It’s not working. Donald Stephenson is an utter disaster, and the Broncos need to make a move now before it’s too late.

Through 10 weeks Pro Football Focus has graded 77 tackles in the NFL who have played the requisite number of snaps, and Stephenson is No. 77; he’s the worst tackle in the NFL.

He’s so bad that on Sunday the Broncos benched him for Ty Sambrailo, the 75th-ranked tackle in the NFL.

If you remember, Sambrailo is the same guy who played so poorly in Stephenson’s absence in Weeks 3, 4 and 5 that all of Broncos Country was blaming him for capsizing the team’s rushing attack.

And it’s only getting worse.

A week ago, Stephenson was so thoroughly outplayed that Pro Football Focus had him graded out as the worst player in the NFL in Week 9, saying, “[He has] a score that is among the worst we have ever given a tackle over the past decade of grading.”

This week, he followed it up with the third-worst performance of the week, only trailing the Bears’ Jay Cutler and New England’s Logan Ryan.

“For the second week running, Stephenson was a walking trainwreck for the Broncos offense in their close win over New Orleans,” PFF’s Sam Monson wrote. “This week he was bad enough that he lasted 53 snaps before being sat down for the remainder of the game, but in that time, he managed to surrender six total pressures and get beat repeatedly in the run game. Stephenson has been the single biggest issue in Denver’s offense in each of the past two weeks, but the problem is they have no better option in personnel terms, so they need to start to come up with ways to give him help, rather than replace him.”

The most unfortunate aspect of all this, though, is that the Broncos don’t really have a better option, and that’s hard to say when Stephenson is the worst tackle in the NFL. Again, Sambrailo is only ranked two spots above him, and while they could move Michael Schofield back out to tackle, he was just as bad in that spot last year, and he’s actually having a fairly solid year at guard.

John Elway may really end up regretting his decision to stand pat at the trade deadline and not bring in a proven veteran.