Broncos analysis: After chasing Patrick Mahomes for 7 years, Denver finally caught him in division-tilting win

Of course, it came down to 35 yards.

Of course, it caused spiraling deja vu on the Broncos sideline.

Of course, nearly everybody involved had some version of the same thought cross their mind.

This is just like last year.

Except for Sean Payton’s team — and for the Kansas City Chiefs, too — this is not last year.

This is anything but.

Fifty-three weeks after the Broncos had their hearts ripped out at Arrowhead Stadium on a blocked walk-off field goal attempt, Wil Lutz toed the line again from the identical distance and tried not to focus on the full-circle nature of the moment.

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“I saw it the whole way,” the veteran kicker said. “The whole way onto the field, it’s obviously something you think about. When you’re part of a — I don’t want to say a traumatic loss because at the end of the day it’s just a game — but when you’re part of a loss like that, you don’t just forget about it.

“When I looked down and saw we were on the line again and it was a 35-yard field goal, I was kind of like, ‘Well, shoot. Here we are.’

“But I’ve been waiting for a day like this.”

This time, the ball sailed cleanly through the left half of the uprights.

This time, the Broncos prevailed.

This time, the AFC West and the conference’s top seed are theirs for the taking.

Denver is 9-2, winners of eight straight and now two games clear of the Los Angeles Chargers in the division as the group heads into its bye week. The Broncos pulled three games ahead of nine-time defending divisional champ Kansas City in the loss column. They are 7-2 in one-score games this year — the stat reversed entirely in 2025 after years in the doldrums — and the Chiefs are 0-5.

“Tonight was a win, obviously it’s a division win,” Payton said, momentarily trying to stave off any further allowance before relenting to the obvious. “Look, I’d be lying right to everyone if I didn’t say it was a big win.

“It got us to nine and it kept them at five.”

Even if Payton had chosen filibustering words, his actions spoke louder.

As Lutz calmly put home his third walk-off field goal of this now two-month winning streak, Payton threw both hands over his head in celebration.

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“Five for five,” Payton said flatly when asked about the deja vu moment and his kicker, who indeed made a quintet of field goals on the afternoon. Moments later, though, Payton again let the guard down ever so slightly.

“(Last year) was a tough gut-wrenching loss,” he said. “But I think there was a feeling, and if you look at our record from that loss, there was a feeling that we belong here. … There was some irony, obviously, when we were taking a knee to kick the field goal. But I think that the confidence thing that we always talk about exists in that locker room with this group of guys.

“It’s special.”

The symbolism on Sunday at Empower Field was almost as much the story as the significance of the win.

A year ago, Payton’s team had an upstart attitude and belief. In critical moments, though, they wilted more often than they blossomed.

In reeling off four straight wins after that devastating loss against the Chiefs, they showed mettle. In getting blown out of a Wild Card game by Buffalo, they showed the distance still to travel.

All of that felt different on Sunday as the Empower Field crowd of 75,911 roiled. Payton called it different than any environment he’d experienced in the building to date.

All of that felt different despite a game that played out so similarly to last year.

Once again, defensive coordinator Vance Joseph’s group did outstanding work against Chiefs quarterback Patrick Mahomes and company. Ja’Quan McMillian sacked him twice in critical moments — on a Hail Mary attempt before halftime and a fourth-quarter third down — and intercepted him in the red zone.

“Game ball,” Payton said.

The Broncos surrendered just one touchdown in four red zone tries — Mahomes is 2 of 14 in scoring territory the past three seasons against Joseph’s group — but still Kansas City took a 19-16 lead with 9:57 to play when Mahomes hit fellow future Hall of Famer Travis Kelce for a 21-yard touchdown.

The Broncos made play after play defensively, but still Mahomes generated moments of brilliance, including a 61-yard heave to Tyquan Thornton that set up a second-half field goal.

Dethroning the king is rarely tidy.

Joseph told his defense Saturday night that they’d do it by chasing. Chasing Mahomes and chasing and chasing some more.

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“He turns into a legendary player — well he’s always legendary, but he turns into a different beast when the play’s extended,” defensive lineman Malcolm Roach said. “… We’ve just got to chase. Get into chase mode. Keep running until you hit a crowd. That’s what ‘V.J.’ preached to us last night. Just chase. Chase. Be some dogs.”

This franchise has chased Mahomes every week since he became Kansas City’s starter more than seven years ago and turned the AFC West, the conference and the NFL on its head.

Sunday on the Front Range, the Broncos finally caught him.

They did it by relying on a remarkable defense and a quarterback who just keeps finding ways to make plays when the chips are down.

Second-year man Bo Nix completed 14 of 22 passes for 215 yards in the second half alone and mustered scoring drives four of the final five times his team had the ball.

He went 5 of 6 for 75 yards on Denver’s lone touchdown drive of the night, an 11-play, 89-yard clinic that finished with a 4-yard Jaleel McLaughlin touchdown run.

He hit rookie Pat Bryant for a 48-yard counterpunch the first play after Kareem Hunt tied the game late in the third quarter, leading to another field goal.

And in one final stroke of serendipity, Nix saved his best for the final drive, straddling the line between putting the Broncos in position to win and not handing the ball back to perhaps the scariest end-of-game player in this game’s history.

Just like last year.

He threw a third-and-15 dart to Courtland Sutton for 20 and a first down. Found Sutton again for 5 more and another third-down conversion.

Then he put a perfect ball on a Troy Franklin corner route for 32 yards, kneeled right between the hashes at the Chiefs’ 16-yard line with 3 seconds left in regulation, and jogged off the field knowing there was one more monster of Chiefs past hiding in the closet.

“There was a whole bunch of ‘don’t celebrate yet’ on the sideline,” Sutton said. “It was one of those ones where you have to just see it go through.”

“That’s PTSD and stuff like that,” outside linebacker Jonathon Cooper said. “So you’ve just got to play until it’s all zeroes. But it was full confidence when I saw Wil go out there.

“There’s no doubt in my mind he was going to hit it through the uprights, and that’s what he did.”

It’s all there for the Broncos now. The AFC West is in their hands. The No. 1 seed is in play. The conference looks wide open, and this team knows both that it has everything out there in front of it and also that the next hard part is only just coming onto the horizon.

“It don’t mean (expletive) in November,” Roach said. “We’ve just got to keep it going. It’s good to be here, be where your feet at, but we’ve got to keep going.

“We want to be No. 1 in February. That’s what we’re marching toward.”

Great 8: The longest single-season win streaks in Broncos history

With Sunday’s 22-19 walk-off victory over the Kansas City Chiefs, the Broncos have won eight straight games dating back to Week 4. That’s the franchise’s longest win streak in a single season since the 2012 team ripped off 11 in a row en route to the top seed in the AFC West. Here’s a look at each of the longest single-season win streaks in Broncos history and what happened with each of those teams.

Source: Pro-Football-Reference.com.

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