There are wins, there are beatdowns, there are absolute ass-whoopings, and then… there’s what the Miami Dolphins’ offense did to the Denver Broncos’ defense on Sunday in a 70-20 thrashing the likes of which professional football has rarely seen.
Mike McDaniel’s offense put up 726 total yards, becoming the fourth team in NFL history, including the postseason, to score at least 70 points in a game and the first in 57 years, joining the Chicago Bears (73 points in the 1940 NFL Championship on December 8, 1940), the Washington Redskins (72 points on November 27, 1966), and the Los Angeles Rams (70 points on October 22, 1950).
Per NFL Research, the Dolphins are the second team in NFL history, including the postseason, to record at least 700 yards of total offense in a single game, joining the Rams on September 28, 1951 (735 yards of offense).
Miami has recorded 1,651 total yards of offense this season and surpassed the 2011 New England Patriots (1,621 yards of offense) for the most-ever by a team through its first three games of a season.
The Dolphins have scored 130 points so far this season and surpassed the 2013 Denver Broncos (127 points) and 1966 Dallas Cowboys (127) for the second-most ever by a team through its first three games of a season. Only the 1968 Cowboys (132 points) had more.
So, yeah… pretty historic stuff.
“Shame on us if you put a ceiling on what you’re capable of,” McDaniel said after the game. “If you just worry about the right things, you don’t worry about anything but your technique and fundamentals and your assignment within the team. You don’t worry about stats, you don’t worry about credit, it’s amazing what a group of people can do going in one direction. I think the points don’t carry over, but I do think this is a meaningful game for a lot of guys to understand to not let an opportunity on the field together slip through your fingers in any way, shape or form because collectively, we have all the right people to do some pretty cool stuff on the football field. I think that’s just incredible. It just goes through my mind like a Rolodex, like all of the intentional work that goes into it by the players.
The Dolphins dumped the entire Rolodex of plays on Vance Joseph’s defense, and here’s how they did it to such a ridiculously successful degree.
The fear of receiver speed affects the entire defense.
Tua Tagovailoa’s 54-yard touchdown pass to Tyreek Hill with 1:23 elapsed in the first quarter had everybody wondering from the broadcast copy — how on Earth was Hill that open?
The All-22 shows exactly why, and it goes back to the constant, thunderous fear of Hill as a downfield threat. Hill was up top in a reduced split, which was an alert to the defense, because he had the room to take the leverage either way. At the snap, safety Kareem Jackson bailed immediately to the deepest depth possible (this looked like a Hail Mary defense) to the point where he was literally and figuratively out of the picture.
The Broncos played Cover-2 to Hill’s side, and Cover-4 to the other side, so when Hill adjusted his route to sort of an option deep over, and Cover-4 cornerback Pat Surtain II and safety Delarrin Turner-Yell dropped to take receiver Robbie Chosen on the in-cut underneath, it was all over. Because Jackson was turned the wrong way, expecting Hill to run a vertical route (this is where the reduced split spacing comes in), all he could do was to try and clean up the mess at the end.
“You just feel like your back is against the wall,” Broncos linebacker Alex Singleton said. “You’ve got to make a play, especially as an older guy now, someone’s got to make a play and change that momentum. We weren’t able to do it. Defense was just – we played on our heels most of that game at a certain point and never got around to getting a step on them any of the drives.”
This wasn’t limited to Miami’s starters. With 9:17 left in the game, and the Dolphins already up 56-13, backup quarterback Mike White hit Chosen on a vertical double move, and even Surtain — one of the NFL’s best cornerbacks — couldn’t do the math.
Miami's use of reduced splits in the context of their personnel really puts defenses in a blender. Now, you aren't just dealing with speed — you're dealing with potential speed leverage to either side. Cornerbacks will tell you that the boundary is their friend. Not here. pic.twitter.com/hn5GET327C
— Doug Farrar ✍ (@NFL_DougFarrar) September 25, 2023
“No, that’s just bad execution by me,” Surtain said. “I just have to stay deep and lock on my guy. There’s no excuses for that. In that situation, I had to lock in and make a play, and I didn’t.”
Chosen is nobody’s idea of a Tyreek Hill or a Jaylen Waddle, but he doesn’t need to be. Because he’s in a passing game that will absolutely maximize his abilities in conjunction with everybody else’s.
Using motion and misdirection in the run game.
Remember that McDaniel spent a lot of time in Kyle Shanahan’s employ — he was a coaching intern with the Denver Broncos in 2005 under Mike Shanahan, and started working with Kyle in Washington in 2011. From there, the two worked together in Cleveland ana Atlanta, and Kyle Shanahan made McDaniel his run game coordinator in 2017 when the San Francisco 49ers made Kyle their head coach. So, it would stand to reason that McDaniel knows a few things about building a run game with motion and misdirection to upset a defense.
That was all over this tape. The Broncos never really had a sense of what the Dolphins were doing on the ground, and they could never really attack it, because the ground game was coming from so many places, at so many different intervals.
