KANSAS CITY, Mo. — On a short week of preparation and facing Kansas City as a double-digit underdog on national television, Broncos coach Sean Payton outlined the path to an upset.
“If I gave you Sunday halftime lead win percentage, so the normal time-slot games on Sunday — (who’s) winning at the half, and who wins the game — it’s probably in the 60-some percentile,” he said Tuesday. “What’s unusual is on Thursday nights is it spikes. I just finished talking about fast starts.
“It’s important.”
Only problem: His offense didn’t get the message.
Payton’s group got shut out into the fourth quarter, quarterback Russell Wilson turned in a performance that vacillated between disjointed and disastrous and the Broncos lost to the Chiefs for the 16th straight time to move to 1-5 to start the season.
This version of the same old story: 19-8.
“To win in this league you’ve got to be better throwing the ball,” said Payton, who thought the wind affected the kicking game but not the quarterbacks. Wilson finished 13-of-22 for 95 yards.
Perhaps the only surprise came when Wilson and the offense mounted a touchdown drive in the fourth quarter that finished with a terrific, 11-yard touchdown catch from Courtland Sutton. When Javonte Williams plowed in for the two-point conversion, the Broncos drew within one score with 6 minutes, 7 seconds remaining.
For much of the game, Denver’s offense looked incapable of scoring or even threatening to score.
Wilson threw a pair of interceptions and logged just 57 yards on his first 14 pass attempts. He was sacked four times. All the while, the Broncos ran the ball effectively, as has mostly been the case over the early part of the season.
Except unlike three home games in which Denver led at halftime before getting away from the run game, this time the Broncos didn’t lead for a second.
The offense’s drive list started like this: Turnover on downs, interception, four straight punts, an interception and then another punt. None of the first six generated more than two first downs or covered more than 34 yards. Those drives featured two first downs through the air and no completions longer than a 15-yard screen to running back Samaje Perine and a 13-yarder to Jerry Jeudy out of the backfield. The seventh drive gained three first downs and 43 yards before Wilson had a pass tipped and intercepted.
For more than 53 minutes, the Broncos flirted with all manner of dubious history.
They’ve fallen to the Chiefs in numerous ways, but they’d at least scored points each time out over the longest active losing streak in the NFL. In fact, they hadn’t been shut out by Kansas City since a 16-0 decision in 1970, the first year post-merger and the first year these teams shared the AFC West as a division.
Not only that, but Payton had never been shut out in his first 246 games as a head coach. Wilson? Only once in 11-plus seasons.
That was all squarely in play until the late touchdown.
To make matters worse, the lifeless offensive outing came just as the Broncos defense finally put together a spirited night after one of the worst opening five-game stretches in NFL history.
Kansas City quarterback Patrick Mahomes and company took their first three drives into the red zone, but finished with a field goal, a turnover on downs on a fake field goal attempt and a Justin Simmons interception.
“No. 1, we’re trusting out technique. It’s not like there’s a whole new set,” Payton said. “… Overall I thought we did a good job of applying pressure and then forcing the clock in (Mahomes’) head to be pretty quick.”
The Chiefs finally punched in a touchdown on a short Mahomes pass to Kadarius Toney, but even after that Vance Joseph’s group got a stop on a two-minute drive and gave Wilson and Denver’s offense one more chance to cut into a 10-0 lead before halftime.
A drive starting with 47 seconds left in the half, though, requires passing the ball. And the Broncos couldn’t do that with any semblance of functionality in the first half Thursday night.
Wilson turned in his his worst first half of 2023 to date, completing 7 of 11 passes for 37 yards and an interception. He also took three sacks, the last of which came on third-and-2 with 22 seconds left in the half to stall a drive that took all of 15 seconds off the clock. Even more inexplicably, the Broncos were charged for a timeout after the snap, stopping the clock ahead of their punt and giving Mahomes enough time to complete one pass and scramble into range for Harrison Butker to pipe a 60-yard field goal at the first-half buzzer for a 13-0 lead.
Payton called the late-half timeout “just a boneheaded mistake by me” because he thought it was third down rather than fourth, but pointed out that Kansas City also would have taken a timeout in that moment.
The offensive ineptitude rendered an otherwise spirited defensive effort early on essentially meaningless. Joseph’s group only failed, really, to do one thing in the early going: Cover All-Pro tight end Travis Kelce.
He caught all seven first-half passes thrown his way for 107 yards and finished with nine catches for 124.
Needing a stop after Sutton’s touchdown catch, though, Mahomes engineered a nine-play drive that covered 41 yards, melted 4:12 off the clock and ended with a 52-yard field goal from Butker to extend the Chiefs’ lead back to a comfortable two scores.
“I told our players that I was disappointed, but honestly, and I said this to them five minutes ago, I’m not discouraged,” Payton said.
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