Kicker Wil Lutz stoked the ire of Broncos Country, and fans are still fuming.
Broncos Country was in a sad, angry state after Wil Lutz’s field goal was blocked in the final seconds of the Broncos’ loss to the Chiefs on November 10. Flickr/Steve Stearns
There have been no shortage of puke-inducing losses over the course of the Denver Broncos’ long history. But precious few have been worse than the team’s 16-14 fail to the Kansas City Chiefs on November 10.
Denver last won a road game in KC back in 2015, when Peyton Manning was still playing quarterback for the squad rather than serving as the spokesperson for every product for sale in America (who knew he loved Hawaiian rolls so much?); current starter Bo Nix couldn’t legally drive a a car by himself in his native Alabama, since he was only fifteen.
This streak would have been over had kicker Wil Lutz been able to boot an exceedingly makeable 35-yarder over the cross bar as time expired. Instead, the Broncos’ offensive line was somehow transformed into a group of ushers who politely invited their opposite numbers into the Denver backfield, thereby allowing them to block an attempt that Lutz aimed low…to make sure they couldn’t miss it.
Afterward, citizens of Broncos Country collectively lost their shit. The better part of a day later, sports-related social media still smells like a sewer as a result. And now, post-season dreams that bloomed when head coach Sean Payton’s underlings were 5-3 and remained alive even after the previous Sunday’s ass-kicking by the Baltimore Ravens are once again in danger of becoming unfulfilled fantasies.Given these circumstances, it may difficult for casual fans to see all the positives that preceded Lutz’s professional nadir. But there were plenty of them.
Exhibit A: the performance of the Denver defense, whose level of aggression actually made Chiefs quarterback Patrick Mahomes, a three-time Super Bowl champ who remains the most consistent winner in the game, look ordinary for much of the competition. The Broncos recorded four sacks, with Zach Allen, Nik Bonitto, Jonathan Franklin-Myers and Jonathan Cooper each earning a credit for planting Pat into the turf. Denver also notched nine quarterback pressures — numbers that only hint at the D’s level of domination.
Better yet, defensive coordinator Vance Joseph’s crew only allowed a single touchdown — a pass to tight end Travis Kelce, who needed to score in order to give the folks at CBS a chance to show his girlfriend Taylor Swift celebrating afterward. On three other occasions, Denver held the Chiefs to field goals by mental Neanderthal Harrison Butker, with the last of them giving Kansas City just a two-point advantage with more than five minutes left to play.
At that point, Nix had a chance to justify all the optimism that his fan base of Bo-Ners have expressed since Payton chose him as field general — and he proved equal to the moment. Nix had an impressive first half thanks to a pair of touchdown hurls and a degree of accuracy that shows how much he’s grown since the beginning of the 2024-2025 campaign; not every toss resulted in a completion, but the overwhelming majority went in the general direction he intended. And if his production waned dramatically in the third quarter and much of the fourth, he was smart and sharp throughout the final drive, which ate up all but one second of the clock and set up Lutz in perfect position.
