Jacob Bobenmoyer felt for Wil Lutz. A little.
Then in the joyous Raiders locker room, Bobenmoyer and special teams coach Tom McMahon, both Broncos employees at this time two years earlier, shared a smile of satisfied glee.
“I mean, the grin’s a little bit bigger at the end of the day, for sure,” said Bobenmoyer, the Broncos’ long snapper from 2019 to ’22, of the celebration he shared with McMahon, the Broncos’ special teams coach from ’18 to ’21, following the Raiders’ shocking 17-16 win in coach Sean Payton’s regular-season debut.
“Yeah, it’s definitely bigger at the end of the game just because … it is what it is on the business side of things.”
Even the business side of the NFL has a flair for irony every now and again. McMahon, now the Raiders’ special teams coach, was a frequent target of criticism during his Dove Valley days.
Yet with McMahon and Bobenmoyer, a former UNC linebacker, wearing silver and black, the Broncos’ special-teams units under Payton still give off an air of low comedy. The more things change … well, you know how the rest of that one goes.
For one, Denver left four points on the field thanks to a missed extra point by new kicker Wil Lutz, whom the Broncos traded a seventh-round draft pick to New Orleans for last month, and a 55-yard field-goal miss by Lutz in the third quarter.
“It’s obviously a tough feeling,” said Lutz, who didn’t shy away from the inevitable media throng after the game. “My job is to help this team win close games. And we’ll give this 24 hours, figure out what went wrong and move on to Washington.”
The extra-point whiff was the first for the 29-year-old, who kicked in New Orleans from 2016 to ’22, since Jan. 3, 2021.
“He’s a bad-(expletive) kicker,” Broncos left tackle Garrett Bolles said, “and we (expletive) love him.”
“Obviously I really appreciate (Bolles offering support),” the kicker continued, “but my job is to make kicks, and (when) you lose a game by one and you leave four points on that board, I didn’t do my job.”
Sunday turned into an imperfect storm for Lutz and Payton, and not just because of the heavy fourth-quarter rains at Empower Field. While Lutz had some Broncos fans seething, the man he replaced, the popular veteran kicker Brandon McManus, was perfect in his Jacksonville debut, converting a 45-yard field goal and all four of his extra-point tries.
“I didn’t hold up my end of the deal (Sunday), and I’m not looking for anybody to come over and pity me,” Lutz said. “My job is to get back to work and do what I know I can do and help this team win.”
Nor did it help the new Denver kicker that his coach elected to roll some serious dice on first kick of the 2023 season. Invoking the spirit of his famous Super Bowl XLIV win over the Colts, the former Saints coach opened the game with an onside kick.
At first blush, it appeared to pay off, as Broncos defensive back Tremon Smith recovered the carom. But officials determined the kick had not gone the mandatory 10 yards before Denver had touched it, giving Vegas the ball at the Denver 44-yard line on the Raiders’ first possession.
The visitors punched it in 10 plays later on a 3-yard Jimmy Garoppolo touchdown pass to Jakobi Meyers, giving the Raiders a quick 7-0 lead.
“They almost got it. Kudos to them,” Bobenmoyer said of the Broncos’ unusual gambit. “I don’t know, in my career, if I’ve never been a part of (an opening kick) like that.”
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