The Denver Broncos and Kansas City Chiefs found themselves in a 6-6 stalemate at halftime on Sunday. The AFC West showdown we’ve been waiting for looked like it was going to come down to the wire. After halftime, Sean Payton said on live TV that the Chiefs were a first-half team, so he felt good about Denver’s chances to win the game. It was a bold move, but he turned out to be spot on with his assessment.

“We’ve done a good job,” said Payton. “There’s a certain way this game is going to unfold, and this is to our advantage. Offensively, we’ll pick it up here, convert some third downs. The team we’re playing is more of a first-half team, and I like the way our defense is playing. That’s a key matchup.”

Payton was completely right. In the first half, the Chiefs held the Broncos to just 88 yards of offense, their least in the first half this season. Bo Nix and Co. looked dead in the water, and it felt like their defense was going to have to pitch a shutout in the second half for Denver to win this game. But just like Payton predicted, the Chiefs’ let up, and Denver’s got rolling.

In the second half, Denver put up 254 yards of offense and scored 16 points against the No. 4 scoring defense in the NFL. Nix was surgical, especially on the Broncos’ game-winning drive. He didn’t throw a touchdown, but after ending the first half with under 80 yards, he went on to finish the game 24-for-37 with 295 passing yards.

Nix was spreading the ball around, too. He completed 3+ passes to five different receivers. Troy Franklin led the team with 84 yards, but Pat Bryant and Courtland Sutton made major contributions as well, logging 82 and 59 yards respectively.

Defensively, his team stepped up to the plate as well. The Chiefs began to figure some things out in the second half, scoring 13 points in the first 20 minutes of the half, but when Denver’s defense needed some crucial stops, they got them.

After Denver punted, trailing 19-16 with 8:18 left in the fourth quarter, their defense got a massive three-and-out to give the ball back to their offense. Nix and Co. responded by tying the game with a field goal, and just when it looked like we’d see another Patrick Mahomes game-winning drive, they forced a couple of incompletions and then got a massive sack, forcing KC to punt it away after just three plays, and we all know what happened from there. Bo Nix would carve up Kansas City’s defense and leave Wil Lutz a 35-yard chip shot with mere seconds on the clock.

Payton called his shot. It was incredibly risky. If they went on to lose that game, this clip would’ve taken social media by storm, and he never would’ve heard the end of it. But Payton believed in his team, and they earned a gritty win over their AFC West rivals.

Andy Reid Explains Chiefs Lack of Rushing Attempts

One thing that stumped Kansas City fans this week was the Chiefs’ unwillingness to run the football. The Chiefs ran 62 offensive plays, and just 14 of them were runs. That’s not a great recipe for winning football games, but Andy Reid explained that they were just taking what the defense gave them.

“Yesterday, they were giving us opportunities to throw the football, so we utilized the opportunities there,” said Reid. “RPO passes end up being as good as a run for you. You get 4+ yards and you go with it. But the runs are being called; sometimes they get turned into passes in today’s world. That’s how it goes.”

When you have a quarterback like Patrick Mahomes under center, you can feel very confident calling a bunch of run-pass options. He’s so smart and has seen just about everything a defense is going to throw at him, so all it takes is a split second for him to make the decision to hand it off or swing it out wide on a short pass.

Vance Joseph and the Broncos defense decided to load the box and force Mahomes to throw it, which, admittedly, was a very bold decision, but it paid off. Mahomes threw it 45 times on Sunday, but had just 276 yards. His 6.1 average yards per attempt was his third-lowest total in the past two seasons.

In the future, Reid admitted he wants to call more hard run plays, but Denver did a great job of executing their defensive game plan and forcing Mahomes to make tough decisions at the line of scrimmage.