Denver Broncos kicker Brandon McManus misses a 45-yard field goal for the win with four seconds left against the Cincinnati Bengals on Dec. 28, 2015 at Sports Authority Field at Mile High. (Eric Lutzens, The Denver Post)
When the football launched off Brandon McManus’ foot — as time in regulation expired, with a Broncos playoff berth on the line — it hooked so far left that, many reasoned, it must have been tipped by an opposing player.
But it hadn’t. It was just an unusually awful kick from 45 yards out.
“I’m 24 years old,” McManus said. “I don’t think I’ve ever kicked a ball like that in my life — grade school, elementary school or anything like that. I just wrapped my toe around on it.”
Some kicking 101, for the uninitiated: A kicker is supposed to lock his ankle and keep his toe down when striking the ball. Pick the toe up too quickly, and the result is, well, what McManus nearly blasted to the visitors’ tunnel.
“I didn’t point my toe down at all,” he said. “My toes popped up, and if your toes pop up, it’ll hit the side panel of the ball and that’s why it went so far left.”
No one came up to McManus after the miss. He was so furious at himself that he came out in overtime — with a chance to put the Broncos ahead — and drilled it right down the middle. McManus said he wasn’t nervous when he stepped into a clutch situation the second time, and he .
“It was the same thing in Pittsburgh when I missed the extra point,” he said of last week’s game. “I was so pissed off at myself. The second one after that was one of the best kicks of the year. I don’t really get nervous; I just more or less got mad at myself.”
McManus has delivered under pressure already this season. in regulation gave the Broncos a 23-20 win, and he in Cleveland.
“That kick was such an anomaly,” McManus said. “(The players) knew I was going to come back. I’m able to talk to myself and figure it out.”
