LINCICOME: Day to revel before reality sets in

By Bernie Lincicome, Rocky Mountain News (Contact)

Monday, December 10, 2007

After all, no team that is 6-7 and several time zones away from the playoffs should need to be penalized for excessive celebration, especially against such soft chew toys as the Kansas City Chiefs.

But there Brandon Marshall was, after the first of two touchdown receptions, penalized for throwing double hands full of snow in the air, like some bride who was so happy to be finally be at the altar she throws her bouquet by pulling off the petals.

"That was for my friends and relatives back in Florida," explained Marshall. "They don't get to see snow."

Well, you had to know it was not spontaneous because Marshall was wearing gloves.

Later, Glenn Martinez pulled one of those Terrell Owens gestures, signaling a first down after he had caught a pass, clearly the only resemblance he has to Owens.

Gloating does not wear well at any time, but on the Broncos, it looks like an aloha shirt on a pallbearer.

Dre Bly, the hit-and-miss cornerback, would lean in with his ear cupped at his helmet hole, indicating to the crowd that they were not making enough noise, and that could be explained with almost 8,000 not showing up at Invesco Field and 50,000 gone by the fourth quarter.

The thing is, the last thing a suffering team should be is insufferable.

Excessive anything does not fit these Broncos, except maybe excessive disappointment, from where they wanted to be to where they are.

The proper and appropriate thing to do after scoring a touchdown would be to sigh that there have been so few, memorize how it was done, hand the ball back and shrug.

On a day when nearly everything went right for the Broncos, in the first and only genuine rout of the season, the lingering question is why it isn't this way all the time.

"It's a shame we couldn't have this kind of performance from Week 1," said Marshall.

A shame, yes, but if he means a disgrace, rather than just bum luck or odd fluke, as if the Broncos had no control over how they played or how they failed to play.

"A complete game," pronounced Mike Shanahan. "You look forward to those type of games."

It all can't be put off on the Chiefs, but a lot of it can, a team even more deficient and indistinct than the Broncos, and, like the Broncos, down to rookies and ciphers and wishes.

"It ain't who we play," said Marshall. "It's us."

If Jay Cutler can throw four touchdown passes one Sunday, why not the next Thursday? Why not have a Peyton Manning-type quarterback rating (141.0 out of a maximum of 158.3) more often?

"Probably his best game, statistically," admitted Shanahan and agreed to by Cutler.

If the trio of lost linebackers, D.J. Williams and Nate Webster and Ian Gold, can play as if they understand the position, if running back Selvin Young can look like the return of Clinton Portis, and all this was true, why does it not happen more often?

"I was really looking for 305 (yards) or something like that," said Young, who had 156. "That's something I can work on in the offseason."

Why not before that? How about the next three games?

A defense that has deserved every bit of doubt it has raised and can hold the other team to 129 yards and a single score ought to be able to do it again, ought to have done it more often.

"We've always thought we could do stuff like this on a consistent basis," said Cutler.

Excessive unawareness, then, that should be the penalty. Good teams know what they can do and why they do it and then they do it.

It is not as if the Broncos have built slowly to a dominant performance. They had lost two in a row, each one worse than the other, and had pretty much removed themselves from the playoffs.

San Diego's win over Tennessee puts the Chargers within one victory of clinching the division, and that would make the Christmas Eve showdown in San Diego with the Broncos moot.

"I didn't know until after our game that San Diego had won," said Shanahan. "I wasn't pleased."

The Broncos have no other real chance to make the playoffs except to win the division, not only an uphill climb but a climb with other teams stomping on their fingers, or hooves, whichever it is.

"We're going to finish these last games out one at a time," said Cutler.

So, maybe this was the day to have fun, maybe the last day when reality can be postponed.

Maybe so much skipping and slapping and hugging and mugging can be understood.

There has been so little call for it this year.