The Denver Broncos defeated the Miami Dolphins on Sunday by a score of 20-13. The loss knocks the Dolphins to 6-4 and ends their five-game win streak. The Broncos move to 4-6 with the win.

Overpowered.

The Dolphins were overpowered in this game. Empower Stadium at Mile High, as the name suggests, sits at 5,280 above sea level. One has to wonder if the altitude played a factor in today’s game. The Dolphins looked lethargic on both sides of the ball — not only being schematically outperformed, but also physically.

In a 2018 interview with NBC’s 9NEWS, Dr. Inigo San Millan, who runs the sports performance program at the University of Colorado’s Sports Medicine and Performance Center spoke about the effects of altitude on an athletes performance.

“It doesn’t matter the sport. When you come to altitude and you want to compete, you’re going to suffer, you’re going to pay for it,” Millian said. “And if someone is waiting for you here, right, with the knife well sharpened, they should take advantage of you.”

The main headline from this game will be: What happened to quarterback Tua Tagovailoa?

In the fourth quarter, with 10:44 remaining, the Dolphins turned to veteran Ryan Fitzpatrick. Tagovailoa was on this week’s injury report with a foot injury, and was sacked six times in this game. On the last sack, he appears to have had his leg caught underneath him.

Coach Brian Flores said after the game that the decision to bench Tagovailoa was not injury related.

“Tua wasn’t injured,” Flores said. “We just felt like it was the best move at that point of the game — we had to get in two-minute mode and we felt like [Fitzpatrick] gave us the best chance to win the game and we had an opportunity at the end to tie it.”

Flores went on to say Tagovailoa would remain starter for next week’s game.

Before leaving the game though, Tagovailoa was largely inefficient. He had his worst game of the season, going for 11/20, 83 yards and a touchdown.

Tagovailoa and the offense really struggled to get anything going. Five of the eight drives led by Tua ended with a three and out.

Ouch.

His touchdown came on a beautiful fade pass to DeVante Parker for a 3-yard TD. He also displayed some nice movement in the pocket, avoiding pressure and being able to look up field.

However, that was just about all the positives from the rookie in this game. After avoiding pressure, he missed on several of the throws. He had an interception that was reversed on a questionable defensive holding.

As expected in the preview, this game did look very similar to the Rams game offensively. Tagovailoa did not complete a single pass beyond 10 yards, and only attempted four.

Tagovailoa once again led the NFL in “aggressiveness” this week, a stat that measures how often a player throws into tight windows, per NFL’s Next Gen Stats. A whopping 40% of throws had a defender within one yard of the target. The next closest was Carson Wentz with 28%.

It’s tough to put all the blame on Tua because of how terrible the offensive line was. This was by far their worst game. As mentioned in the preview, the Broncos send few blitzes — but are still extremely successful at applying pressure. That did not change in this game. Three of their six sacks came with only four down linemen rushing the quarterback.

Tagovailoa was sacked six times in this game. In his previous three starts, he was sacked a combined four times.

Guard Ereck Flowers had a terrible performance. He was getting beat nonstop, and on several of the sacks, you can see him either on the ground or being desperately blown back.

Tackle Austin Jackson also struggled today. Working alongside Flowers, that whole side of the offensive line was under heavy attack. On one sack, Jackson and Flowers man switched, and were able to capitalize on the confusion and get to the quarterback. Flowers and Jackson looked at each other with their hands up, showing some visible miscommunication.

Broncos Bradley Chubb was causing disruption at will, finishing with a sack and a tackle for loss. Deshawn Williams would finish with 2 sacks, and Malik Reed had a sack and half.

The wide receivers in this game also struggled. The preview piece touched on the Broncos strong secondary — but even then, the Dolphins receivers were completely blanketed to a level that was unacceptable on their part. The Dolphins desperately need to add a star receiver in the offseason, albeit in the first round of the draft or acquiring a stud like Allen Robinson II.

Fitzpatrick entered the game for Tua in the fourth quarter. In his first drive, he commanded a 44-yard drive that ended with a field goal. On the following drive, down by seven, the Dolphins got the ball at their own 1-yard-line. Fitzpatrick was able to drive deep into Broncos territory, but ultimately threw an interception to Justin Simmons.

