De’Von Achane could hear the crowd at the Hard Rock Stadium chanting “Three more points” on the Miami Dolphins’s final drive. They had the ball inside the Denver Broncos’ 30 with less than a minute left, and they were three points shy of breaking the NFL’s single-game scoring record.
Instead of sending out his kicker for a potential record-setting field goal, Dolphins coach Mike McDaniel elected to take a knee and run out the clock.
“It felt like chasing points and chasing a record — that’s not what we came to the game to do,” McDaniel said.
Photo: Nathan Ray Seebeck-USA Today
They almost got there anyway. The Dolphins scored the most points in a game by an NFL team since 1966, overwhelming the Broncos 70-20 on Sunday behind the rookie speedster Achane’s 203 yards rushing and Tua Tagovailoa’s no-look shovel-pass touchdown.
The Dolphins set a franchise record for scoring and finished two points shy of the NFL’s regular-season record — set in 1966 when Washington scored 72 points against the Giants. They are the fourth team in NFL history to score at least 70 points in a regular-season or playoff game.
Many of Miami’s starters, including Tagovailoa and star receiver Tyreek Hill, were pulled from the game early in the fourth quarter.
Achane caught a 10-yard touchdown pass from Tagovailoa — the quarterback’s fourth touchdown — in the fourth, and Jason Sanders converted the extra point that made it 56-13 and broke Miami’s franchise scoring record of 55 set against the St Louis Cardinals on Nov. 24, 1977.
“Seventy points is crazy,” said Achane, who combined with veteran running back Raheem Mostert for eight touchdowns. “That’s like video game-type stuff.”
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