KANSAS CITY, Mo. — Beating the Chiefs here any time is difficult enough.
Thursday night or Sunday afternoon. October or January. Pristine weather, persistent wind or pelting snow.
The job becomes essentially impossible if a visitor fails in all three phases of the game.
Thatap exactly what happened for the Broncos at the end of the first half in a 19-8 loss Thursday night.
Overall, the defense played well, the offense stunk and the special teams checked in somewhere in between. But they all had a hand in allowing Harrison Butker’s 60-yard field goal to end the half. And head coach Sean Payton played a key role, too.
Consider this: The Broncos started their final possession of the half with just 47 seconds left on the clock.
Russell Wilson followed an ideal drive-starter — a 15-yard screen to running back Samaje Perine out to the Denver 39-yard line — with an incompletion and a low throw to Courtland Sutton that prompted Payton to take his first timeout.
On third-and-5 from his own 44, Wilson got sacked when Chiefs star Chris Jones beat Mike McGlinchey cleanly around the right edge and hammered Wilson at the Broncos’ 37-yard line with 22 seconds remaining.
On the visiting sideline, Sean Payton lost track of the downs and called a timeout thinking the Broncos faced third-and-long rather than fourth down.
“Thatap a boneheaded mistake by me,” he said after the game. “They were calling one as well and I’m off by a down, but that was stupid.”
Indeed, Kansas City had all three of its timeouts and would have taken one to get the ball back anyway, but itap the kind of gaffe that is just asking for trouble against two-time MVP Chiefs quarterback Patrick Mahomes II.
That only compounded when Riley Dixon’s punt into the wind managed just 3.3 seconds hangtime and checked up at 29 yards. Rookie defensive back Riley Moss touched the ball after running out of bounds as a gunner and cost Denver five more yards.
So 24 net on the punt left Mahomes 15 seconds to work from his own 39.
He followed a six-yard completion to Jerrick McKinnon with a 13-yard scramble, with a timeout after each snap, and set up Butker with a long-range chance. His holder right in the middle of the logo at midfield, Butker smashed a liner that cleared the crossbar with plenty of distance from 60 yards.
“Thatap a three-point swing there, but there’s so many of these other things that jump into my mind relative to opportunities missed,” Payton said.
The difference between 10-0 and 13-0 at halftime might not seem like much, but it mattered when the Broncos scored late and got within 16-8.
It mattered even more when Butker’s 52-yarder with 1:55 to go was enough to extend the lead back to two scores.
It matters for a team that spent so much time working on situations in training camp, got two possessions in the final 3:06 of the first half around a defensive stop and still fell further behind.
It matters for a team that keeps thinking itap close to winning games and keeps coming up short.
Like, a timeout short. Or a field goal short. Or 20 yards of field position short.
Russell Wilson was in an almost identical situation against the Jets last week late in the game but with more favorable conditions: First-and-10 at his own 41 with 50 seconds remaining, a timeout to work with and needing three points to tie the game or seven points to win it.
Instead of capitalizing, though, he didn’t register an unblocked defender off his right side, scrambled left and fumbled to seal the game.
So, sure, plenty else went wrong for Denver offensively Thursday night. But the inability to take more than 15 seconds off the clock, correctly utilize timeouts, flip the field on special teams or keep Mahomes from covering ground in 11 seconds all conspired to make an already massive challenge all the more difficult.
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