Lincicome: Even at home, Broncos look like lost cause

Published January 23, 2006 at midnight

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How convenient for the Broncos that next year does not require a new calendar. Or even a plane ride home. But next year it is, all the same and all of a sudden.

Another Broncos season ends in January, this one at Invesco Field instead of back there in Indiana, the third short sheet in a row, a few weeks later but still a numbing redundancy.

Home cooking, splendid weather, encouraging worshipers, the merest of opponents, none of those advantages helped the Broncos any more this time than the last two. The team that might have been champion, with a chance to be, if not a team for the ages, at least the team for a season, let practically a free pass to the Super Bowl pass.

Sorry to use that word. Pass. It conjures up the flailing, failing Jake Plummer, asked finally to do something, unable to do enough, except to help Pittsburgh, which didn't really need it.

And it recalls the younger, more able, Ben Roethlisberger, whose future is as bright as Plummer's is limited, exposing the Broncos in places they thought they had fixed, the secondary, the pass rush.

Roethlisberger had enough time to read the Congressional Record while his receivers danced in spaces so open they could have been zoned for farming. The Steelers converted third downs as if they were government bonds.

Every Broncos defensive back had bad moments, though all of them together could not match Plummer with his two interceptions, two fumbles and ragged, if sporadically sensational, play.

The special dilemma that is Plummer is that, turned loose, he can be exhilarating, but the efficiency demanded by Mike Shanahan blunts his very nature. That may be why Plummer wears his hair like a rebellious punk, taking his freedom where he can.

And the down side of the dilemma is that, constrained to do nothing, when Plummer must do everything, it is too much to do.

It is one thing to lose to Peyton Manning in his house and quite something else to submit at home to a second-year learner at football's most difficult position and to someone named Cedrick Wilson, a pass catcher as it turns out. And turns in. Just ask Domonique Foxworth.

The regret for what might have been will ache longer than the wounds of combat.

The Broncos are long past appreciation for little successes. A brief and insufficient rally in the second half is no consolation to anyone. Playoff failures are still failures.

The Broncos must be beyond bronze medals.

This one was worse than either of those bad surrenders to Indy, for it was a clear rout by a team no more fit for glory than the Broncos. The Steelers now become the favorite for the Super Bowl, like being the largest knuckle in a fist.

This one was worse because the Broncos played like the team that had never kept its breath or made a first down or left a quarterback in a cast. This one was worse because the team the Broncos lost to was facing its third road game in a row.

The Steelers, a collection of crude craftsmen, not an artist among them, were not particularly brutal or especially inspired. They were dogged and competent, as the Broncos were supposed to be, immune to altitude and calamity, grotesques in ghastly Halloween colors, while the Broncos played like a team full of fog and excuses.

Maybe the truth is this simple: The Broncos lost because they were not good enough to win.

The season is what the season is, but it foretold a better ending. Those Brown-cos on the defensive line played like they could still smell Lake Erie, and the odor was overt. The rookies at corner, so accomplished for ones so young, played as if it were their first game. Even the trusty leg of Todd Sauerbrun, a season sensation, plunked a kickoff out of bounds at the most critical time.

At the end, the Broncos were twitching to an empty house, vacated not so much from the chill of the day but the chill of dread, leaving the place to out-of-towners still twirling their yellow terrible towels long after the precious orange pompoms of the locals were left under seats or shredded in despair. Is this the way such bright hope dies, frail and futile?

Is it possible to know in one game if this is the beginning of something or a mere mistake? Will this group of Broncos ever have a better chance than this one?

This is what is obvious: The Steelers had a better quarterback, a better game-breaking receiver and a better defense, and all played better than the Broncos in the thin air of misery that was supposed to neuter outsiders.

Was this as much of a season as the Broncos could have expected? Not at all.

Here's what must be faced: The Broncos still need to get better. And the Broncos need to be tougher. And the Broncos have to start today.

lincicomeb@RockyMountainNews.com or 303-892-2411

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