Broncos country had every reason to believe this was their year. They finished 15–4, secured the No. 1 seed, and naturally entered the playoffs with Super Bowl expectations. Yet, Nik Bonitto’s team was unable to capitalize on home-field advantage in their Conference Championship loss to the New England Patriots. Shortly after a narrow 10-7 defeat, Bonitto struggled to come to terms with what had happened.

“Sickening, bro,” he said, via Zack Stevens of DNVR Sports. “I mean, to think of all we fought through this year, all the games we had to win. Knowing we’re definitely the better team, but it just didn’t work out that way today,”

It’s hurting Bonito and the team because Denver certainly had the edge they needed.

They had a 7–0 lead early and carried that advantage into the second quarter. By halftime, though, the game had turned into a defensive grind with both teams locked level.

The Broncos’ defense did a lot right statistically, but the margins where they fell short were decisive. Allowing just 206 total yards and 3.2 yards per play is usually enough to win, yet Denver failed to capitalize on situational dominance.

The most glaring issue was red-zone resilience. New England entered the red zone only twice, but one of those trips ended in Drake Maye’s 12-yard touchdown run, set up by the defense failing to prevent a short field after Stidham’s fumble.

Containment of Maye was another missed opportunity. Though he threw for just 86 yards on 10-of-21 passing, the Broncos allowed him to rush 10 times for 65 yards, including the game’s only touchdown and a back-breaking bootleg late.

Denver struggled to maintain edge discipline, particularly against designed quarterback runs and movement plays. The decisive third-and-6 bootleg late, where Maye outran Jonah Elliss, should never have been converted in that situation.

Denver also failed to generate timely negative plays. The Patriots went just 6-of-18 on third down, but too many of those stops came without flipping field position. There were no sacks mentioned, no forced punts backed up deep, and no takeaways despite Maye’s struggles. In a low-scoring, weather-impacted game, a single defensive turnover could have changed everything.

And the defense also didn’t fully exploit New England’s inefficiency.

On another note, Nik Bonitto isn’t the only one who shared his frustration after the game.

Riley Moss believes the defense let the Broncos down

While the loss still sat heavy, CB Riley Moss kept it honest when asked what hurt the most.

He pointed straight at the defense, saying, “I think the biggest thing is for us as a defense, because I can only speak for the defense, being able to stop the run and a couple of passes. I thought we played pretty decent defensively, but we have to be able to take the ball away. So we own that as a defense.”

Then his teammate Alex Singleton also doubled down on it in the postgame.

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“On defense, I mean, nothing. They were going to try to run the ball. We knew we had to stop the run, and that’s it. Is the pain of this loss,” he said. “It sucks though; we need to do more defense, we need to take the ball away, and we didn’t do that.”

Early in the game, a touchdown gave the Broncos a solid 7–0 lead, but the offense couldn’t manage to find any rhythm after that. It took the unit all the way until the fourth quarter to record their first down of the second half. However, they missed two field goals and gave it all they had, which only added to Bonitto’s frustration. The Patriots, on the other hand, did just enough to escape with a win and a trip to Santa Clara.

The Patriots missed two field goals and averaged just 3.2 yards per play, yet Denver couldn’t produce a short field of its own. While the unit held firm in the snow-filled second half, giving up only 32 yards on 18 plays, the lack of a game-altering moment ultimately defined their loss.