DENVER — So much promise, so many hopes and the biggest of football dreams eluded the Denver Broncos on Sunday, coach Sean Payton said, because the offense didn’t do enough when it had momentum before the snow rolled in off the Rocky Mountains.
Payton said he will find several “regrets” when he looks at it all again, most notably when he passed up points in the second quarter, as the Broncos dropped passes and the run game fizzled in a 10-7 loss to the New England Patriots in the AFC Championship Game in Empower Field at Mile High.
“[I’m] hurting for every one of those players in that locker room,” Payton said. “There’ll be a number of things when we watch the tape and I’ll look at and critique and pay close attention to. … It was a hard-fought game, and we didn’t do enough to win it.”
The Broncos, who had their biggest play — a 52-yard pass from Jarrett Stidham to Marvin Mims Jr. — on their second possession, their only scoring drive, had just 32 net yards of offense in the second half to go with one first down.
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Kicker Wil Lutz missed a field goal attempt, and the potential game-tying kick with just under five minutes left was blocked, as the Broncos didn’t have a play longer than 12 yards after Mims’ first-quarter catch.
“We didn’t score enough points and capitalize on that field position,” Payton said. “Starts with the head coach and rest of our staff.”
Payton said he will “always” have second thoughts about a decision to go for a fourth-and-1 conversion with 9 minutes, 28 seconds left in the second quarter, especially after the snow arrived at halftime and only increased in intensity as the game progressed.
The Broncos led 7-0 and the Patriots at that point had not had a drive go longer than 11 yards. Payton elected to go for it from the Patriots’ 14-yard line and said initially he had called for a run play.
But the Broncos took a timeout, and during the pause, Payton said, he changed the call to a pass play that put Stidham in a bootleg.
“I just felt like, man, we had momentum, to get up 14 [points], felt like we had a good call,” Payton said. “I think the feeling was, man, let’s be aggressive. You know, to get up 14, I was just watching the way our defense was playing.”
After the snap, Patriots defensive tackles Cory Durden and Milton Williams were almost immediately in the Broncos’ backfield, and that rushed Stidham’s throw, his pass falling incomplete.
The Broncos did not get inside the New England 20 for the remainder of the game as the weather conditions deteriorated.
“There’s always regrets,” Payton said. “I felt like here we are fourth-and-1, close enough and it’s also a call you make based on the team you’re playing and what you’re watching on the other side of the ball. So, yeah, there’ll always be second thoughts.”
Payton added that in “hindsight,” the original run play he called “was a better decision.”
All in all, Payton said the big-picture problem of the day was that three first-half possessions starting at the Broncos 40 or better resulted in just one touchdown — a 6-yard Stidham pass to Courtland Sutton in the first quarter.
In the swirling snow after halftime, the Broncos rushed for 22 yards, Stidham had 10 yards passing and the Broncos’ longest possession went for 17 yards as the passed-up field goal loomed larger with each snowflake.
“Became apparent that with each possession, a field goal, that type of thing was going to be real important,” Payton said. “And we weren’t able to get it done.”
As offensive tackle Mike McGlinchey put it: “They executed one more possession than we did. And we’re going to have to sit with that until next year.”
