KANSAS CITY, Mo. — The Broncos, it seemed, did everything right.
In a road test against the defending back-to-back Super Bowl champs, the Broncos played the game they wanted to play.
They jumped out to a 14-3 first-half lead over the unbeaten Chiefs, as quarterback Bo Nix threw a pair of touchdown passes in one of his finest performances of the season. They held Patrick Mahomes and Kansas City to 1-of-4 in the red zone and kept the game within striking distance late in the fourth quarter.
The Broncos were more efficient on third down. They ran the ball better. They did not turn it over.
And when Nix and the Broncos faced their first deficit of the afternoon on the final drive, he and the offense drained nearly six minutes off the clock, picked up three third-down conversions and forced the Chiefs to burn their final timeouts. On a critical third-and-6 from the Kansas City 30-yard line with 1:53 to play, Nix moved up in the pocket and hit wide receiver Courtland Sutton for a 13-yard gain. The completion allowed the Broncos to run the clock down to the final moments.
It all set up a 35-yard field-goal attempt that could have sent the Broncos to 6-4 and given the team its first win at Arrowhead since 2015.
"It really played out exactly how we wanted it to," Head Coach Sean Payton said after the game. "Exactly. With the ball, with the clock, with complete control of everything."
And then the kick was blocked.
The Chiefs sideline spilled onto the field in jubilation, and the Broncos were left to digest a 16-14 loss in which Denver seemed in control for extended stretches of the game.
"Obviously, a tough loss," Payton said. "I thought we played well on the road. … I felt like we outplayed them, but we didn't finish. We had an opportunity to right at the end. We kind of controlled the ball, and we've got to be able to finish. That one will take a while [to get over]. It'll sting. When you do this long enough, hopefully you're at the better half — not the other way around — of some tough losses like that. I told our team I was proud of how we fought. I thought we outplayed them. But nonetheless, you've got to beat a champion, and we weren't able to do it. Obviously, [it was] gut-wrenching."
And while the Broncos remain in the thick of the playoff hunt, the close performance didn't dull the pain of a two-point loss that seemed in hand for Denver.
"Games like this are supposed to hurt," defensive lineman Malcolm Roach said.
Added cornerback Pat Surtain II: "It's tough to lose like this, I ain't gonna lie."
The game wasn't without its challenging moments. An illegal contact penalty on Brandon Jones before halftime wiped out a Nik Bonitto sack and gave the Chiefs a chance to extend their drive. Rather than holding a 14-3 lead and getting a chance to tack on more points before halftime, the Broncos led 14-10 as their 60-yard field-goal attempt fell short before the end of the first half. In a scoreless second half for the Broncos, promising offensive drives were wiped out at times by either penalties or sacks. Denver largely held Mahomes in check, but he shook off what looked to be a sure Bonitto sack on a third-and-13 — and then proceeded to fire a 35-yard completion to Samaje Perine to lead to another Chiefs score.
Yet despite the difficult plays that are sure to come in a matchup against one of the league's best teams, Denver held tough. Nix completed 9-of-10 passes on third down for six first downs, and he finished the game 22-of-30 for 215 yards, two touchdowns and a 115.3 passer rating in what Payton called a "gutsy" performance.
"I thought the 'Q' played real well," Payton said. "[He was] poised."
Defensively, the Broncos held the Chiefs to their lowest scoring output of the season on the shoulders of their red-zone performance. According to the CBS broadcast, the Chiefs have scored just one touchdown on their last 11 red-zone trips vs. Denver.
"I thought defensively, the last three times we've played them now, we've played them very well," Payton said.
That success, though, just makes the loss sting more.
"We gave ourselves a chance," Nix said. "Again, they just made one extra play. When we thought it was in our hands, it wasn't."
Now, the Broncos must pick themselves up and showcase a level of resilience.
"We know where we want to go," Roach said. "We know where we're trying to go. We know what we're fighting to do. At the end of the day, we've got to keep showing up and keep going to work. We've got to give this city something to be proud of, and we've got to get the job done."
