Remember Dolphins 70, Broncos 20, on Sept. 24?
The final score read like a misprint at the time. But it was reality.
It, too, was open season on first-year Denver head coach Sean Payton, who has made his share of missteps since returning to the sideline this season after a short TV broadcast career.
No NFL team had put up a 70-spot on another since 1966, when Washington rolled past the Giants, 72-41. Miami coach Mike McDaniel could have broken that record had he opted to kick a late chip-shot field goal, but instead he decided to kneel on the ball in the final seconds.
The Broncos and Payton were the most ridiculed bunch in the NFL, not to mention their quarterback Russell Wilson, who’s become a lightning rod for criticism for his significant drop-off in performance commensurate with the obscene contract the team gave him.
That 50-point loss by Denver dropped its record to 0-3, and it later spiraled to 1-5 — the worst start for the Broncos since 1994 when they finished 7-9. It, too, was the worst start to a season in Payton’s career as a head coach.
Payton did his share to make himself unlikable — lowlighted by his idiotic comments calling out Nate Hackett, the Broncos head coach in 2022 before being fired, for doing one of the worst coaching jobs in NFL history with that team.
To their credit, the Broncos have rallied from that frightful start, entering Monday night’s road game against the Bills riding a two-game winning streak, their most recent a stunner over the Chiefs before their bye week.
Though the Denver defense hasn’t brought back memories of the ’85 Bears, it has settled down admirably since that embarrassing 70-point day, allowing a total of 104 points in the past five games.
Though they still rank last in the league in yards allowed (405 per game) and points surrendered (28.3 per game), the Broncos have held their past three opponents to 19, 17 and 9 points. And two of those were against the reigning Super Bowl champion Chiefs, whom they defeated for the first time in eight years two weeks ago.
“I feel like we’re a better team today than we were four or five weeks ago,’’ Payton told reporters this week. “You can see that in a lot of ways. We’re defending the run better. Our red zone defense has been much improved. Offensively, we’ve been more efficient running the ball. We’re doing a number of the things that are necessary to win games that I don’t think we were doing nearly as well at the start of the season.”
Something to watch is Wilson, who had his worst year as a pro last year and struggled early this season. But he’s putting up some strong numbers of late. Since the 0-3 start, Wilson has thrown 11 touchdowns and just two interceptions. For the season, he has thrown 16 TDs and just four INTs.
Though there’s a lot of scrutiny around Payton and Wilson, it should be noted that when Drew Brees joined Payton with the Saints in 2006, it took him some time to adjust to the system. In the first seven games that season, Brees struggled. He finished strong and went to the Pro Bowl.
Wilson, too, has played some of his worst games against some of the league’s top pass defenses this season.
Maybe, just maybe, this Payton thing might work in Denver — where the Broncos have gone six consecutive seasons without a winning record and seven years without a playoff berth, second longest only to the Jets’ 13 playoff-less seasons.