Broncos’ one-month trip to Nowhere

William Bryan, Special to the News

Published December 12, 2006 at midnight

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The Broncos are on the Road to Nowhere.

The real Road to Nowhere was a 13-mile highway in the penal colony of French Guyana. It took seven years to build, and almost 5,000 convicted criminals died in its construction. It went from the colony eastward along the coast to, well, nowhere.

OK, so the Broncos’ season has not been that bad.

They built their road in a mere month. The good news is that nobody was sacrificed to the project, unless you count Jake Plummer. The bad news is that there are many players, coaches and executives building this accursed road. Even worse is that the Broncos have not yet reached Nowhere and apparently intend to play three more games to ensure that they do.

After an entire season fixated on their quarterback situation, the Broncos wake up Monday morning, sore after a brutal 48-20 beating at the hands of the Chargers, painfully aware that they have bigger problems.

The Broncos’ special teams are likely the NFL’s worst, the offensive tackles are following closely behind and the defensive line has failed to control the line of scrimmage almost completely during the Broncos’ four-game skid. For these failings, responsibility may be sprinkled liberally over players and coaches alike.

It seems like only seven weeks ago that I delivered a simple lecture about counting to 11, the premise being that the Broncos needed 11 wins to reach the playoffs. Any attempt to count to 11 now leads us unavoidably to next year. Next year, incidentally, is what lies at the end of the Road to Nowhere.

Seven weeks ago, it appeared that two of the Broncos’ final three games, against the Cardinals and 49ers, were gimmes. Two wins with no obligation to even show up at the park. But as the Broncos decline, these teams are both playing their best football in years. The other game is a Week 16 tilt with Cincinnati, a game the desperate Bengals will probably need to get into the playoffs.

Will the Broncos win these games? Yes, two of them. But who cares? Since all of the Broncos’ road signs read "Next Year," the next three games are little more than an extension of the next preseason.

For one delirious third quarter in San Diego, everybody got to see the substance of Mike Shanahan’s meandering daydreams. Cutler-to-Scheffler looked more like Elway-to-Sharpe than like the punch line to a "guy walks into a bar" joke, which was nice. Now the Broncos need to build on that, develop a game plan for next year and objectively evaluate their existing talent both on the field and on the sideline.

Building this Road to Nowhere need not involve fatalities. This is a game, not capital punishment. But if the Broncos want this road to eventually go somewhere, they must address their whole team, and they need to start now, with the season’s final three games.

And it needs to involve more casualties than just Plummer.