ENGLEWOOD, Colo. — It wasn’t an attempt to run up the score but run out the clock that Broncos head coach Sean Payton was trying to accomplish with his two fourth-quarter trick plays Sunday.
Some of the Carolina Panthers had a different opinion. With the Broncos leading 28-7, the Panthers didn’t like it when Payton called for a fake off a 60-yard field goal with 10:10 remaining, and then again with a double-pass play where receiver Courtland Sutton connected with fullback Michael Burton for a 28-yard gain with 4:29 left.
“We’re trying to finish the game the right way,’’ Payton said in his day-after-game media conference call Monday. “We’re not trying to run up the score on anyone. It’s the National Football League. I’ve been in games with a 28-point lead in the fourth quarter and lost. We’re trying to finish. The Burton throw from Sutton is trying to continue a drive.’’
And then Payton took a parting shot at the Panthers.
“Play better,” he said.
Later, Payton said: “There’s no story there. We’re trying to win a football game. We’re trying to extend the drive. I’m throwing the ball to my fullback, Burton. So not necessarily expecting a touchdown. We’re trying to close a game out. It wasn’t 50, 60 or 70 (points). I didn’t look at that at all. I just looked at that as us trying to win a football game and learn to close out a game.”
The Broncos beat Carolina, 28-14, Sunday at Empower Field at Mile High. They might have won by a 35-7 score, but Sutton fumbled the ball away at the Carolina 1 yard line with 2:13 remaining, and the Panthers then traveled 98 yards in less than 2 minutes to score a consolation touchdown.
Afterward, Payton was noticeably irked in his postgame news conference about how his team didn’t finish strong. Players in the winning locker room seemed relatively somber. In past years, there have been more smiles after losses than there was Sunday in victory.
“Here's the thing, we can't turn the ball over the way we did offensively,’’ Payton said Monday. “We can't fumble on the first drive, we can’t fumble later in the game. I put up some numbers for these guys just to see where we're at relative to the season and relative to history. It's not the perfect game we're searching for, but it's the game that we know when played with bigger stakes against a better team, it'll cost you.
“Then all of a sudden, you're in the locker room, players have their garbage bags out (to clean out their lockers at season’s end), you guys are in interviewing what happened, early exit from the whatever, and you have your exit meetings. That has to get — we have to be better at that. The turnovers bothered me. The late drive and how we played defensively bothered me. Look I just think, ‘What's the bar? What's the expectation?’ It has to meet or exceed mine.”
