MIAMI GARDENS, Fla. — By the end, the beatdown got so bad Dolphins head coach Mike McDaniel didn’t know what to do.
He tried to run the clock out, but the Broncos simply couldn’t or wouldn’t tackle his running backs.
He had long since put his backups in the game, but they ran roughshod over Sean Payton’s team, too.
Finally, McDaniel had to order his team to sit on the ball to save the Broncos, the franchise he said this week caused him to fall in love with football way back when he was a kid in Aurora, one final, historic indignity.
The Broncos did not give up an all-time, single-game record number of points to the Dolphins on Sunday. Not because they did anything to deserve avoiding that scarlet letter piled on top of a 70-20 loss at Hard Rock Stadium, mind you.
Only because McDaniel opted not to listen to the bloodthirsty, blissfully bewildered fans on hand who saw their side score 10 touchdowns, knew no team had ever scored 73 in a regular-season game and booed McDaniel’s humanity while chanting, “three more points.”
McDaniel called the Dolphins off at 70.
Seventy.
In an NFL game.
Against a Broncos defense that entered the season fancying itself one of the game’s best and through three games is instead its worst.
“That’s the most embarrassing game I’ve ever been a part of,” Broncos inside linebacker Alex Singleton said, searching for words to describe an indescribably bad day at the office. “It’s the most embarrassing game I’ve ever watched. We’ve got to figure it out. Thank god it’s only one. But we can’t make it more.”
It’s only one, but it goes down as one of the worst games in franchise history.
No Broncos team had ever given up more than 59 points. This one gave up 70.
No Broncos team had ever given up more than 634 yards. This one gave up 726.
No Broncos team had ever given up more than 10.3 yards per play in a game. This one surrendered 10.7 until the Dolphins let up on the final three snaps.
The points and yardage each check in at No. 2 in NFL history, too. Miami passed for 376 and five scores, and rushed for 350 and five scores, becoming the first team in the Super Bowl era to have a quintet of touchdowns in each category.
This only counts as one loss, but how does a team overcome that?
“Yeah, it definitely feels bigger than one game,” Broncos safety Kareem Jackson said. “Any time you lose the way we lost today, the (crap)’s embarrassing. Absolutely embarrassing.”
Jackson’s point is clear, but the fact is nobody on the Broncos has actually lost a game like this before. Certainly head coach Sean Payton hasn’t.
Over 15 years with New Orleans, Payton suffered seven regular-season losses by 20-plus points. The worst? A pair of 41-10 losses, one in 2007 to Indianapolis and another seven years later to Carolina.
This one was worse by three scores.
“I’m at a loss for words,” Payton said. “I’ve never … I’ve been on the other side of some games like that and then every once in a while, you get your butt whipped. But this was more than that.”
Here’s the conundrum for the Broncos: If players too easily get over a 50-point loss, it’s a problem.
If they wallow too long, it’s a problem.
If they break apart, it’s a problem.
But there’s no reinventing the wheel after three weeks, either.
This team hoped it was good. Maybe even believed it to some degree. Payton said he’d be “pissed” if this group didn’t make the postseason.
It took Denver eight games to score 10 touchdowns last season. They gave up 10 Sunday alone.
Since the middle of the second quarter against Washington in Week 2, the Broncos have surrendered 14 touchdowns and two field goals and logged three stops: A missed field goal and two possessions on which the opponent wasn’t trying to score.
Now the team has to find a way to both accept the reality of this disaster while staving off further degradation. They have to watch the film in a clear-eyed way and then delude themselves into thinking some tweaks here and adjustments there might be the ticket to turning this thing around.
“Once we look at it, we’ll be able to pinpoint stuff and see what happened, but 70 doesn’t happen by one or two mistakes,” Singleton said. “It’s going to be all over the tape. Everyone’s got to eat it, take it for what it is and learn. Learn fast.”
There are Sunday scaries, and then there’s the team flight back to the Front Range knowing what’s coming in the film review Monday.
“Tomorrow will be tough for a lot of players and tough for us, too, as coaches,” Payton surmised.
On first blush, he barely knew what to say to reporters after he’d finished thundering away in a postgame address to his team in the visiting locker room.
He came into the interview room moments after an EMT opened the door and asked if anybody had called for a paramedic.
Not literally, it turns out, but this defense is going to need all the metaphorical resuscitation it can get.
“Teams are going to watch that and install every play they ran. I would,” Singleton said. “I’m sure Chicago will come out and run the same first 15 plays. I would. We have to learn from it, take it for what it is and step up. We’ve been saying that — I know last year is last year, but now we’re 0-3 and it’s kind of just rolling over.
“We’ve got to stand up and punch somebody back.”
Nobody did Sunday.
“We came in with a plan, we didn’t execute nothin’ that we put in place. Nothin’,” said Jackson, one of several players who said defensive coordinator Vance Joseph’s game plan engendered confidence during the week. “From the top guy to the last guy, we didn’t execute anything that we put in place for this game. When you play good teams and you don’t execute, that’s what happens. They hang 70 on you. As a defense, we’ve got to take this one on the chin, got to evaluate it and we’ve got another opportunity next week.
“But we did not execute anything we put in place.”
Perhaps it’s apropos the way Miami opened and closed its scoring. On the first, second-year safety Delarrin Turner-Yell jumped a crossing route Surtain already had covered, which left All-Pro wide receiver Tyreek Hill running wide open for a 54-yard score. On the last, Surtain, an All-Pro himself, let practice squad receiver Robbie Chosen run past him and haul in a 68-yard score.
From the top guy to the last guy.
By the time the top guy got beat, his dad, former Dolphins great Patrick Surtain, Sr., had already posted to social media that his son “deserved better.”
The Broncos collectively on this day did not. They got exactly what was coming except that last dose of infamy.
A once-upon-a-time Broncos fan spared them that much at least.
Broncos’ historically bad loss to Miami Dolphins by the numbers
Miami coach Mike McDaniel showed mercy opting against a field goal in the final minutes of the Dolphins’ 70-20 blowout win Sunday, sparing the Broncos the ignominy of allowing the most points in a single NFL game. For now, that history stays with the New York Giants, who gave up 72 to Washington in 1966. Still, Denver hit new lows as a franchise, and came close to a few others. Here’s a look:
| Category | Sunday | Record before Sunday |
|---|---|---|
| Opponent points | 70 | 59 |
| Broncos gave up 59 twice, once to Raiders (2010) and once to Chiefs (1963). | ||
| Opponent total yards | 726 | 634* |
| Previous record came in 40-7 loss to Raiders in 1964, with 207 rushing and 427 passing. | ||
| Opponent TDs | 10 | 8 |
| The most offensive TDs allowed before Sunday was 8 by Chiefs in 1966. Two others scored 8, but not all were offensive. | ||
| Opponent Rush TDs | 5 | 5 |
| This is sixth time Broncos gave up five rushing TDs, with most recent coming against Raiders in 2016. | ||
| Opponent passer rating | 158.3 | 155.2 |
| Steelers’ Bubby Brister (156.2) outdid Tua Tagovailoa (155.8) in 1990, but Mike White (158.3) puts Miami over the top | ||
| Point differential | Minus-50 | Minus-52 |
| Based on differential, losses to Chiefs (59-7) in 1963 and Raiders (51-0) in ’67 are worse. Unless McDaniel kicks that FG. |
Source: pro-football-reference.com and Denver Broncos
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