You Play to Win the Game: Gary Kubiak made the right call on Sunday night

DENVER – The Denver Broncos Football Club has a deeply rooted winning culture. In a lot of ways, it’s why the team is so successful. They compete for championships year in and year out because anything less is not tolerated.

On Sunday night, in probably the game of the year in the NFL, the Broncos and head coach Gary Kubiak found themselves in an extremely tough predicament. With the game tied and the clock holding just a few more than 60 seconds in overtime, Denver had the ball on the 44-yard line of the Kansas City Chiefs, 4th-and-10.

The predicament: Attempt a 62-yard field goal for the win in tough conditions and risk giving KC the ball in great field position or try to pin the Chiefs deep and play for the tie.

The decision was easy.

“My thing is that we’re going to try to win around here,” Kubiak said with a stern look in his eyes after the game. “I made that decision, and it just didn’t work out. I have a lot of confidence in Brandon. I have a lot of confidence in our football team. That’s why I made that decision… If you punt, you’re punting to lose or tie.”

When push comes to shove, as the head coach of a football team you have to walk back into that locker room and face the men you implore to prepare themselves for a victory every week. How can you possibly justify looking those men in they eyes and saying you didn’t trust one of them to make a play you’ve seen them make thousands of times in practice, saying that all the work they put in that week was for naught?

It was a tough decision, but there was truly only one right choice, and Gary Kubiak made it on Sunday night. In a stadium full of 75,000 fans who will settle for nothing less than victory, he went for the win, bold as it may have been.

“I’m with ‘Kube’ on that one,” Von Miller said afterward. “What are we playing [for]? Are we going to play for a tie or are we trying to win the game? I’m 100-percent behind ‘Kube’ right there. If we’re looking at it again, we have one of the best defenses in the National Football League. Let’s try this field goal, and we’ll stop them. I wouldn’t just play for the tie, either. I’m 100-percent behind ‘Kube’ and the coaching staff. ‘B-Mac’ is the man. It’s a tough position that he was in, but he can make those. If we had to do it all over again, I would do it again.”

Now, none of this is to say the Broncos head coach was perfect on Sunday night. In fact, it was far from one of his best performances as a head coach. You could certainly call into question the decision to throw the ball twice in the two plays leading up to that long field goal, squandering a chance to run the clock well under a minute.

You could question why, when Bennie Fowler scored with just over three minutes left, Denver didn’t go for two. A decision that, if executed would have effectively ended the game right then and there, giving the Orange & Blue a two-score lead.

You could question a lot of things Kubiak did on Sunday.

At the end of the day, though, those decisions boiled down to Kubiak trusting his players to make plays. He trusted Trevor Siemian, who was in the midst of his best game as a pro, to hit one of those passes on second and third down, giving the Broncos a heightened chance of victory. He trusted his defense to keep the Chiefs out of the end zone with three minutes left, and trusted that if they did let them score, they could stop a two-point attempt.

On a weekly basis, Gary Kubiak’s players put it all on the line for him. In the NFL, being able to get that out of your players is one of, if not the most important quality in a head coach. Why does he get that out of his guys? Because he believes in them and, in turn, they believe in him.

On Sunday night, the same coaching philosophy that carried Gary Kubiak and the Denver Broncos to Super Bowl 50 cost them a game. The head coach believed his player could make a play, and he was wrong, but he walked into that locker room after the game knowing that he made the right decision, knowing he gave his guys a chance.