Denver Broncos vs Kansas City Chiefs Match Player Stats (Dec 25, 2025)

Sean Payton had no intention of snapping the football. With the game tied at 13 and under two minutes left at Arrowhead Stadium, the plan on fourth down was to take the delay-of-game penalty, kick the field goal, and let Denver’s defense do the rest. Chris Jones jumped early.

That offsides moved the chains inside the Kansas City 10-yard line. Three plays later, Bo Nix hit RJ Harvey in the back of the end zone. Denver’s defense forced an incompletion on fourth down in the final seconds, and the Broncos walked out of Arrowhead with a 20-13 Christmas night win — their first there since September 17, 2015.

Kansas City arrived at Week 17 at 6-9, already eliminated from postseason contention, and without its top two quarterbacks. Patrick Mahomes had torn his ACL and LCL against the Chargers in Week 15. Gardner Minshew followed a week later with a knee injury against the Titans. Third-string quarterback Chris Oladokun — a 2022 seventh-round pick with just 11 career regular-season completions before kickoff — started in front of 73,045 fans on Amazon Prime Video. Mahomes and Minshew watched from a suite together.

Denver controlled 39 minutes of possession, ran 71 plays, and held Kansas City to 139 total yards. The Broncos moved to 13-3.

“You always have to remember this — you’re playing the heart of a champion, Andy Reid and this team. There’s a ton of respect we have for what they’ve been able to accomplish.” — Sean Payton

Team Stats

Scoring Summary

Denver’s four scoring drives that produced touchdowns averaged 13 plays and more than eight minutes each. Kansas City’s three scoring sequences ran a combined 22 plays total. Nick Bolton’s interception of Nix in the second quarter set up the short field that led to Oladokun’s touchdown pass — the first of both his career and Brashard Smith’s. Courtland Sutton dropped a would-be end zone target in the final seconds of the first half, turning a potential 13-7 lead into a 6-7 deficit heading to the break.

Quarterback Stats

Nix’s interception kept Kansas City in the game in the second quarter. He answered by scoring the first Broncos touchdown himself on a 9-yard scramble, then delivered the go-ahead pass to Harvey with 1:45 left. His adjusted completion rate of 75.7% — accounting for drops, throwaways, and spikes — was lower than Oladokun’s 77.8%, but Nix operated on a significantly deeper route tree.

“We just did what we had to do.” — Bo Nix

Rushing Stats

Denver ran the ball 32 times to Kansas City’s 19 — a direct reflection of how the game played out in terms of possession and field position. McLaughlin came off the bench and averaged 5.7 yards per carry in seven touches. Harvey forced six missed tackles as a runner despite modest yardage totals.

Receiving Stats

Harvey’s 35 yards after the catch on five catches demonstrated how Denver used the short passing game as a direct extension of their run scheme. Kelce was the entire Kansas City passing game — his five catches accounted for 36 of Oladokun’s 66 passing yards.

Defensive Stats

Pass Rushing — PFF

Chris Jones was the best pass rusher on the field all night — 7 pressures in 26 snaps, the highest win rate of any defensive lineman in the game. His late sack pushed Denver back before the Broncos ultimately scored the winning touchdown on that same drive.

Pass Coverage — PFF

Pass Blocking — PFF

Quinn Meinerz earned the game’s highest offensive PFF grade (92.0) on 44 pass-block snaps without allowing a single pressure. He was the anchor of a Denver offensive line that, outside of Palczewski’s rough night at 17.6%, kept Nix mostly clean across 38 pass attempts.

PFF Grades — Top Performers

Initial grades, subject to review

Special Teams — Full Breakdown

Kicking

Punting

Returns

A Night Arrowhead Won’t Forget

This was Kansas City’s first losing season since 2012. The Christmas night loss confirmed what had been evident since Mahomes went down six weeks earlier in Los Angeles — the Chiefs’ run of 10 consecutive playoff seasons, nine straight AFC West titles, seven conference championship appearances, and three back-to-back Super Bowl trips ended in 2025.

The franchise had also announced that same week it would leave Arrowhead for a $3 billion domed stadium across the state line in Kansas when their current lease expires in January 2031.

For Denver, the win snapped a 16-game road losing streak at Arrowhead stretching back to that September 2015 date. The Broncos have now won four of the last five meetings in the series.

Travis Kelce finished the night with five catches for 36 yards — the only consistent offensive threat Kansas City had. He said after the game he would make his retirement decision with his family and the Chiefs organization. Whether that night was his last at Arrowhead is a question only he can answer.

“I’ll let that be a decision I’ll make with my family, friends, the Chiefs organization when the time comes.” — Travis Kelce

The Broncos-Chiefs player stats from December 25 tell a straightforward story on paper. But the gap between 303 total yards and 139, between 39 minutes of possession and 20, between 13-3 and 6-10 — that gap says something bigger about where these two franchises stood as 2025 came to a close.