How the Broncos embarrassed the Cardinals on ‘Thursday Night Football’

Were the Broncos playing the St. Louis Cardinals or Arizona Cardinals on Thursday Night Football? The Broncos flat out embarrassed the Cardinals in a game that made us wish the NFL had a mercy rule.

The Broncos seem to have a way of beating the Cardinals with ease. Thursday night marked Denver’s second-largest road win in team history, the largest being a 37-0 win against — you guessed it — the Cardinals in 1989.

If you slept through the game — or watched any of the other sports that were on TV on Thursday night, here’s a by the numbers look at what you need to know about the Broncos’ 45-10 beatdown of the Cardinals.

50: Seconds it took before Von Miller’s promise of the Broncos’ defense giving the game their best came to fruition. Broncos linebacker Todd Davis secured a pick six on just the second offensive play of the game. It was Josh Rosen’s first throw of the night. Davis had an impressive evening, leading the Broncos in tackles with 10.

2: Pick sixes by undrafted players in the first quarter as shortly after Davis scored, Chris Harris intercepted Rosen and brought it back 53 yards for a touchdown.

21-3: The score at the end of the first quarter, which was about an hour into a game that it’s safe to say only Broncos fans enjoyed watching.

4: Emmanuel Sanders is the fourth player in Broncos history (and first since John Elway in 1986) to catch and throw a touchdown in the same game. Sanders joins Odell Beckham Jr. and Albert Wilson as players to accomplish that feat this year, h/t Patrick Smyth. Sanders threw a 28-yard touchdown to Courtland Sutton and caught a 64-yard touchdown from Case Keenum.

35: The most points allowed in a half at State Farm Stadium. The halftime score was 35-3, Broncos.

0/7: Third down conversions for the Cardinals’ pathetic offense in the first half of the game. The Cardinals had just 82 total net yards in the first half while the Broncos had 237.

16.4: Josh Rosen’s very sad first half passer rating. Keenum’s was 109.9 while Sanders’ was a perfect 158.3. That number went considerably down for Keenum in the second half as he finished the game with an 85.6 passer rating. Rosen boosted his number and ended the game with a (still bad) 44.2 rating.

4: Plays in the second half before the Cardinals finally did something good! Patrick Peterson intercepted Keenum at the Cardinals’ 37-yard line.

111: Larry Fitzgerald’s third-quarter touchdown brought him to 111 career touchdowns, which is tied for seventh all-time with Tony Gonzalez.

5: Turnovers forced by the Broncos defense as Bradley Roby notched an interception in addition to the two previously-mentioned pick sixes, and Von Miller forced two fumbles, one of which he recovered. The other was recovered by DeMarcus Walker. Bradley Chubb also forced a fumble on Rosen, but the quarterback was able to get back the ball.

39: David Johnson was not able to join the growing list of players who have rushed for 200 yards against the Broncos. The Cardinals running back had just 39 rushing yards in the game and averaged 2.7 yards per carry.

2: Coming into the game, Miller had the most sacks in NFL since 2011 with 89 and the most forced fumbles in the NFL since 2011 with 23. He added to both of those numbers on Thursday with 2.0 sacks and two forced fumbles.

194 vs. 161: Rosen actually threw for more yards than Keenum. Though, that’s not all that surprising as the Broncos were able to run the ball nearly exclusively in the second half. Keenum only threw four passes in the third quarter (one of which was an interception) and threw no passes in the fourth quarter.

Let’s hope the rest of Week 7 entertains a whole lot more than Thursday night’s game.