The Broncos mounted a rally after falling behind 31-7 in the third quarter, but were unable to cut the lead to less than 10 points, and fell to the New England Patriots by a final score of 31-21.
Denver fell despite a strong performance from quarterback Peyton Manning, who completed 31-of-44 passes for 345 yards and three touchdowns. But he and the Broncos were outdone by the Patriots’ ability to control the clock, as New England finished with a 10-minute advantage in time of possession.
Trailing by 10 points and driving inside the New England red zone, a fumble by running back Willis McGahee put the game out of reach, as the Patriots were able to run out the remaining 3:42 on the clock.
New England got on the board first when quarterback Tom Brady found wide receiver Wes Welker for an 8-yard touchdown pass. The Broncos responded with a 1-yard scoring strike from quarterback Peyton Manning to tight end Joel Dreessen.
The Patriots then scored the last 10 points of the first half and added 14 more in the third quarter to build a 31-7 lead.
Denver cut the lead to 31-21 on a pair of short touchdown completions by Manning, who hooked up with wide receiver Eric Decker from two yards out, then wide receiver Brandon Stokley from 5, to cut the lead to 10 points.

Kind of a Bummer…
-2 on turnovers for the day, bring us to -6 for the year… It’s so frustrating to watch mental error, after mental error……
As a broncos fan, im a bit disappointed w/ the game today. The defense need to step it up really good. There’s so many holes in the
defense and offense can’t even catch a ball. I can’t understand why its always in the 4th quart when you can see a defense pushing it
other than that… offense and defense are so so…. FOX is also not doing a good job as a coach..well it makes me more not like him(LOL). he appears to be full of himself..like his sitting on his high horse. Eric decker you need to step up your game also.
Yes just like I have been saying peyton manning su#*s! We spent all that money on manning and that is a waste of money, instead of getting players for the defense. Manning was good at one time but we got the old broken down manning now. I was so happy when we signed elway to be the general manager but now I think he is doing more harm than good. I want to start a petition to fire elway and john fox. Go broncos! Demaryius thomas is way over rated, he drops to many balls.
AAAAWWWWW I am so pissed right now. We will never be any good as long as we have elway as general manager.
agian the mediocrity of Elway
we need a real WR
Damarius is weak
Jack Del Rio is a looser
Fox is a Looser
31 of 44 for 345 yds and 3 tds no ints. seriously you want to hang this PM? thats a pretty good day at the office if you ask me.You dont have to look any further than the defense to figure out how we lost this game.
345 yds and
we lost agian
7 wins 9 L
PM isn’t the problem. Offense has problems they can correct. Now the D is a different animal. It’s hard to correct problems when you do not have the personnel to work with. Big problems in the front 7. Von can’t carry the load by himself.
Time to prepare for the Chargers.