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Colts beat Broncos thanks to controversial ‘leverage’ penalty

Originally posted on Larry Brown Sports
By Darryn Albert | Last updated Sep 14, 2025 7:52 PM ET

A controversial penalty brought the Indianapolis Colts back to life for an improbable win on Sunday.

The Colts faced the Denver Broncos in Week 2 at Lucas Oil Stadium in Indianapolis, Ind. With just three seconds remaining and the Colts trailing 28-26, Indianapolis kicker Spencer Schrader attempted a 60-yard field goal for the win and missed wide right.

Denver started celebrating their apparent victory, and even the Colts’ mascot fell to the ground in despair in the background at seeing the Schrader attempt miss. But all of a sudden, the game was turned on its head by a penalty flag thrown by the officiating crew.

The referees called Broncos defensive lineman Eyioma Uwazurike for a seldom-seen “leverage” penalty (i.e. using another player at the line of scrimmage to try to gain an advantage in blocking the field goal attempt). As a result of the penalty (which was a sizable one of 15 yards), the Colts got a re-kick from 45 yards with triple zeroes on the clock. Schrader then easily made the re-kick to give Indianapolis a miraculous 29-28 win.

Here is the video of the full sequence.

Broncos got called for a “leverage” penalty on the initial field goal so the Colts got to kick again and won the game pic.twitter.com/LLYOB9GnUl
— Jomboy Media (@JomboyMedia) September 14, 2025

It looks like Uwazurike used his weight there to push down on the Colts guard who was in front of him. That then gave Broncos teammate Dondrea Tillman (No. 92) a clearer pathway to jump up and try to block the field goal.

Still, leverage penalties are rarely called, especially when the infractions are so subtle like that one was. In fact, we have seen several leverage penalties get missed before in the scrum of bodies at the line during field goal attempts. But unfortunately for Uwazurike and the Broncos, they were unable to get away with that one, and the Colts ended up securing the unlikely win on Sunday (after two tries) as a result.

This article first appeared on Larry Brown Sports and was syndicated with permission.

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