The Broncos’ Sean Payton is pointing the finger at himself after an ugly Wild Card loss to the Bills
The The Denver Broncos’ season has collapsed on Sunday, as they were beaten by the Buffalo Bills in a 31-7 loss on Wild Card weekend. With this loss, a very promising and somewhat surprising season in Denver ended without a playoff win.
Going into this game, there was a lot of buzz around The Broncos probably have a chance to pull off the upset over a Bills team that many consider a Super Bowl contender. However, that did not happen on the field. After a long touchdown pass from Bo Nix to Troy Franklin gave the Broncos an early 7-0 lead, the Bills held them down with 31 unanswered points the rest of the way to an easy victory.
After the game, the head coach of the Broncos Sean Payton took full responsibility for the loss, according to Chris Thomason of the Denver Gazette.
“It starts with me.” “It’s always a tough pill to swallow,” Payton said of the playoff loss, per Thomason.
One of the game’s defining sequences came in the second quarter, as momentum slipped away from Denver’s offense. Peyton tried to inject some energy into his team by calling a fake punt, which worked to perfection. Punter Riley Dixon hit Marvin Mims for the first down of the game, and the Broncos were in business.
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However, Peyton curiously elected to punt on fourth-and-7 on the same drive when he could have either tried again or kicked a long field goal. After the game, Peyton said that he he did not regret the decision to throw it away even after burning a fake punt earlier in the drive, according to Zac Stevens of DNVR Sports.
The The Broncos also missed a critical field goal before halftime that would tie the game at 10 at halftime and give them some momentum.
The game edged even more in Buffalo’s favor in the second half with the Bills leading 13-7 but facing a fourth-and-1. Instead of going for a field goal to go up by two points, Sean McDermott decided to be aggressive and continued . Josh Allen extended the play and then found Ty Johnson in the back of the end zone for a touchdown to make it a two-score game, and the Bills took off from there.
The Broncos still had a very successful season as a team that wasn’t even supposed to make the playoffs in the AFC, but it’s still a bitter end to the year for Payton and company.
2025-01-12 22:14:00
