Darren Rizzi sensed trouble just before the fateful snap against Indianapolis.
The Broncos, though, could not reset.
The closing seconds of Sunday’s walk-off loss to the Colts are well-covered by this point.
The 60-yard Spencer Shrader field goal attempt that went begging short and right. The leverage penalty on Dondrea Tillman that gave Shrader another chance.
The 45-yarder sailing through the uprights and dropping Denver to 1-1 moments after the team thought it had started the season with two wins.
Rizzi on Thursday acknowledged that Tillman erred when he, just before the snap, switched places with interior defensive lineman Eyioma Uwazurike.
Head coach Sean Payton, though, had already used all three second-half timeouts to try to preserve some clock in case the Broncos needed it — including one somewhat questionable stoppage after the Colts picked up a first down on third-and-6 to the Denver 43-yard line with 1:44 to play.
“There was a late bit of confusion before, and a couple of guys switched spots in the heat of the battle,” Rizzi explained Thursday. “Unfortunately, we didn’t have a timeout; we’d burned all our timeouts. So we were aligned incorrectly. That’s on me. That’s on the coach.”
Rizzi, like Payton on Monday, acknowledged that Tillman committed a penalty — with a bit of a hedge.
“Was it letter-of-the-law a foul? Yes. Are there many of those throughout the year that don’t get called? Yes,” Rizzi said. “I get it, probably because the play was in an escalated situation. We’ll learn from it and move on.”
The veteran special teams coordinator also pushed back some against the celebratory recounting of the sequence out of Indianapolis, where coaches and players have said they spotted a tendency and took advantage of it.
“We know our tendencies,” said Rizzi, in his first year with the Broncos. “The call we were supposed to run we’d never, ever run before. Ever. I’d have to say that’s coachspeak a little bit. In my 17 years in the league, we’ve probably run 80 different field goal blocks, and we ran the call incorrectly.”
Interestingly, what Colts special teams coordinator Brian Mason said wasn’t about the exact nature of the call itself, but that Rizzi historically has used a “jumper” in gotta-have-it scenarios in his time as a special teams coordinator in New Orleans and Miami before that. Because a jumper has to line up on the line of scrimmage, the alignment of a block unit can help identify who the jumper might be. Then it’s up to the protection group to sell the call.
How do you do that? A jumper can’t extend his arm while going over the offensive line, but the offensive line can try to make it look like the jumper is pushing off, even if he doesn’t really.
“If you identify a jumper, which Dalton Tucker did, then instead of staying low in a field goal situation, it would be wise to then step up to punch the jumper,” Mason said Tuesday. “So, No. 1, they can’t jump through the gap, but then No. 2, if they do extend and land on your back, you then draw the penalty. Dalton Tucker identified the situation, drew the penalty.
“It became much more obvious because he stood up into it.”
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Wil Lutz got a mulligan in November 2023 at Buffalo when he missed a 41-yarder but got another chance and won the game from 36 because the Bills had too many men on the field. Denver also won 10-9 at the New York Jets last year when Greg Zuerlein missed a 50-yarder in the rain that would have put the Jets on top with 51 seconds remaining.
The four losses: First, New England’s Chad Ryland drilled a 56-yarder on Christmas Eve 2023 at Empower Field, then Kansas City took advantage of a weak point in Denver’s protection last year to block a 35-yard Lutz walk-off attempt. Cincinnati’s Cade York actually missed a walk-off 33-yarder in overtime in late December, but the Bengals still ended up winning. Then came Sunday against Indianapolis.
“From a coaching standpoint, the thing that’s disappointing to me is the execution part,” Rizzi said. “That’s on me. As a coach, any coach, if you go out and we’re not lined up correctly and we didn’t execute the call that was called, that’s what keeps you up at night.”
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