MIAMI — On the bright side Sunday for the Miami Dolphins, at least no earthquake or other natural disaster struck Indianapolis to delay the game and elongate the misery.

The Dolphins christened the club’s 60th season with one of the most shameful performances in franchise annals. Miami’s play was so decisively putrid that the 33-8 loss to the Colts seemed almost a blessing because the game felt so much more lopsided than that.

I mean, seriously. Miami had an entire offseason, a whole training camp and a then a full preseason to come out like ... this?

Inexcusable. An embarrassment not of riches, but of rags.

We all figured head coach Mike McDaniel would feel the heat this season and be coaching for his job. Charitably we didn’t think the burners would turn up on opening day.

“When you’re minus-3 on turnovers plus a turnover on downs, 20 minutes less in time of possession, you don’t take the ball away, and you don’t take care of the ball — that’s a formula for failure and nothing else,” said McDaniel in a postgame press conference that felt like an autopsy. “It’s a young team having to learn some very hard lessons. The guys let Week 1 and the bells and whistles of the season starting get the best of them. My job is to prevent that. ”

The season-opening burial was 20-0 by halftime. The Colts at that point led 17-3 in first downs, 43-15 in offensive plays, 255-43 in total yards and 21:40 to 8:20 in time of possession. The Dolphins would have gotten about as much accomplished if they never left their Indianapolis hotel rooms. Daniel Jones’ 197 yards passing were the most ever in a first half in his career.

Jones, by the way: Not very good. A retread quarterback. Until Miami made him look like Peyton Manning.

The Colts, by the way: Not very good, either, 8-9 last season just like Miami. Until the Fins made ‘em look like Super Bowl contenders.

One team here was going to indicate in this opener that it means to flip the script this season and be playoff-caliber.

That was not the team that flew home so thoroughly beaten.

Meanwhile as Jones soared, thanks to a Miami pass defense as bad as feared, Tua Tagovailoa ended the Fins’ first possession with an interception when he overthrew Tyreek Hill, and ended the second series with a lost fumble — the Colts turning both turnovers into touchdowns. Tua later had another interception, a third turnover, this one converted to an Indy field goal.

“The way we lost … none of the fans pay to go watch the Miami Dolphins put up eight [points] and watch the other drop 30,” said Tagovailoa afterward. “There’s lots of things we need to go look at. We need to look in the mirror, and it definitely starts with me. Could this be good for us? I don’t know. We’ll see how we respond next week [in home opener vs. New England].”

A stink this colossal needs getting past fast. If not the most extreme reactions are fed. “Fire McDaniel now!” “Tua’s a bum!” “Start over!” “Trade Tyreek Hill!” “Trade everybody!”

“I turned the ball over in bunches. That’s crazy,” Tagovailoa continued. “We gotta move forward from that. We don’t want to overreact to this or underreact to this. We wanna make sure we get this right so this never happens again. As an offense we got to get going and get into that groove and rhythm. We couldn’t find it today.”

Me at my therapist’s office:

Doctor: “Um, Greg, what were you thinking in predicting the Dolphins would be a playoff team?”

Me: “Must you torment by asking that with such a wide grin?”

This was supposed to be a Dolphins win, that’s the heck of it. The first half of this season’s schedule was the soft one. Now, suddenly, no opponent seems soft for Miami anymore — not the Dolphins we saw here, the team that came out as the weak one on Week 1.

The Colts were a negligible 1 1/2-point home favorite. They had an NFL-worst 12-game winless streak on opening day. Miami had won four in a row on Week 1.

Almost immediately, none of that mattered. Because, immediately, journeyman Jones threw five passes on the first five plays to began attacking the NFL’s weakest starting cornerbacks — a situation too obvious for the club to have gone the entire offseason not doing enough to remedy.

It was like watching a lion attacking baby antelope ... the first time ever that Daniel Jones has been likened to the king of the jungle.

It was 30-0 before the Dolphins at least — at the very least — dodged the ignominy of a shutout by scoring with 6:21 left. Tagovailoa flipped a short pass that De’Von Achane turned into an 11-yard touchdown, followed by a two-point pass.

But even that only score was shrouded in a bit of head-scratching. Hill had just earlier caught a pass that was ruled out of bounds, and McDaniel failed to challenge. Then, fourth-and-6 became fourth-and-11 because Miami had to many men in the huddle!

So much for the grand introduction of the Dolphins’ team reset, the supposed reboot to an improved team “culture.”

“I think we’re a much better team than we displayed [Sunday] but that doesn’t matter,” said the instantly under-fire McDaniel. “Week 1 you’re either crowned or shunned. It’s in our control how the observation of this thing plays out. We have a choice. We can change it or we can be the same.”

You know how they say you only get one chance to make a good first impression?

The Dolphins had their chance Sunday to show us they were new and improved, a team ready to silence the doubters, a team ready to not only make the playoffs but also end a league-worst 24-year streak of no playoff wins.

The Dolphins did none of that, they did the opposite, and so a season of low expectations sags as its has barely begun.

Backup quarterback Zach Wilson entered the game late for Miami, in garbage time — a phrase befitting the Dolphins’ entire afternoon.

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