Denver Broncos placekicker Wil Lutz has a theory for why a New England Patriots defender was able to block his second field goal attempt in the AFC championship game – and it’s partly the snow’s fault.
Lutz missed two field goals in the Broncos‘ three-point loss to the Patriots. The first, he pushed wide right in relatively clear conditions. The second was amid heavy snowfall in Denver late in the second half. New England’s Leonard Taylor III managed to jump up and get his hand on the 45-yard field goal attempt to keep the Broncos off of the board.
“Honestly, I think we might have been a yard short on the snap,” Lutz told reporters after the game. “You can’t see the lines on the field, and we had to kind of estimate. Guy comes through and it gets blocked.”
USA TODAY Sports reviewed multiple angles of Lutz’s blocked kick as well as where the veteran kicker traditionally lines up.
On Lutz’s first kick in the AFC championship game, Broncos punter/holder Jeremy Crawshaw lined up eight yards behind the long snapper. The same was true for all four of Lutz’s kicks against the Bills in Denver’s AFC divisional round win.
Before Lutz’s second field goal attempt against the Patriots – the one in snowier conditions that ended up blocked – Crawshaw appeared to line up only seven yards behind the long snapper upon a closer look. The NFL’s official play-by-play recap of the game on the league’s official website also indicates that one-yard discrepancy.