The Denver Broncos are going to be smarting over this loss for a while. Denver had the Kansas City Chiefs on the ropes, up by 10 points with less than a quarter to go, but the home team let the visitor storm back to win the game.

One of the reasons the Chiefs were able to score 14 straight to end the game was because of the offense’s inability to stay on the field after Patrick Mahomes and company found the end zone with just over six minutes to play.

Case Keenum would need to sustain a drive, and operate the four-minute offense with aplomb. Somehow, though, the message didn’t get sent to Offensive Coordinator Bill Musgrave.

After calling a run play to Phillip Lindsay in which he was stopped for no gain — oddly from the shotgun formation — Musgrave would call two consecutive pass plays. I can understand why he’d call a pass on third-and-10, even if I disagreed with it, but to go away from Denver’s ground dominance at any point with the game on the line was inexplicable.

We’re talking about a Broncos offense that averaged 7.2 yards per carry on the ground on Monday night. It was so dominant, there was literally no reason to go away from the run.

But go away from it, with the game on the line, the Broncos did. And it defies explanation. But that didn't stop Head Coach Vance Joseph from defending Musgrave from the podium after the game.

“Our offensive line has been really good all year,” Joseph said. “Both young backs (RBs Royce Freeman and Phillip Lindsay), they ran downhill. They had 70-plus yards apiece. They ran downhill, but you score points by throwing the football. We ran the ball to control the game. You throw the ball to score. That’s never going to stop.”

Joseph’s argument kind of collapsed in on itself there. He acknowledges how explosive Freeman and Lindsay were, as well as how dominant the O-line was, before disintegrating into a nonsensical football cliche.

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What Joseph said about running the ball to control the game, while throwing to score is true. But at the point in question, Denver needed to sustain a drive in order to protect a lead late — and thus control the game. The Broncos weren’t trying to score on that possession, let's face it.



There’s absolutely no reason for Denver to go away from the run game in a four-minute situation after the team had already hung 159 rushing yards on their opponent at more than seven yards per clip. The first down rush attempt was questionable in and of itself, even though it was a run.

Why run Lindsay out of the shotgun, instead of putting fullback Andy Janovich in the game to run the power-I down Kansas City’s throat with Freeman?

That was the formula the situation called for, but Musgrave blew it. And Joseph, albeit without consulting the tape, defended his OC at the podium.

“It was third-and-long,” Joseph said. “At that point, it wasn’t going to be the running game, it was going to be a pass there. They played good defense there. We went three-and-out.”

Again, I can at least understand the call to pass on third-and-10, even though I still would have ran the ball, knowing the odds were in my favor to pick up at least seven yards and keep the clock running. Denver's miscalculations ended up stopping the clock as Keenum ran out of bounds on third down, with the possession taking 68 seconds off the clock.

Until this coaching staff learns to play to it’s team’s strengths, the seat upon which they all sit is only going to continue to get hotter. It had been Defensive Coordinator Joe Woods blindly scheming away from his team’s strengths in the first three games, but Musgrave’s hubris was the straw that broke the camel’s back this week.

Case Keenum threw the ball 33 times on a night in which he probably shouldn’t have exceeded 25. Had Musgrave stuck to the formula that’s been working all year — the same one that had the Chiefs on their heels all night — we might be talking about an upset victory in the Mile High City instead of a monumental fourth quarter collapse, and a sixth-straight loss to Kansas City.