Fitzpatrick finished the game: 12/18, 117 yards and an interception.

His 117 yards on two drives was more than Tua had on eight drives. He had two completions of beyond 15 yards in his two drives.

The Dolphins leading receiver was DeVante Parker who had 61 yards.

The Dolphins running game was largely non-exciting again. Running back Salvon Ahmed was solid at best, picking up 43 yards on 12 carries. He also had 31 yards receiving on five catches.

Running back Matt Breida made his return from a hamstring injury this week, but had a minor impact. He finished the game with 2 carries for 4 yards.

Wide receiver Antonio Callaway had his first reception as a Dolphin, which came on a 13-yard catch for a third-down conversion.

The Dolphins defense started off hot, yet again. Cornerback  Xavien Howard recorded his sixth interception, which once again makes him the league leader in interceptions. The play put the Dolphins on the Denver 22-yard-line and led to their touchdown.

The Dolphins, which had been having tremendous success at applying pressure over the last several games, did not record a sack in this one. They only had three hits on the quarterback.

In the preview piece, one of the keys to victory was to contain the run and force Lock to pass the ball. Lock had recorded 10 interceptions in his last five games, making it likely that the Broncos would keep the ball on the ground.

The Broncos would finish this game with 189 yards rushing on 5.7 yards per carry. Melvin Gordon had 84 yards rushing, and a fumble near the goal line. Phillip Lindsay had 82 yards rushing.

The Dolphins defense looked noticeably slower than in previous games, struggling to catch up to the ballcarriers or break through the line.

Aside from the strip by Andrew Van Ginkel on Gordon’s near touchdown, it was a largely disappointing game from the Dolphins defensive linemen and linebackers.

Linebacker Elandon Roberts had a huge 4th down stop on Melvin Gordon, but also gave up a big play down the center of the field to Nick Vannett.

The secondary in this game was alright for Miami. Cornerback Nik Needham was being targeted heavily at one point — surrendering a few catches to Jerry Jeudy and KJ Hamler. There was also an instance of Hamler beating him big over the top, but was lucky that Drew Lock missed on the pass. Needham was able to minimize the damage by having several big pass deflections.

The Dolphins three leading tacklers in this game were defensive backs — which is not a good thing. Eric Rowe led the Dolphins in tackles with 10, and had a tough outing against Noah Fant. Fant finished the game with a respectable 55 yards.

Broncos receiver Tim Patrick had several big catches in this game, including a 41-yard reception on Xavien Howard. He would finish the game with a whopping 119 yards receiving, but those numbers are heavily overinflated. On the final play of the game with four seconds remaining, Drew Lock launched a ball downfield in order to burn the remaining time off the clock. Patrick would make the grab for a 61-yard gain.

Takeaways

It’s not time to panic yet. The Dolphins won five straight games — and several of those were against talented teams. Those weren’t by accident. Don’t let one disappointing performance on the road define your perception of this team.  Was the defense bad in this game? Sure, but they have been stellar for the majority of the season. Was the offensive line atrocious today? Absolutely, but this is a group that many people had low expectations for at the beginning of the season. Give them all another week to bounce back before anyone tries to label this team a fluke.

The receiver situation is bad, and needs to be improved in the future. Every week, Parker makes another highlight reel catch, but at the same time, he hasn’t been able to create separation consistently like one would hope a WR1 could. This same thing could be said about a lot of the playmakers on the receiving side of the ball. Gesicki disappears more often than not. Jakeem Grant is limited in terms of his skillset. The Dolphins will need to make a huge upgrade at receiver in order to take that next step offensively.

The Dolphins defense must address their run-stopping issues. The Dolphins are currently 27th in the NFL in yards per carry allowed. Their ability to create pressure on the quarterback is phenomenal. Their ability to capitalize on that pressure with turnovers is unmatched. Both of those points are moot if the opponent can hand the ball off and chip away at the defense all game. The only truly tough quarterbacks remaining on the schedule for Miami are Mahomes and Josh Allen — but if the rest of Miami’s opponents can mimic Denver’s performance today, it could make a lot of routine wins much harder.