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The Denver Broncos‘ 10-7 home loss to the New England Patriots in the AFC Championship Game was agonizing to watch for anyone who bleeds orange. But it’s not as if denizens of Broncos Country, and loads of others, didn’t see it coming.
In the week leading up to the faceoff, local podcast and sports radio talkers worked themselves into a lather coming up with reasons why the Broncos could and probably would best the Pats and make it to Super Bowl LX despite the fractured ankle starting quarterback Bo Nix suffered toward the end of last week’s win over the Buffalo Bills. But national pundits had very different takes, with most arguing that the absence of Nix was a disaster too large to overcome.
Likewise, the yuksters at Saturday Night Live devoted an entire sketch to the blatant obviousness of Denver’s doom — and they were so confident in their prediction that they shared it with America roughly twelve hours before the opening whistle.
SNL‘s offering, on view below, wasn’t exactly a paragon of accuracy. The bit maintained that the ESPN broadcast team of Joe Buck (portrayed by James Austin Johnson) and Troy Aikman (Andrew Dismukes) would be calling the contest; in real life, Jim Nance and Tony Romo drew the duty for CBS. Meanwhile, Academy Award nominee Teyana Taylor, the evening’s host, assumed the persona of sideline reporter Lisa Salters, another ESPN staffer. But the gist of the joke was clear: Jarrett Stidham, Nix’s backup, had no chance in hell of topping New England thanks to second-year QB Drake Maye, a viable candidate for Most Valuable Player (although he’ll probably fall short to Matthew Stafford), and a stifling defense that likely would have given even Bo far more trouble than he would have preferred.
In the end, the matchup was considerably closer than comedians had guessed, and its competitiveness gave fans on social media ample opportunity to assess blame for the loss. Most of the finger-pointers aimed their digits at head coach Sean Payton, but Stidham took his share of brickbats as well.
Things started off far better than anticipated. Denver’s first possession generated a single yard on three plays, but after the Broncos’ D stuffed Maye and company shortly thereafter, Stidham hit Marvin Mims Jr. for a 52-yard strike on a third-and-ten, then cashed in with a touchdown chuck to Courtland Sutton.
Early in the second quarter, Stidham drove his charges down to the Patriots’ fourteen. The Broncos faced a fourth-and-one at that spot, but rather than taking the easy field goal and extending their lead to 10-0, Payton chose to gamble — and he lost his bet thanks to a poorly conceived pass play that pretty much gave Stidham only one option that never materialized.
The three points that weren’t turned out to be the margin of defeat in large part because of Stidham’s worst moment. On Denver’s next turn with the ball, he chose to shovel the pigskin away rather than take a sack. The result was either a fumble or a backwards pass, depending on the interpretation. Either way, it set the Patriots up for a Maye score a mere 42 second later.
From that point on, Mother Nature took center stage, with a fast-moving winter storm promptly turning Empower Field at Mile High into a picturesque but athletically impossible snow globe. The blizzard conditions essentially froze both offenses in place with a single exception: New England’s first drive of the second half, marked by a 28-yard Maye scramble. The Denver defense stiffened at the five, but that was close enough for Pats kicker Andy Borregales to boot a field goal that gave New England the lead.
The ineptitude of the Broncos offense over the remaining twenty minutes or so of playing time — a stretch distinguished by bad ideas from Payton, poorly executed by Stidham, as well as lousy clock management — ensured that the New Englanders would keep it.
That the Broncos had a legitimate chance for victory without Nix but squandered it left most Denver boosters on X more infuriated than if they’d just witnessed the sort of massacre everyone had been envisioning. The twenty posts below tell the sad tale one invective at a time.
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