Third-round rookie Devon Achane had no snaps in Week 1, and just six offensive snaps in Week 2. But McDaniel had his new weapon ready for this game, as Achane used his legitimate Olympic speed to feast for 203 yards and two touchdowns on just 18 carries. That’s a gaudy 11.3 yards per carry, and it was fascinating to see how McDaniel and his staff deployed Achane — often in conjunction with fellow running back Raheem Mostert (another speed guy), who gained 82 yards and scored three touchdowns on just 13 carries.
This 40-yard Achane run with 8:53 left in the third quarter was particularly diabolical. Mostert motioned to the backfield from the left slot, and Achane was wide right in another reduced split. At the snap, the Broncos had three pieces of eye candy to deal with — receiver Braxton Berrios’ jet motion across, the fake handoff to Mostert, and the eventual handoff to Achane in a play that turned into what the old Packer Power Sweep would look like in outer space. Add in the blocking all the way through the play on crack toss, and this was just about perfect.
“They do a good job getting on the edge, putting people in difficult situations, making one-on-one plays on our playmakers,” Broncos defensive lineman Matt Henningsen said. “[We’ve] just got to make sure we play better.”
Well, the Broncos will not likely face this every week.
Adding new wrinkles.
In their first two games against the Los Angeles Chargers and the New England Patriots, Miami ran for a total of 215 yards — not bad at all, but hardly the centerpiece of the offense. But with receiver Jaylen Waddle out due to a concussion, McDaniel had to tweak his ideal offense, because he didn’t have it 100%.
Which, of course, he did. So, let’s feature another run play, this time from Mostert. We tend to think of the Dolphins as a “spread ’em out” offense, but again, remember the Shanahan imprint. On this 15-yard Mostert run with 12:04 left in the first quarter, Miami is in 21 personnel — two backs, one tight end, and two receivers — and a longtime Shanahan staple. Fullback Alec Ingold was in the backfield with Mostert, and while Hill’s speed motion was a nice touch to blur the picture, this was about getting upfield and putting bodies on bodies. The Broncos had massive problems with Miami’s backs at the second and third levels.
And of course, there was the four-yard, no-look, shovel pass touchdown to Achane with 10:21 left in the first half — something that Tagovailoa said he’d never done in a game at any level before.
“That’s just the play that they put in and when I did it in practice, everyone thought, oh, that was super cool, especially with the helmet cam — you can watch it again, and they’re like, you’ve got to do that in a game. I’m like, all right. So we did it.”
It’s nice when things work out that way.
A magnificent performance by the offensive line.
We should not overlook the big men up front in this overall performance. Tagovailoa suffered no sacks and was hit just once. While that’s a product in part of the Dolphins’ quick passing game (not to mention Denver’s lack of top-tier pass rushers), no offensive plan works this well without synchronization up front.
I don't think any photo covers the Miami/Denver game better than this one. McDaniel had the Broncos in hell. pic.twitter.com/p0MX57XjbG
— Jake Burns (@jake_burns18) September 25, 2023
We’ve already detailed the blocking on Mostert’s 15-yard run; this six-yard run in the third quarter was another example of the Dolphins just running power concepts down the throat of a defense. Moreover, this line is attuned well to block at the second and third levels, which is crucial when you have this much speed among your skill players.
“The line of scrimmage,” Mostert said, when asked what was working so well in this game. “I harped on that from the jump. If we can establish the line of scrimmage, we’ll have a good chance of getting to that second, third level and even those home run plays. To be able to see the o-line — those guys don’t get enough credit and it’s sad because those guys really have gotten a lot better, especially from last year. They improved last year. We were able to do some things. But this year they’re on a whole other level. They understand the assignments a lot better. You’ve got [offensive line coach] Butch Barry, who’s a phenomenal coach. I was with him in San Francisco and he’s going to bring that tenacity for the O-line, which you need, especially down in the trenches.”
Yes, this is sustainable.
Of course, now that the Dolphins have done this, people will wonder whether they can keep doing it. Defenses will adjust as much as they can, but I think the answer is that it is sustainable. because McDaniels’ offense doesn’t just run a few concepts with holes in other areas. They can beat you with the vertical passing game, they can beat you with the quick passing game, and if they need to, as they did against the Broncos, they can spam you with varied concepts on the ground.
Basically, they’re the Tyreek Hill Chiefs with Kyle Shanahan’s run game, and I’m not sure how anybody defends that week to week. Maybe it’s not to the tune of 70-poine embarrassments all the time, but you had better get used to this offense.
“It’s a lot of players executing a lot of things to a standard that’s unrelenting,” McDaniel concluded. “I think that you see where guys are at, for me, when you have a lead. So many leads are vulnerable in this league. We talked at length all off-season just about adversity, and sometimes adversity is having a score or two lead because you can let the atmosphere dictate your product. So what I saw from a lot of guys, and specifically when you’re talking about that type of production, that’s guys really taking it to heart, that we have one op with this team in 2023, and we’re going to make the most of it and be unrelenting with our standards.
“I’ve said it time and time again that it’s an incredibly coachable locker room, and they definitely earned that victory.”
As they will likely earn many more.
