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DENVER -- The Denver Broncos defense, the scapegoat for the team's two late-season losses, set the tone for a rout in the first minute of Saturday's AFC divisional playoff game.

	Broncos linebacker Bill Romanowski celebrates his interception of Dan Marino.

"We blitzed them the first three plays of the game," linebacker Bill Romanowski said after Denver's 38-3 romp of the Miami Dolphins. "We were like, 'You're not going to do to us what you did the last time on Monday night. We're going to be aggressive, we're going to go after you, and we're going to make you earn everything you get.' "

Miami quarterback Dan Marino shredded Denver in a 31-21 regular-season victory 19 days ago, throwing for 355 yards and four touchdowns. Lamar Thomas had three TD catches as the Miami receivers had their way with Denver's secondary.

"We were not going to let it happen again," cornerback Ray Crockett said.

On the Dolphins' opening series Saturday, O.J. McDuffie dropped a short pass on first down, Bernie Parmalee ran for 3 yards and Stanley Pritchett dropped another pass, forcing a punt with only 1:09 expired. The Broncos responded with the first of their three consecutive touchdowns.

"I told him (McDuffie) he was scared," Romanowski said. "I told him if he caught that ball, he was going to get hit, and he was going to get hit hard. It seemed like, overall, it worked a little bit."

Romanowski had six tackles and an interception. He also was responsible for dumping Marino hard just after the Miami quarterback released a pass.

Linebacker Glenn Cadrez said the strategy was to "make sure they heard the sounds of our pads."

The Broncos held the Dolphins to 252 total yards and a second-quarter field goal. Marino completed 26 of 37 passes for 243 yards, but most were in the 5- to 10-yard range. The Dolphins had only 14 yards rushing on 13 carries.

Asked if he had seen a more dominant defensive effort in a game of this magnitude, Crockett said, "No, not at all. I've never seen a defensive unit come out and dominate the way we did today, especially against a team and a quarterback like Marino is. And we didn't let up, not in the third quarter or the fourth quarter."

Broncos coach Mike Shanahan said his defense "did a great job of keeping Marino off balance. Any time you can do that to a quarterback of his caliber, you know that you've played a complete football game on defense. To hold Miami and Dan to three points is really a credit to our defense."

Backup cornerback Darrius Johnson, who led the Broncos in tackles with nine, said the victory was sweet redemption for a defense -- and secondary -- that was the target of scorn in recent weeks.

"There had been a lot of talk about our secondary being real soft," Johnson said. "I guess when you lose a couple of games, you always have to have somebody to point your finger at.

"We knew it was either have a bad game and go home, or put it all on the line. And we did."

Added Crockett, "We took a lot of heat in the past four or five weeks. A lot of it stemmed from that last Miami game. We had been counted out by everybody, by the media, by the NFL, by ESPN. We kept reiterating all week that if we wanted to go to the championship game, to the Super Bowl, the defense had to step up. This was our time to shine."