The final result — New Orleans 31, Bron­cos 3 — will be a foot­note next week when Drew Lock and Co. return from NFL inel­i­gi­bil­i­ty, next year when hope­ful­ly things like masks and pro­to­cols are no longer nec­es­sary and way in the future when Kendall Hin­ton reflects on going from prac­tice squad receiv­er to quar­ter­back in a span of 24 hours.

Hin­ton will remem­ber Sun­day at emp­ty Mile High even if he com­plet­ed more pass­es to the Saints (two) than his team­mates (one).

But every­thing else should be for­got­ten. All of it. Move on. Start think­ing about Kansas City.

The 112 yards of offense, six first downs and three turnovers? For­get it. The defense final­ly wilt­ing after a strong first quar­ter and allow­ing 229 rush­ing yards? Old news. And the Bron­cos los­ing a third game this year by at least 25 points? Doesn’t matter.

The Bron­cos had no shot at beat­ing New Orleans after the NFL benched quar­ter­backs Drew Lock, Brett Ryp­i­en and Blake Bor­tles for vio­lat­ing mask-wear­ing and social-dis­tanc­ing pro­to­cols. Already minus Jeff Driskel, who test­ed pos­i­tive for COVID-19 last Wednes­day, the Bron­cos on short notice turned to Hin­ton and run­ning backs Phillip Lind­say and Royce Free­man to catch/receive cen­ter Lloyd Cushenberry’s snaps.

“For me, I’m not real­ly dis­ap­point­ed in the quar­ter­backs,” safe­ty Kareem Jack­son said after the Bron­cos fell to 4–7. “I know the pro­to­cols have picked up a lit­tle bit and wear­ing that mask in a meet­ing room on a day-to-day basis def­i­nite­ly becomes irri­tat­ing. But you have to do what you have to do. I just felt like going into the game, we weren’t giv­en a chance.”

And for that, the Bron­cos should blame the league, who want­ed to make an exam­ple out of the quar­ter­backs. They should cer­tain­ly hold the quar­ter­backs account­able, but the pun­ish­ment didn’t fit the crime.

Jack­son took the league to task for not being open to mov­ing the game. The close-con­tact rule is five days of iso­la­tion, but his point is well tak­en about play­ing Mon­day or Tues­day because it would have allowed the coach­es and play­ers valu­able time to devel­op a game plan.

“To have to con­tin­ue to play this game and not be giv­en the chance to fig­ure things out with our quar­ter­back sit­u­a­tion, that was def­i­nite­ly dis­ap­point­ing,” he said.

Def­i­nite­ly dis­ap­point­ing, def­i­nite­ly unfor­tu­nate and def­i­nite­ly pathetic.

The seeds of Saturday’s mad­ness were plant­ed last Tues­day. The Bron­cos were off, but the quar­ter­backs went to the facil­i­ty on their off-day to watch video.

“They got lax with their masks, I guess, and got lax with their dis­tanc­ing from each oth­er, I guess,” coach Vic Fan­gio said.

Just before Saturday’s 1 p.m. prac­tice, the quar­ter­backs were told to scram.

“I was the last one out of the lock­er room and Drew came back in and told me the deal and that they pos­si­bly wouldn’t be able to play,” Jack­son said.

The league made their deci­sion — it still hasn’t made a pub­lic announce­ment, select­ing their sup­port­ive media voic­es to car­ry out its words — after a con­fer­ence call with a group that includ­ed Bron­cos president/CEO Joe Ellis and gen­er­al man­ag­er John Elway.

Asked if he was sur­prised and/or dis­ap­point­ed with the NFL’s deci­sion, Fan­gio veered in an unex­pect­ed direction.

“I was dis­ap­point­ed on a cou­ple of lev­els in that our quar­ter­backs put us in this posi­tion, our quar­ter­backs put the league in that posi­tion,” Fan­gio said. “We count on them to be the lead­ers of this team and lead­ers of the offense and those guys made a mis­take and that’s disappointing.”

Whoa. We didn’t expect Fan­gio to apply a flame-throw­er to the league because that would get him fined … and he was docked $100,000 ear­ly this sea­son for not reg­u­lar­ly wear­ing his mask.  But it was unex­pect­ed for him to put the blame entire­ly on the quar­ter­backs and then himself.

“Obvi­ous­ly, I haven’t done a good enough job of sell­ing the pro­to­cols to them when they’re on their own,” he said. “Part of that can fall on me. I thought I was.”

Fan­gio was diplo­mat­ic and Jack­son mat­ter-of-fact. The Bron­cos have a rea­son to feel picked on because they lost their bye week in Octo­ber when New Eng­land had two pos­i­tive tests. That game was moved a week. Sunday’s show went on as scheduled.

The Bron­cos faced the Saints while know­ing Bal­ti­more had its Thanks­giv­ing Night game at Pitts­burgh moved to Tues­day because of myr­i­ad coro­n­avirus cases.

What was the dif­fer­ence? Accord­ing to a league source, the find­ings by the league and play­ers’ union so far have led them to believe a Bron­cos’ spread was con­tained. Lock, Ryp­i­en and Bor­tles were found to be close con­tacts, which is why they were placed on the COVID-19/re­serve list Sun­day morn­ing. Bal­ti­more had its game moved because the virus is not yet con­sid­ered con­tained because pos­i­tives were con­tract­ed out­side the building.

