Gary Kubiak on 4th down call "We needed to make a dang play"

Gary Kubiak made a gutsy call and it didn’t pay off.

On 4th and 5, with just under 4 minutes to play in the 4th quarter, trailing by 3, Brock Osweiler hit a wide open Vernon Davis before the recently acquired Davis saw the football hit his hands and eventually the turf leading to a turnover on downs to give the Raiders control of possession and the field.

“We weren’t doing anything from a momentum standpoint,” Kubiak told me postgame about his decision to go for it on 4th down. “We were playing great defense and getting the ball back, I just felt like we needed to do something to go out there and make a play.

It was a play with high risk and high reward. If Davis makes the catch the game may have a completely different ending and Brock Osweiler may still be undefeated as the starting quarterback of the Denver Broncos.

“We got the coverage we thought we’d get but we just don’t make the play,” It’s pretty risky but I just didn’t feel good about what was happening. We needed to make a dang play. We didn’t do it.”

Despite missing on the conversion the Broncos still found themselves in a position to tie or take the lead in the final drive before Khalil Mack slammed the door shut. If Gary Kubiak had instead elected to punt and regain control of the field position battle that, by his own admission Denver lost in the third quarter, he might’ve put his team in a better position to win by trusting his defense that had only allowed 126 yards of total offense on the day.

No single play determines an outcome of a 60 minute football game but when the Broncos needed to make one, they didn’t do it.