Who saw that one coming?

William Bryan, Special to the News

Published October 31, 2006 at midnight

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Hours after Sunday's long-awaited Broncos-Colts tilt at Invesco Field, the streets were dead silent in Denver, and on all of the televisions the talking heads stared blankly at one another because not a person in the world could say, "I told you so."

When two teams whose strengths and weaknesses are so extreme square off, the expected outcome covers almost any possibility. Except perhaps what happened. ESPN.com has a bizarre feature called Accu-Score, wherein a computer simulates a game more than 10,000 times based on the two teams' statistics and tendencies coming into the game and then publishes the results, which in this case had the Broncos winning 53 percent of the time by an average score of 18.8 to 18. I would bet the computer never produced a game similar to the one finally produced on the field.

Each offense played a single half, according to Hoyle. The Colts spent the first half patiently completing short passes, which the Broncos defense is designed to allow. The Broncos spent the second half running the ball, cramming it down Indianapolis' throat, which the Indy defense is not designed to allow but does anyway. The computer knew these things would happen, but as the game lasted two halves, the computer was only half-right.

In the first half, the much-maligned and heretofore incompetent Jake Plummer was as good as he has ever been and will ever be. The Broncos' play-calling bloomed, exploding with depth and color. Plummer completed two breathtaking passes, one a rollout toss to Tony Scheffler and the other the timing pattern in the corner of the end zone to Javon Walker, the likes of which he did not even display last year.

Then in the second half, the Colts threw the ball downfield. Peyton Manning has a cannon and reads a defense like a Dr. Seuss book. Everybody knew before the game that the Colts have a stunning vertical passing attack, but nobody is supposed to successfully do that against the Denver defense. It turns out that you cannot do this against the whole Denver defense, only against Darrent Williams.

The game was half-expected, but the unexpected holds murky portent for the future. Williams was awful, and you have to hope it does not become permanent as it once did for Deltha O'Neal after a single game absorbing abuse from Raiders receiver Tim Brown. Mike Bell ran with the heart that Tatum Bell has always mysteriously lacked. After six games getting good pressure from only their front four, the Broncos defense managed exactly no pass rush against Manning. In a profound and mystical reversal of fortune, the offense was good and the defense was bad.

We know one thing: The Broncos absolutely do not want to go into the RCA Dome for a playoff game this year. The Colts would be unlikely to spend an entire half respecting Denver's defense again. If the computer plays that game 10,000 times, I predict the Colts score 100 points at least twice.

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