Tua Tago­v­ailoa came into Den­ver rid­ing a rook­ie high as the first Mia­mi quar­ter­back to start his career 3–0.

He left Empow­er Field on Sun­day hav­ing been benched, his momen­tum checked thanks to a dom­i­nat­ing, dis­rupt­ing per­for­mance by the Bron­cos defen­sive front. Den­ver tied a sea­son-high with six sacks, and a fraz­zled Tago­v­ailoa was replaced ear­ly in the fourth quar­ter of Denver’s 20–13 victory.

“We knew (Tago­v­ailoa) had been doing a good job the past three weeks run­ning that offense, so we knew it was going to be a bat­tle and a chal­lenge to get back there and make him uncom­fort­able,” Bron­cos’ out­side line­backer Malik Reed said. “We want­ed to get a rush at him, so it’s amaz­ing to see us end up with six sacks, because that’s what we strive for as a defen­sive front. To real­ly get after him, that was the goal.”

The Bron­cos’ sacks took away 33 yards from the Mia­mi offense, start­ing with one by Dre’Mont Jones in the first quar­ter and cul­mi­nat­ing with Bradley Chubb’s sack in the final quar­ter. That sack result­ed in Tagovailoa’s bench­ing on Miami’s next series, a move Dol­phins coach Bri­an Flo­res said was not injury-related.

Jour­ney­man DeShawn Williams, pro­mot­ed to Denver’s active ros­ter Sept. 25 after a four-year NFL hia­tus, paced the Bron­cos’ rush with two sacks. Reed had 1.5 sacks, Chubb and Jones each had one, and DeMar­cus Walk­er chipped in with a half-sack.

The Bron­cos also had five tack­les for loss and eight quar­ter­back hits. 

“We did pres­sure some more (than we have before this year), but I was actu­al­ly plan­ning on doing it even more than we did,” coach Vic Fan­gio said.

Fan­gio was pleased with the sack total, call­ing them “hard to get” while cred­it­ing the secondary’s role in Sunday’s suc­cess up front.

“The sacks came a lit­tle bit lat­er in the down, so our cov­er­age was good and we had to keep grind­ing,” Fan­gio said. “We had our chance at a cou­ple oth­er ones, but Tua and (Ryan) Fitz­patrick are elu­sive guys and good scramblers.”

Chubb felt like the pres­sure the Bron­cos gen­er­at­ed on Miami’s first pos­ses­sion, a three-and-out where Tago­v­ailoa was hur­ried into two over­throws down­field, set the tone.

“We want­ed to get to him ear­ly, rat­tle him up a lit­tle bit ear­ly, and I feel like we did that,” Chubb said. “For the rest of the game, we kept get­ting back there. The key was keep­ing him in the pock­et, and once we did that, the hits start­ed adding up.”

The offen­sive side took notice of the sack par­ty on the oth­er side of the ball. Run­ning back Phillip Lind­say, who ran for 82 yards, acknowl­edged the offense set­tling in dur­ing the sec­ond half accel­er­at­ed the defense’s domination.

“It’s hard when we go three-and-out and put the defense in a bad spot (like we’ve been doing),” Lind­say said. “If we can do this every game, you’ll see a defense that’s top two, top three. When you put them in a sit­u­a­tion where their backs are (con­stant­ly) against the wall, it’s not a good thing. But when we’re doing our thing, and mov­ing the ball and dri­ving and keep­ing them off the field to get rest, you’re going to see a bet­ter defense out there, a more con­fi­dent defense out there, and the Den­ver defense that (fans) are used to.”

Den­ver also held Mia­mi to 56 rush­ing yards on 17 car­ries, about half of the 98.7 rush yards the Dol­phins had been aver­ag­ing. The secondary’s sound tack­ling helped, with safe­ty Justin Sim­mons pac­ing the team with sev­en tack­les, while Reed and inside line­backer Alexan­der John­son both had six tack­les apiece.

Tago­v­ailoa, mean­while, nev­er found any rhythm in the pass­ing game fol­low­ing his first-quar­ter touch­down pass to DeVante Park­er. The No. 5 over­all pick in this year’s draft fin­ished 11-of-20 through the air for 83 yards, with one touchdown.

And a seat on the bench.