The last time the Broncos played the AFC West’s bogeyman, Patrick Mahomes, was a year and six days before Sunday’s showdown in Denver. And that one, for the Broncos, went like a lot of them have since Peyton Manning hung up his cleats, with this one, for Sean Payton’s crew, being particularly painful—because the Broncos had them.
In Week 10 last season, Denver had the ball with 5:57 left on its own 40, trailing 16–14, and methodically moved its way down the field, draining the clock, forcing Kansas City to use its timeouts and lining Will Lutz up for a 35-yard game-winning field goal with a second left.
The kick was blocked. The loss dropped Denver to 5–5, and 13–14 through Payton’s first 27 games. The Broncos were improved, but the mighty Chiefs could seemingly absorb any punch they tried to throw. And while the final margin was just two points, Denver seemed way further off than that from truly challenging the AFC’s preeminent superpower.
But the head coach had other ideas. In the locker room postgame, Payton told the players he believed in them, and their work. He told them they were close. The next day, he showed the players tape of his most devastating losses, including the 2018 NFC title game (the Saints’ loss to the Rams marred by a missed pass interference call).
Since that loss to the Chiefs, the Broncos are 14–4 in the regular season.
And Denver’s most recent win may be the most meaningful of Payton’s first two-plus years with the Broncos.
This time, Lutz hit the 35-yard game-winner. This time, the Broncos beat the Chiefs.
As a result, Denver’s now 9–2, three-and-a-half games in front of K.C. in the AFC West, two games up on the Chargers and headed into its bye. It’d be presumptuous to say any sort of torch-passing has taken place.
But to say these Broncos are different wouldn’t be.
For most people, because the Broncos aren’t the most aesthetically pleasing powerhouse for the era they play in, it was going to take a win like Sunday’s to buy in on this tough, gritty team.
Conversely, the internal buy-in—first through the players buying into Payton, then with those guys buying into each other—has been in place for a while. Mostly because Payton tested who would give it to him from the minute he arrived in Colorado in early 2023.
We’ve written plenty about how that was forged through the weeding-out process that’s gone on in Payton’s Bill Parcells–ian, not-for-the-faint-of-heart training camps. So you’ve heard how unrelenting the Broncos have been with their players—running two-and-a-half-hour practices and maxing out on fully padded practices in the age of sports science—to identify who’d be fit to play for the veteran coach.
The part you may have missed is what Payton has said to those guys along the way.
“He always told us that we’re heading into the right direction,” veteran corner Ja’Quan McMillian told me after the win over the Chiefs. “We just bought in and we believed it. He’s instilled confidence. He’s just doing a great job with the team. Everyone bought in, everybody’s put their hand in. We’re playing for each other.”
And he’s really leaned into it when his team needed it most—in moments like the one the team faced last year after having its heart ripped out by the Chiefs.
Maybe that’s why, on Sunday, Denver once again looked so ready for any adversity that could come.
For the defense, those moments arrived in the fourth quarter, when it looked like the Chiefs were gearing up to run away with the game. A Travis Kelce touchdown put Kansas City up 19–16 with 9:57 left. The Broncos’ defense went back out there with 8:11 left. They secured their first three and out. Then, after a resulting short field helped set up a 54-yard Lutz field goal to tie it, the defense got another three and out, keyed by a McMillian sack on third down.
“[Defensive coordinator Vance Joseph] called it at the right time,” said McMillian, who’d picked off Mahomes earlier in the second half. “He’d been saying I was gonna come free, we were going to come free on that play, with the nickel, which is me. I was just reading Mahomes. The whole game, I’d watch his hands go up, and that’s when the ball was snapped. I just timed it up well, and they didn’t slide the protection my way, and I just made a play.”
From there, it was the Bo Show, with second-year quarterback Bo Nix coming up biggest when he was needed most, just like he did in Week 7 against the Giants and Week 9 in Houston.
And he saved the best for last against the Chiefs. Nix bought time, then found Courtland Sutton for 20 yards on third-and-15 just before the two-minute warning. Five plays later, he made the throw of the game, connecting with fellow NFL sophomore Troy Franklin for 32 yards on a corner route, to move well within Lutz’s range.
“He’s made for the moments,” McMillian said. “He comes up clutch for us. He’s making them plays. I love Bo. He’s a high competitor, he goes out and gives it his all each and every play. He has a knack for making plays when we need it the most. Bo is that dude.”
At this point, the Broncos have a lot of those dudes, spread throughout the roster to equip the team to win different types of games from week to week. They’ve won rockfights against the Raiders and Jets. They’ve won shootouts against the Cowboys and Giants. On Sunday, they won something in between the two—and what came with it.
The prize in Sunday’s win for Denver is how it sets up a run at bigger prizes.
If the Broncos can hang on and win the AFC West, that’ll mean at least one home playoff game. If they stay atop the AFC, the whole bracket will run through Colorado.
Which is to say soon enough everyone should start talking about the Broncos the way Payton’s been talking about them for a few months now. To his credit, Payton’s had no problem raising the bar of expectations for his team going all the way back to training camp—because he knows they can handle it.
They showed that, unequivocally, on Sunday.
“Guys just want it more,” said McMillian, one of the players Payton inherited from Nathaniel Hackett’s team. “We’ve been here for three years. This is my third year in the defense. Guys that have been in the defense know each other. The guys they brought in have bought it. We’re just playing well together. We don’t want to let each other down. We fight for each other. We have hard, long camps. And we just want to go out there and show the work we’ve put in.”
On Sunday, they did.
And Payton can say he saw this coming all along. Even when it didn’t seem so rational to think that way.
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This article was originally published on www.si.com as How the Broncos Knew From Experience They Could Beat the Chiefs.
