Broncos roll over Raiders with Manning, embarrass ex-defensive coordinator Allen (Shu

[Feed Robot]

There have been many occasions throughout his 15-year when Peyton Manning has looked very much like the man who invented the no-huddle offense. Rarely has that been more the case than in the Denver Broncos' 37-6 beatdown of the Oakland Raiders. Manning completed 30 of 38 passes for 338 yards and three touchdowns, leading those who have wondered if his arm was back at full strength to discern that against a truly rotten defense, Manning can still let it fly. The Raiders, coached by ex-Broncos defensive coordinator Dennis Allen, suffered the worst margin of defeat to their longtime blood rivals in 50 years, and the second-worst in their history versus the Broncos -- the 1962 Raiders took a 44-7 whacking in the early days of the American Football League. For the Broncos, this game resembled one of those old AFL shoot-outs -- they didn't punt once in the game, Manning had his fifth-highest completion percentage in a single game, at 78.9. Manning's highest completion rate came in 2006 against these Broncos, and that was the year Manning's Indianapolis Colts won the Super Bowl. It was as gratifying a win as the quarterback, and his team, could imagine. "My plan was to play fast," Manning said. "We went no-huddle predominately the whole game. In the second quarter, we kept getting some penalties, and anytime you have penalties or incompletions, it sort of takes away the rhythm of playing fast. The referees have to spot the ball, you have to walk the yardage back. So we were kind of hurting ourselves. I know I talked about last week finding a week for the offense, defense and special teams to be all playing well at the same time and feeding off of each other. We certainly did that. That blocked punt … I think our offense really fed off that momentum and finished out with a couple touchdown drives." There were some offensive foibles for the Broncos in the first half, which made the second half even more embarrassing for the Raiders. At halftime, Oakland was down 10-6, but the last 30 minutes was nothing more than a highlight show for Denver's offense -- and a referendum on the distance Oakland's defense has to go before it's even serviceable. "They outcoached us, they outplayed us, they beat us in every phase of the game, so there's not a lot of positive you can take from it," Allen sad. "We've got to go back and go to work. We've got the bye week coming up so we're going to evaluate what we're doing schematically, what we're doing personnel-wise and we've got to come up with a way to play better."

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