LINCICOME: Hester shouldn’t have been given chance to be the hero

By Bernie Lincicome, Rocky Mountain News (Contact)

Originally published 08:20 p.m., November 25, 2007
Updated 08:20 p.m., November 25, 2007

CHICAGO – The Broncos can’t kick.

Or shouldn’t.

It is not as if this singular creature named Devin Hester is a secret, some ambusher hiding behind the goalpost, without a reputation, never having done to the Broncos what he did Sunday to anyone else.

“That’s what he does,” confirmed Denver cornerback Dre’ Bly.

Hester is all that the Bears are, the only weapon in an otherwise empty holster. The Broncos had film on him and everything.

And yet there the Broncos were, kicking the football to Hester, rather smugly, rather carelessly, rather regretfully.

“If you could do it all over,” said Mike Shanahan, “you wish you had played it some other way.”

And there was Hester doing what he does, dipping and dashing and daring, at one point leaping over the punter, Todd Sauerbrun, the very deliverer of the football, the man he had suggested was some sort of poultry waste if he did not kick the ball to Hester.

“Sometimes the first time is a fluke,” said Hester. “The second time you get a chance to show what you’re really about.”

Fool the Broncos once, shame on them. Fool the Broncos twice and the next bit of shame is an overtime loss to a team that is several parts lint and the rest road kill.

The only way the Broncos could have lost this game is exactly the way they lost it, letting the Bears loll around like sermon sleepers in church pews until Hester dragged them to their feet and put a roar in their throats.

Hester returned a punt and a kickoff for touchdowns, doing instantly what it took the Broncos time and turnovers and nerves to get done, so stunningly and yet so seemingly sidebarish, that even then the Broncos had merely to be half decent at the end and the game was theirs.

“You’re up by 14 with the ball at midfield (and seven minutes left) and you should win,” said Shanahan.

But then you get stupid. Not the kicking the ball to Hester kind of stupidity but the ordinary, thoughtless, bad team kind of stupidity, like lining up incorrectly on a punt that had astonishingly not been returned by Hester, and having to punt it again.

This time, trying to kick the ball away from Hester, Sauerbrun instead finds a Bear on top of his foot, and the blocked punt is turned into a Chicago touchdown four plays later and just like that the safe door is open and the season is exposed.

“I’m not going to put this on the special teams,” said quarterback Jay Cutler, which his coach did and every witness in the bizarre structure that used to be Soldier Field did.

But if Cutler could have held the ball in his last possession, worked the clock, done his job, the Bears do not actually drive the ball down the field for a tying score.

Up until the blocked punt on Sauerbrun, the Bears had only 155 yards of offense. They were no more a threat than the trained bald eagle that barely left its handlers arm during the national anthem.

But whether it was too much Hester in their heads, or a sense of doom, or simple too many steps short (like Champ Bailey covering Bernard Berrian on the tying touchdown or Nate Webster letting Desmond Clark get away for the catch that set up the winning field goal) the Broncos blew this one from in front, dropping out of a first place tie with San Diego and losing whatever place they were clinging too in the wild-card sorting.

Shanahan’s answers to why he kicked to Hester are vague and deflective, other than to suggest that in the first half the Broncos got away with it. In fact, Hester swatted at a bouncing punt and turned it into a Bronco field goal, though afterwards stayed away from any ball he could not field cleanly.

Hester, at least, learned from his mistakes.

But at the root of the strategy, as it was last week when the Raiders kicked to Hester and he did nothing, is the macho sense of manliness, which is, after all, football’s essence.

“You don’t want to kick away,” said Sauerbrun. “At least I don’t. I hate doing it. You could kick it out of bounds every time. But guys are paid to make tackles on special teams.

“We did want to pin him to sidelines, but nothing worked for us and it worked for them. It was not a pleasurable day for us.”

One of those paid to make the tackle is, of course, the kicker himself. And on both of Hester’s runs, Sauerburn had the last shot at him. On the punt, Sauerbrun was on his face in the damp grass, having slipped.

Hester hurdled him like he was a wet rag, and on the kickoff, Sauerbrun barely glanced off Hester’s thigh as Hester dashed past.

“You poke and hope,” said Sauerbrun of his tackling style. “Mostly hope.”

There is still a little hope left for the Broncos. But less than there should be.