The NFL inves­ti­gates every team that has alleged COVID pro­to­col vio­la­tions. The NFLPA works with the league to con­trol the spread of the virus, fol­low­ing a review of the facts and then the NFL office con­sid­ers dis­ci­pline for vio­la­tions. The Bron­cos should expect to be fined, espe­cial­ly if the league deems them repeat offend­ers because of Fangio’s ear­ly-sea­son fine (the team was fined $500,000).

Before the game, Lock tweet­ed a state­ment and said, “in a con­trolled and social­ly-dis­tance area, we let our mask­ing slip for a lim­it­ed amount of time. An hon­est mis­take, but one I will own. … I sin­cere­ly apol­o­gize and I ful­ly under­stand why these safe­ty pre­cau­tions are so impor­tant. Doing the right thing for a major­i­ty of the time is not good enough.”

Lock’s apol­o­gy is noble and prob­a­bly war­rant­ed, but what about an apol­o­gy for the com­pet­i­tive integri­ty of the game being com­pro­mised? Don’t expect the NFL to issue one.

Also don’t expect the Saints to decline the win. New Orleans took advan­tage of the Bron­cos’ sit­u­a­tion, grind­ing out a dom­i­nant win after a slow start. The Saints opened the scor­ing with a 13-play dri­ve aid­ed by defen­sive end Dre’Mont Jones’ fourth-and‑1 neu­tral zone penal­ty and capped by quar­ter­back Taysom Hill’s one-yard touchdown.

The Bron­cos’ chances at an improb­a­ble win — or mak­ing things inter­est­ing in the sec­ond half — dis­ap­peared in the final three min­utes of the first half when the Saints turned a Lind­say fum­ble (bad snap by Cushen­ber­ry) and a Hin­ton inter­cep­tion into 10 points and a 17–0 lead.

The Bron­cos’ 112 yards were their fifth-fewest, their six first downs third-fewest, 12 net pass­ing yards sev­enth-fewest and one com­ple­tion the fewest in team history.

Fan­gio, who is hope­ful to have his reg­u­lar quar­ter­backs back at the facil­i­ty ear­ly this week, salut­ed the effort of his avail­able players.

“I have a lot of love and respect for our play­ers,” he said. “I know the score is what it is, but they played hard, they played phys­i­cal and I love them and respect them even more.

“In the final analy­sis, it was just too big of an ask.”

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Three-headed monster (OR) Snap decision

The Bron­cos had three play­ers (Royce Free­man, Kendall Hin­ton and Phillip Lind­say) take snaps in Sunday’s bizarre 31–3 loss to the Saints. A look at how the offense fared with each:

	Snaps	Runs	Pass­es (C‑A)	Yards	Turnovers
Royce Free­man	10	10	0	47	0
Kendall Hin­ton	24	15	9 (1–9)	36	2 inter­cep­tions
Phillip Lind­say	9	9	0	29	1 fum­bled snap
Total	43	34	9 (1–9)	112	3

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Err it out

The Bron­cos set a fran­chise record for fewest com­ple­tions in a game Sun­day, with Kendall Hin­ton con­nect­ing on just 1‑of‑9 pass­es for 13 yards. Den­ver com­plet­ed two pass­es in a game three sep­a­rate times, includ­ing a 17–10 win over Kansas City on Nov. 13, 2011, that saw Tim Tebow com­plete 2‑of‑8 for 68 yards. Still, Sunday’s loss wasn’t the worst day Bron­cos fans have seen in terms of pass­ing yardage thanks to a few games where Den­ver QBs couldn’t stop get­ting sacked:

Date	Oppo­nent	C‑A-I	Yards	Rat­ing	Result
Sept. 10, 1967	at Oak­land	2–16‑1	-53	13.5	Loss, 51–0
Sept. 3, 1966	at Hous­ton	2–20‑0	-7	39.6	Loss, 45–7
Sept. 4, 1983	at Pitts­burgh	5–16‑1	1	35.7	Win, 14–10
Nov. 15, 1964	N.Y. Jets	7–21‑2	6	18.7	Win, 20–16
Sept. 3, 1978	Oak­land	5–13‑1	8	40.2	Win, 14–6
Nov. 30, 1975	San Diego	8–20‑6	8	25.0	Win, 13–10 (OT)
Nov. 29, 2020	New Orleans	1–9‑2	13	0.0	Loss, 31–3

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Top five worst yardage totals

It took until the final dri­ve of the game, but the Bron­cos were able to eclipse 100 total yards Sun­day against New Orleans. As bad as things were, Den­ver has actu­al­ly had worse offen­sive performances.

Date	Oppo­nent	Yards	Result
Sept. 10, 1967	at Oak­land	-5	Loss, 51–0
Sept. 3, 1966	at Hous­ton	26	Loss, 45–7
Sept. 20, 1992	at Philadel­phia	82	Loss, 30–0
Nov. 20, 1966	Oak­land	102	Loss, 17–3
Nov. 29, 2020	New Orleans	112	Loss, 31–3