Vic Fangio sheds light on much-maligned decision to punt late

KANSAS CITY, Mo. — The Denver Broncos didn’t have a chance against the Kansas City Chiefs on Sunday Night Football, according to the oddsmakers.

As 13-point underdogs, the Broncos faced the longest odds of any team in the NFL in Week 13 playing against the 10-1 Chiefs. Vic Fangio entered Sunday night’s game with a bold and aggressive mindset in order to pull off the upset he believed his team was primed for.

“I was in the mode of doing most everything aggressively,” Fangio stated after the Broncos’ heartbreaking 22-16 loss at Arrowhead Stadium.

In the first three quarters, Fangio was aggressive. Up 10-6 with 33 seconds left in the first half, the head coach sent out Brandon McManus to try a 57-yard field goal. To put it in perspective, McManus’s career-long is 58 yards.

If McManus drilled the kick, the Broncos would have been in prime position to go into the locker room at halftime up a touchdown. If he missed, however, Fangio knew he was giving Patrick Mahomes and the Chiefs a prime opportunity to score before the half.

A punt, on the other hand, would have been the conservative play as it would have limited both team’s scoring opportunities.

Fangio went aggressive.

“Brandon’s obviously one of our best weapons. He’s had a helluva season. He’s a helluva kicker,” the head coach said, explaining the decision to kick the risky field goal before the half. “We had a chance to get three there. I fully acknowledged and understood at the time that if he missed it where they would get the ball. But it was a chance to get three. I believed in him. It didn’t work out.”

The 57-yard kick sailed left, which put the Chiefs in prime position to tack on a field goal before the half, which they did.

That, however, didn’t change Fangio’s aggressive mindset in the second half.

After Tim Patrick’s toe-tapping touchdown grab in the third quarter to put Denver up 16-12, Fangio again went aggressive. Instead of settling for the extra point, the head coach went for two.

“Being up four, you know the chart says to go for two there,” Fangio said, explaining his second aggressive decision of the game. “It was close enough to the fourth quarter to where I went with it. You never know how that would have turned out. If we had kicked the P.A.T., they certainly would have went for two on their next score and who knows whether they would have got it or not. I was in the mode of doing most everything aggressively when we had those decisions and that one fell into that category.”

Nearly exactly one quarter later, with 6:07 left in the fourth quarter, Fangio’s aggressive mindset changed.

Down 19-16 at their own 49-yard line, Denver faced a 4th-and-3. The aggressive mindset would have said go for it.

Sam Martin and the punt unit took the field.

“I gave it a strong consideration,” Fangio stated after the game about going for it on fourth down instead of punting.

But in the end, Fangio showed confidence in his defense—which held Mahomes and Andy Reid to only 22 points in the game—to get a stop instead of his offense to pick up the three yards at midfield.

Once the Broncos punted the ball to the Chiefs, Reid and Mahomes burned over five minutes of clock as they slowly moved down the field before settling for a field goal with 1:04 left in the game.

“At some point in the game, we got to get a stop and we weren’t able to—I mean we held them to a field goal, but that made it a touchdown game and burned off some of the time there,” Fangio said, continuing to reflect on his decision to punt instead of going for it.

Down six with barely over one minute left, the task was too tall for the Broncos’ offense with no timeouts. Four plays later, the game was over when Kansas City picked off Lock.

“In retrospect, should have probably gone for it,” Fangio stated about the 4th-and-3 near midfield. “I did give it serious thought.”

Fangio was in an aggressive mode for most of Sunday night, as he stated. But in the final six minutes, he strayed from that mode, putting the “most” in his quote of “doing most everything aggressively.” In retrospect, he wishes he would have done everything aggressively.

“No moral victories. We came here to win. I fully felt we would win,” the head coach stated after the team’s eighth loss of the season. “Disappointed that we came up short.”