Your regularly-scheduled program of winners and losers, which I planned to write following this game, has been interrupted because guess what? There are no winners this Sunday for the Denver Broncos.
Marvin Mims looks great for the team and he needs to see the field much more than he has, but that is where the positivity starts and ends. The Denver Broncos are absolutely horrible.
In case you missed it (and hopefully, you did), the Broncos were waxed by the Miami Dolphins on Sunday, losing by 50 points! Yes, you read that right. The Dolphins put up 70 points in an NFL game, something you probably only see if you're sitting in front of a TV screen while playing Madden.
Those 70 points were the most a team has scored since 1966. As the Dolphins continually ran up and down the field on this putrid Broncos defense, fans had to be grabbing their phones to hit Google and find out what the most points ever scored in an NFL game was.
The answer? Washington against the New York Giants on November 27, 1966. 72 points.
The Dolphins even had a chance late in the fourth quarter to bring out the field goal unit and set the record. But head coach Mike McDaniel finally showed some mercy and saved the Broncos from that dubious record.
But let's be honest, Miami could have scored 100 points in this game if they wanted to. The defensive effort was as bad as you will ever see at the professional level and it goes without saying that it should cost Vance Joseph his job.
But the blame can't just be placed on Joseph. This is a complete organizational failure and Sean Payton can't be left unscathed, particularly after these words towards Nathaniel Hackett earlier this year that are going to come back to haunt him.
So Sean Payton took Hackett to task in camp. His offense can’t call plays any faster. His team can’t score any better in the 2nd half. And this loss is now worse than any suffered last year, including Christmas. Keep your mouth shut, like you told your players.
— Andy Lindahl (@Andy_Lindahl) September 24, 2023
Now to be clear, what Payton said about Hackett was 100 percent true, but this is why things like that are often better left unsaid. Because now, he looks even worse than Hackett ever did which is.... shocking to say.
After the Broncos lost to the Las Vegas Raiders in Week 1, I talked about how serious that loss was. Because it showed the potential trajectory this team could find itself on. After losing to the Washington Commanders in Week 2, an argument could be made that the season was already in peril.
Broncos Country is as passionate and as loyal as any fanbase in the NFL. But there is no way to defend this. It might seem like a heat-of-the-moment thing to call this the low point in team history, but this team is in complete shambles right now.
The Dolphins didn't just put up 70 points. They did so with ease. It was clear they could have scored even more. That's a horrible thought when you consider it had been nearly 60 years since a professional football team scored that many points.
Sure, the Dolphins look like a terrific team, but this is much more about how bad Denver is. Russell Wilson is even playing pretty well, but the defense can't even slow an opponent down, let alone stop them. Players are missing tackles and passes are being completed against this secondary with sheer ease. Tua Tagovailoa completed his first 17 pass attempts in this game.
The Broncos have had some tough moments in team history. Getting blasted by the Seattle Seahawks in Super Bowl XLVIII. All of those John Elway Super Bowl losses in the late 1980s. The Wild Card round loss to Jacksonville in 1996 or when Joe Flacco beat Rahim Moore deep in 2012.
Those were all heart-wrenching moments, but somehow easier to digest than this was. Because in each of those crushing defeats, there was still plenty of hope on the horizon. Those teams that lost the Super Bowls still had John Elway and later, Peyton Manning. Where is the hope for this team?
Right now, no matter how you cut it, there is none. It's not with the head coach. It's not with the quarterback, and it's certainly not with the defense, the unit that has been a bright spot for the team even when it has been bad in recent years.
The Broncos are now 0-3 and are going to be contenders for the No. 1 pick in this year's draft. The rebuilding process continues but after the depths of which the franchise just fell to on Sunday, that process may be the equivalent of reaching the top of Mount Everest.