DENVER — The pain from get­ting pulled in the fourth quar­ter of Miami’s first loss in sev­en weeks might sting awhile, but Tua Tagovailoa’s bench­ing won’t last.

“No, no changes,” coach Bri­an Flo­res insist­ed after the Dol­phins’ 20–13 loss at Den­ver on Sun­day that was sealed when safe­ty Justin Sim­mons inter­cept­ed Ryan Fitzpatrick’s throw to DeVante Park­er in the end zone with just over a minute remaining.

Tago­v­alioa tot­tered off the field after his sixth sack ear­ly in the fourth quar­ter and looked to be limp­ing on the side­line, but Flo­res said it wasn’t his young quarterback’s health that was the issue.

Flo­res yanked Tago­v­ailoa after watch­ing his rook­ie left-han­der strug­gle all game against a relent­less pass rush that had six sacks and a stingy sec­ondary that lim­it­ed him to 83 yards on 11-of-20 passing.

“They pres­sured us. They did a good job in the back end from a cov­er stand­point. We just had trou­ble get­ting it going,” Flo­res said after the Dol­phins fell to 6–4 with their first loss since Oct. 4 against Seat­tle. “We had to try to do some­thing to cre­ate momen­tum. That’s why we made the switch, but he’s healthy.”

The Dol­phins are adamant, too, that there is not a quar­ter­back quandary in South Beach.

“There’s no con­tro­ver­sy,” Fitz­patrick said after com­plet­ing 12 of 18 pass­es for 117 yards. “This is his team. He is going to con­tin­ue to lead the team, and we’ve all just got to pull in the right direction.”

The Dol­phins vis­it the win­less New York Jets (0–10) next week.

Fitz­patrick said he spoke with Tago­v­ailoa “on the side­line and in the lock­er room. He’s going to put his head down and keep work­ing hard and keep try­ing to be a bet­ter quar­ter­back. We’ve got a great chance here as a team. Tua has done a nice job. It’s about putting it behind you and mov­ing on to the next one.”

Tago­v­ailoa, who was try­ing to become just the sec­ond rook­ie QB in the past 40 years to win his first four starts (Ben Roeth­lis­berg­er is the oth­er), said he under­stood the move when Flo­res benched him.

“My thoughts were what­ev­er was going to be best for the team,” Tago­v­ailoa said. “When I was in we couldn’t real­ly get things going. Coach felt like it was the best deci­sion to put Fitz in to try to give us a spark. If we were to win with Fitz in there the lock­er room would be a lot dif­fer­ent. Every­one would be a lot hap­pi­er. It just sucks to lose.

“For me it was a great learn­ing expe­ri­ence,” he added. “I felt like I was hold­ing the ball a lit­tle too long.”

Flo­res said he has no con­cerns that Tagovailoa’s bench­ing will dam­age his psyche.

“He’s a con­fi­dent kid. He has dealt with a lot of adver­si­ty,” Flo­res said. “He’ll be fine.”

The Bron­cos (4–6) did some­thing the Rams, Car­di­nals and Charg­ers couldn’t do against Tago­v­ailoa. Den­ver kept the Dol­phins’ superb blitz­ing defense at bay and pre­vent­ed their spec­tac­u­lar spe­cial teams from stak­ing Tago­v­ailoa to an ear­ly lead.

Instead, the Bron­cos bounced back from Drew Lock’s inter­cep­tion, his 11th, on their open­ing dri­ve that led to a quick 7–0 Mia­mi lead to take a 13–10 lead into the lock­er room.

Melvin Gordon’s sec­ond touch­down run extend­ed that lead to 20–10 in the third quar­ter and that’s when Fitz­patrick replaced Tagovailoa.

Gor­don ran it 15 times for 84 yards and Phillip Lind­say ran for 82 yards on 16 carries.

Bron­cos coach Vic Fan­gio said a quarterback’s best friends are a good ground game and a good defense, and while Lock had both, Tago­v­alio had nei­ther on this day.

Five of his eight dri­ves were three-and-outs, includ­ing four of his first five series sand­wiched around a 22-yard touch­down dri­ve fol­low­ing Miami’s only take­away, Xavien Howard’s sixth inter­cep­tion of the season.

The Dol­phins were out­gained 189 yards to 56 yards on the ground, and Den­ver had six sacks while allow­ing none.

“It was a com­bi­na­tion of pro­tec­tion and maybe hold­ing it a lit­tle too long and guys not get­ting open,” Flo­res said. “We weren’t mov­ing the ball effec­tive­ly. I felt like we need­ed to give our­selves a spark.”

And maybe in the process light a fire under Tago­v­ailoa that will pay div­i­dends as the Dol­phins chase their first play­off berth since 2016.