5 Reasons Denver Broncos Lost AFC Championship Game

Yes, it's almost been a week since the Broncos lost the AFC Championship Game to the New England Patriots 10-7, but it's the last game to talk about for eight months.

Besides that, since the dust—and snow—has settled, more issues have shown themselves beyond Sean Payton's coaching mistake. He should've kicked the field goal in the 2nd quarter, but beyond that, lots of other issues have surfaced, too.

5 Reasons Denver Broncos Lost AFC Championship Game

The Denver Broncos lost to the AFC Championship to the Patriots due to a coaching error by Sean Payton, multiple kicking issues, and poor blocking from All-Pro Quinn Meinerz.

1. Coaching Miscue

The first and foremost reason Denver lost was Sean Payton's decision, and play call, to go for it on 4th-and-1 from the Pats' 14 in the 2nd quarter.

Sean Payton Should’ve Kicked the Field Goal, Denver Broncos Lose 10-7

Sean Payton should’ve kicked the field goal in the second quarter, extending Denver’s lead to 10-0. Instead, he went for it on 4th down on a pass play, and turned it over.

Broncos BlitzRich Kurtzman

Payton should've kicked the field goal and gone up 10-0. This was true at the time, mostly because they had a backup quarterback playing, and it became only more true after the near whiteout conditions prevailed in the second half.

Not only did he say he regretted it after the game, in Seth Wickersham's piece Payton admitted, "I wish I'd stayed with the initial play call," Payton said softly, leaving the stadium. "The look they showed on film, and the look we saw, wasn't the look we got."

Payton had a QB sneak called, then stopped the clock with a timeout, then called the rollout pass that had zero chance of working. He also said the Bears should've kicked field goals when they had opportunities in the Divisional Round, which is pretty ironic.

Obviously, if everything else played out the same, the game would've been 10-10 in the fourth quarter, so kicking that field goal wouldn't have won the game. But Denver would've had a better chance leading and then tied rather than trailing for basically the entire second half.

2. Kicking Issues

The added insult to injury of Payton not kicking that short, 32-yarder early, was that Wil Lutz missed his other two field goal attempts.

The 50-yarder to end the first half went wide right.

The 45-yarder in the fourth quarter was partially blocked. And it turns out the snow affected where the Broncos lined up.

“Unfortunately you couldn’t see the lines on the field and honestly I think we might have been a yard short on the snap," Lutz said immediately after the loss. "But you can’t see the lines on the field and we had to kind of estimate…guy comes through and it gets blocked."

On Monday, Lutz went to Twitter to explain the team was lined up correctly.

But, after reviewing the tape, as well as his earlier kick from before halftime, and all of his four field goals in the Divisional Round win, it turns out the Broncos were indeed lined up a yard shorter than usual.

Typically in the NFL, kickers line up 7 yards behind the line of scrimmage to kick a field goal or an extra point.

But, for whatever reason, Lutz usually stands 8 yards behind the line of scrimmage. You can see in the above tweet that punter Jeremy Crawshaw is 7 yards behind the line, possibly as much as 7.5 yards, but not a full 8 yards back.

That's a huge mistake because it means the ball was still lower to the ground than it should've been by the time it flew over the opposing players. That lower trajectory allowed Leonard Taylor III to get a slight fingertip on the ball and force the Broncos to miss the kick.

3. Quinn Meinerz's Poor Play

Quinn Meinerz may be a two-time All-Pro, but he played terrible football last Sunday.

The biggest glaring mistake was the sack he allowed to Christian Barmore. Meinerz looked like a turnstile as he got set up and barely got hands on Barmore before the Pats lineman sacked Stidham for an 8-yard loss.

He also was the reason why Taylor penetrated the line and got a hand on the field goal.

Pro Football Focus' grades were glaringly bad for Meinerz, too.

His 27.7 pass blocking grade was the by far his worst of the season and 7th-worst of his career. Similarly, Meinerz' 53.4 offensive grade was his worst of the season and the worst since Week 1 of the 2024 season (46.4).

In all, Meinerz allowed six total pressures of Stidham. He played nowhere near his best football, and Christian Barmore called him out disrespectfully after the Patriots win.

“First-team All-Pro. Our coach tells us all the time that All-Pro don’t mean (expletive),” Barmore said after the win. “Our coaches tell us every time that they’re All-Pros, so they’re the targets. That’s the mission. He’s a helluva player, but this is for us.”

4. Jarrett Stidham vs. Bo Nix

Obviously Bo Nix would've played better than Jarrett Stidham in the AFC Championship Game.

In fact, the game was so ugly and so close, many Broncos fans assert Denver would have definitely won with Nix at quarterback.

If all things held the same—that's to say, if the Patriots offense was as inept as they were thanks to the Broncos defense—I think Denver wins that game with Nix at QB.

Stiddy wasn't terrible. He actually outplayed Drake Maye for most of that game, and his 52-yard pass to Marvin Mims in the first quarter was the biggest passing play of the day for either team.

But Stidham's backwards pass fumble went a long way to sink the Broncos. Nix definitely wouldn't have done that.

"The significance of it (turnovers) in a game that’s pretty quick, and it’s not a best of five," Sean Payton said on the Friday before the game. "It’s a three-hour game that oftentimes these games can be lost, not won.”

It also seems safe to say that Nix would have avoided pressures better than Stiddy did, and that Nix would have likely run for more yards and first downs.

Even in the driving snow, down a field goal, Nix's fourth quarter heroics would have likely helped Denver tie the game at minimum, and possibly win it late.

Obviously, this is the one of these five reasons the Denver Broncos lost the AFC Championship Game that they weren't in control of.

Denver had some of the best luck injury-wise of all NFL teams in 2025, and then they were snakebitten at the very end of the Divisional Round win over the Bills. There's nothing to do other than go get 'em next year, Bo.

5. Defense Didn't Force Turnovers

Overall, Denver's defense played a great game.

They sacked Drake Maye five times and pressured him six times on the day. While Maye led the NFL in passer rating this year (113.2), his rating in the AFC Championship Game was the lowest of his season (58.8). It was also his worst passer rating as a starter dating back to 2024, too.

Similarly, Maye's 86 passing yards were his lowest of the year. Although, he did gash the Broncos on the ground; once for the Pats only touchdown of the day, and the game-winning run in which he called his own number.

Denver made Maye, an MVP candidate, look very ordinary.

But what they didn't do is force any turnovers. And they needed to in order to win.

The Broncos lost the turnover battle, and there were three different drives in the 4th quarter, with the snow falling like crazy, that were prime for forcing a turnover.

Remember, Maye had fumbled six times in the first two playoff games this year, losing three of them. If the Broncos could've forced one there, it would've made for a chip-shot field goal to at least tie the game up.

And if they kicked the one in the 2nd quarter, too, they would've won.

Or, if the defense found a way to take a turnover and make it a score—like a fumble-6—that would've won them the game.

The Broncos in 2024 and 2025 were defense-first. They needed the D to save the day again, and they came up just short.

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