Among all of the bad, one aspect of Denver’s loss on Sunday was the worst

BALTIMORE — The Denver Broncos had the exact same number of rushing yards and penalty yards on Sunday against the Baltimore Ravens.

That can only mean good news for one of those departments.

Let’s just say Bill Musgrave’s offense had a fine day on the ground statistically — racking up over 10 more yards than the NFL average in 2017.

Penalties, however, “killed” the Broncos, according to head coach Vance Joseph, in their 14-27 loss to the Ravens.

“Too many penalties. Too many penalties,” Joseph said following the game after reflecting on the mind-numbing 13 penalties for 120 yards.

To put this into perspective, the Seattle Seahawks were the worst disciplined team in 2017, committing an average of 9.25 penalties per game for 83.88 yards.

Denver blew that out of the water on Sunday. It started almost right out of the gate, too.

Denver’s first penalty of the game was symbolic of what was to follow.

“Someone pushed someone, I’m not sure what happened,” Joseph said, attempting to explain Isaac Yiadom’s unnecessary roughness penalty on the sidelines after Baltimore’s 37-yard kick return. “It was someone who was out of the game.”

With less than half the field to go after the unnecessary penalty, Joe Flacco and the Ravens’ offense moved at ease — thanks in part to Denver’s first defensive penalty — “punching it” into the end zone, as Joseph said.

The next two penalties, however, were dreadful.

In a five-play span, the Broncos not only erased a touchdown off the board due to an illegal block in the back on Chris Harris, Jr.’s blocked field goal return, they lost their best offensive player through the first two weeks of the season, Phillip Lindsay, while also racking up 15 penalty yards on the play.

“I didn’t see it. I was told he threw a punch under the pile,” Joseph said with disappointment written all over his face. “If that’s accurate, he can’t do that. He’s obviously a big part of what we do offensively, he’s our double returner today, he’s our kick off and punt returner today, so losing him, that’s a big deal. Plus the penalty yards after that. You can’t do it.”

In the first half, the penalties were bad — racking up 50 yards on five penalties.

But the amount of yellow laundry on the field in the first 30 minutes of play didn’t compare to what was to come as Denver’s discipline completely fell off the rails in the second half.

“A lot of the penalties were guys really losing their composure,” Joseph admitted. “We can’t do that. You’re playing a tough Baltimore team on the road and you have 13 penalties for 120 yards and really, honestly, cost us 20 points out there. That obviously killed us today.”

In the second half, not only did Denver tack on eight more penalties for 70 yards, nearly all of them were damming.

On the defensive side, a Derek Wolfe offsides penalty on 3rd-and-4 kept the Ravens drive going after it appeared Baltimore’s drive had stalled.

But the offensive side was much worse.

Not only did one of Garett Bolles’ holding penalties negate a 39-yard pass to Demaryius Thomas, which would have put the team at Baltimore’s 11-yard line, but the offense also had three different penalties in the second half that took them out of field goal range.

“We made some plays and it came back because of penalties,” Joseph said.

After the offense overcame one of those penalties, the entire group collectively hit the final nail in their coffin, having too many men on the field on 4th-and-1, forcing a do-or-die 4th-and-6, which proved to be too tall of a task.

“We put together two drives — we got down there inside the ten and just didn’t come away with points either time, for whatever reason it was,” Case Keenum said after the game looking for answers.

Here’s why, Case: Penalties.

In the final two drives, the Broncos had back-breaking penalties.

On the day, three players finished with two penalties: Von Miller, Garett Bolles and Connor McGovern.

“I got two of them with the offsides. I can handle those, that’s two off the board,” Miller said, taking responsibility for his contribution. “I mean, we practiced well. We don’t have penalties in practice.”

As he racked his brain for how his team can clean up the mistakes, Miller uttered, “I don’t know. I don’t know. I don’t know,” before adding, “We definitely have to clean it up.”

In 2017, the average number of penalties in a game by a team was 6.41 for 55.40 yards.

Last year, Denver was the eighth-most most penalized team, going for 7.06 penalties per game for 55.31 yards.

Through the first two weeks, the Broncos were slightly improved, averaging 6.5 penalties for 47.5 yards.

Sunday, they did their best to catch up to the 2017 Seahawks in one game.

“It’s a problem we had in the past. I don’t think that’s the type of team we are though,” Miller said, clearly frustrated by his team’s first loss. “Just weird day today. Weird Sunday.”