Broncos at Chiefs: The No Bull Review

Belated Happy Holidays and Merry Christmas to all of you in Broncos Country. If you are like me and tend to choose function over form, this win felt good.

If you like style, I’m sure this game left a bad taste in your mouth. Our team looked rough around the edges in every facet of the game. But they finally put it together and locked down late in the game and came out with a victory.

Also, let me give a big, stinky pile of coal to Billy “I fix games to make money in Vegas” Vinovich. You and your crew are rotten, corrupt, and are an absolute embarrassment to the NFL, the game, and humanity. Let us count the ways you worked to keep the Denver Broncos’ score down:

• The false start call on Powers was completely bogus, as Powers didn’t move until the defender jumped across the neutral zone.
• Your crew threw a bogus PI on Surtain – the ball was not catchable in any reality.
• The Evan Engram OPI was total bullshit. He did not extend his arm for a push off.
• At the beginning of the 4th, there’s a clear pass interference on the Chiefs mugging Sutton to the outside that doesn’t get a flag.
• There were too many blatant holding penalties on the Chiefs’ offensive line to count. I leave this for last since it is the most significant compared to the others. Most crews let holding happen quite often after all.

I tire of calling out the refs much like many of you, but I’m not willing to brush it under the rug when it was as blatant and awful as this game was. As a fan trying to enjoy a game where we want our team to face another team to see who is better, I find it pathetic that our team has to play by a completely different ruleset that lets a scrub loser team like the Kansas City Chiefs get to hang around all game.

Offense

I honestly think everyone should take a moment to enjoy how consistently good the play calling has been as the season has progressed. Early in the year, there were far too many screens, short throws, and predictable plays with too much passing on early downs. But Sean Payton is really setting up his team well in almost every circumstance (maybe 5 – 10% of the calls in a game do I think, are pretty questionable, though that could be execution for all we know).

My favorite interesting play call in the game was on 3rd and 2 early in the game. The play design has both backs in the backfield with Nix in shotgun, and they motion Harvey out into a trips look, then hand off to McLaughlin for 15 yards as KC was reading pass.

Payton utilizes tendencies, both his and his opponents to set up easy wins. I encourage everyone to try and notice this, as we...