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KRIEGER: Elam as matter-of-fact as always

By Dave Krieger, Rocky Mountain News (Contact)

Published September 10, 2007 at midnight

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ORCHARD PARK, N.Y. - Before Jason Elam would talk about a game-winning field goal as dramatic as any in his 15-year NFL career, he had something more important to discuss:

"First of all, I do want to say that our prayers go out to Kevin (Everett) from Buffalo. What we heard is not so good, so our whole team, our prayers go out to him. I do want to start off by saying that. I was praying for him most of the third quarter. Definitely, our thoughts and prayers are with that whole family."

The backup Bills tight end, playing special teams, suffered a cervical spine injury after lowering his head to tackle Broncos return man Domenik Hixon on the first play of the third quarter Sunday. He lay motionless on the Ralph Wilson Stadium turf while his teammates gathered and knelt for a group prayer.

"It was real hard," said Bills cornerback Terrence McGee. "I watched the whole thing and he never moved."

At 37, Elam has pretty much seen it all on the football field. He's been on two winning Super Bowl teams. He's scored more points for the Broncos than anyone has scored for one team in NFL history. He's seen John Elway orchestrate countless fourth-quarter comebacks and now he's seen Jay Cutler orchestrate his first.

So it was not surprising that he would put Sunday's events in the right order. Nor was it surprising, even after missing two of four previous field-goal attempts, that he would split the uprights with the rushed game-winner, beating the clock by a single tick.

"That's why we've got him," coach Mike Shanahan said. "That's why you don't let a guy like that go, because you know he is battle tested. Regardless of how talented a guy might be, you're not really sure how he's going to handle clutch situations. He's been in those situations for a number of years. It's great to have a guy like that."

Until that final tick, it was a day Elam wanted to forget. The Broncos rolled up 470 yards of offense against the Bills and surrendered only 184, yet trailed the whole way. Able to put the ball in the end zone just once, they turned repeatedly to Elam.

After hitting a chip shot in the first quarter, he bounced a 48-yarder off the upright and through in the second, then missed from 50 in the third and from 43 in the fourth.

"I was going to be feeling pretty bad if we would have lost that game," he said.

Which is certainly the way it was looking at third-and-23 from their 21 with 1:43 left, down 14-12. That's where Cutler made the sort of play from which teammates draw inspiration.

The second-year quarterback had his ups and downs, to be sure, two of them right on top of one another. His incomplete backward pass for Selvin Young could have spelled disaster. Thinking quickly, the rookie free-agent running back batted the ball out of bounds to maintain possession. Cutler followed blunder with brilliance, a mixture you can probably expect for a while. His strike up the seam to Javon Walker went for 21 yards.

"He got a game ball, to have that type of poise, third down and 23," Shanahan said.

If the offense was both powerful and unproductive, assistant head coach Jim Bates' defense was much stingier than in the preseason.

Whether this confirmed the meaninglessness of the preseason or the futility of Bills quarterback J.P. Losman, we will know soon enough.

In either case, it all came down to the last 18 chaotic seconds, when Cutler converted a third-and-10 with an 11-yard strike to Walker to get into field-goal range. With no timeouts, he was getting ready to spike the ball when he saw the field-goal team charging in.

The Broncos have practiced the hurry- up field goal regularly since Scott O'Brien took over as special teams coach this year, but they generally put 16 seconds on the clock. There were 11 showing after Walker's catch.

"This is why God made whiskey," O'Brien said.

There was no time for signals or even eye contact. The clock was moving from 2 seconds to 1 when Todd Sauerbrun looked at Mike Leach for the snap. Elam swung his leg like a golf club, as he always does. And the Broncos won a game they never led.

"Out of all the kicks I've had, I've never had a scenario like that," Elam said. "That was a lot of fun."

Joy and relief dominated the visitors' locker room. It was left to the veteran kicker to remind us all that a man's future hung in the balance in a nearby hospital.

We will learn in the coming days whether this game will be remembered for its fantastic finish or another sad casualty of a violent collision sport. The man who hit the game-winner knew right away which mattered more.