Deep wounds left from this loss

Van Walker, Special to the News

Published October 31, 2006 at midnight

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The defense rests.

Peyton Manning completed 10 more passes than Jake Plummer attempted.

The game clock stopped the Colts offense as many times as the Broncos defense managed all day.

Darrent Williams still hasn’t tackled Reggie Wayne.

Denver led 14-6 at the half, scored 31 points on purpose, and still lost the most meaningful game of the season.

At home.

At least we can take Tony Scheffler’s face off the milk cartons. For now.

For all that the defense did, this three-point loss might as well have been 30. Not only did they have no answers for Peyton Manning (yet again), they couldn’t get close enough to him to ask him a difficult question, much less actually make him complete a pass under duress. Average quarterbacks will throw to Champ Bailey’s side of the field only when death is the other option; Manning threw to Harrison with the impunity of a made guy at the Bada Bing. We’ll not discuss the aforementioned Williams or his alleged coverage of Reggie Wayne, except to say that his therapy seems to be progressing nicely.

Pat Bowlen may own the Broncos, but Peyton Manning owns the lien on Bowlen’s deed.

There is no silver lining to be found in this cloud. There is nothing to be taken from this loss, except that it was inevitable. On one of Jake Plummer’s better days this season, he still managed to contribute to the loss in his own snake-handed fashion, fumbling deep within his own territory, gift-wrapping the Colts’ first lead of the day. Thirteen completions in 21 attempts for 174 rather pedestrian yards, with one touchdown early and one momentum-crushing fumble late are numbers that Jay Cutler could put up right now, to much louder fanfare. Better yet, it is to be hoped that Cutler might actually improve on those numbers, while the Bronco faithful are just happy that Plummer didn’t try a left-handed pass this week.

This is where expectation meets reality: If Manning puts up Plummer’s numbers, you’d think Manning got hurt before the half. In Plummer’s case, some will actually argue that this game solidifies his position as the team’s starting QB. All it really solidifies is that Peyton Manning is everything that Jake Plummer isn’t.

Enough. The sorting of the laundry in the AFC is done for this week, and this is what we know: Whatever good enough is, Denver ain’t. Good teams don’t let scrums become shootouts, especially when it is common knowledge that the other team has better bullets and more of them. Good teams win this game, which is what the good team did.

With 11 games to go, Denver is now numbered with the well-scrubbed rubes from Jacksonville or the felons from Cincinnati, teams playing for whatever falls short of the Super Bowl.

The wounds from this loss will persist long into the year.

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