One of the most consequential plays of the AFC Championship Game came on a fourth-and-1 from the New England 14-yard line in the second quarter. <\/p>\n
The Broncos were leading 7-0 at the time, but head coach Sean Payton passed on a field goal in order to have backup quarterback Jarrett Stidham throw a pass in an attempt to convert a first down and try for a touchdown. Stidham was pressured and wound up nearly getting his pass intercepted to cap a drive that would move the Broncos closer to the end zone than they would get at any other point in the afternoon. <\/p>\n
\u201cI just felt like we had the momentum to get up 14,\u201d Payton said in his postgame press conference. \u201cI felt like we had a good call. . . . I think the feeling was, let\u2019s be aggressive. I was just watching the way our defense was playing.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Broncos defense was playing well and it continued to play well once the game became a snowy and windy affair over the final 20 minutes or so. Payton referenced the conditions in his press conference by saying \u201cyou don\u2019t know how a game\u2019s gonna unfold\u201d and how valuable three points would turn out to be, although it\u2019s hard to imagine any coach not appreciating a two-score lead in the first half with a backup running the offense. <\/p>\n
Denver had other opportunities over the course of the afternoon, but two longer field goal tries were no good and Stidham had the only two turnovers of a game that the Broncos entered with a very slim margin for error. That proved to be too much to overcome and they\u2019ll have to wait a long time before they\u2019ll have a chance to get back on the field. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"One of the most consequential plays of the AFC Championship Game came on a fourth-and-1 from the New…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":429942,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[63],"tags":[349,99],"class_list":["post-429941","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nfl","tag-nfl","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/429941","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=429941"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/429941\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/429942"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=429941"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=429941"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=429941"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}