The Denver Broncos defense certainly played well enough to win Sunday’s AFC Championship Game against the New England Patriots.
The problem is the rest of the team wasn’t quite on the same level as defensive coordinator Vance Joseph and his group were.
Denver held New England’s high-powered offense to just 206 yards, but the Broncos only mustered 181 yards of total offense themselves, and their two turnovers proved to be the nail in their coffin.
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After the game, there was plenty of blame to go around, but Broncos head coach Sean Payton started by pointing the finger squarely at himself.
“I know this: I’m going to look at [the film] and be critical of myself,” Payton said. “I think there are a number of things that we just had to do better. We didn’t finish some runs, we dropped some passes again — I felt like that was a problem all year.”
Payton’s assessment didn’t end there, however.
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Though he initially shouldered the responsibility for the loss, Payton also pointed out a costly mistake by backup quarterback Jarrett Stidham, who was starting in place of Bo Nix after he broke a bone in his foot last week, which knocked him out of Sunday’s game.
Stidham threw a backward pass in the second quarter that the Patriots ultimately recovered. They scored a touchdown on their next drive to tie it 7-7. Stidham was also intercepted by Patriots cornerback Christian Gonzalez with 2:18 left in the game to seal New England’s win.
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“The turnover was costly — the backward pass — that resulted in points [for them],” Payton continued. “Defensively, we played very well. It became a low-scoring game. In the end, those turnovers…we had the wind in the fourth quarter, but it was just managing what you could do throwing it.”
Broncos fans — and Payton — are presumably wondering what could have been had Nix played instead of Stidham.
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