ESPN:  “Seattle took down Jay Cutler and the Broncos Sunday night in Denver, and I think the Seahawks are now clearly the team to beat in the playoffs. How could they not be? They beat Jay Cutler. THE Jay Cutler. The Jay Cutler who is already one of the greatest quarterbacks ever based on everything I read and heard about him over the past week.”

 Fox Sports:  “Rod Smith looks slow and unable to gain separation from cornerbacks to become open and a viable passing target.”

 Denver Post:  “The rookie starting his first real, live professional game wasn't a total disaster. He was merely awful.  The quarterback changed; the outcome didn't.”

 Knoxville News: “If Plummer had Tatum Bell running the ball as Bell did Sunday night, Plummer would still be the quarterback. If Plummer had the defense, as game and gritty as it had been earlier in the season, playing as well as it did, he would still be the quarterback.  If Plummer were still the quarterback, the Broncos could reasonably expect to save something of what is left of the season.  (But) Cutler it is, as if there is any other choice. Shanahan's vanity will not let him admit a mistake until the mistake can no longer be defended.”

 Rocky Mountain News:  “The Broncos can change.  They can change their jerseys, change their shoes, even change their ways. But changing their quarterback - although the likely winner in the popular vote in the Broncos nation - will not fix all that needs repair at the moment.”

 Yahoo Sports:  “This team isn't any better off with a rookie at the controls than with Jake Plummer.”

It’s a strange feeling I have.  Part of me wants to be disappointed that the Broncos look so mediocre now.  The other part of me wants to laugh and point fingers in the faces of Jake’s critics who thought that he was the problem and not the whole damn team.  I want to blame Jay Cutler and mock him because he isn’t Jake.  But as a Broncos fan, I want to support him and I recognize his potential.  I want to respect Mike Shanahan’s decision-making because after all, he has two Super Bowl rings.  But I keep remembering that even the greatest coaches can lose their edge with time and hey, maybe Shanahan was just lucky to have the talent that he did in 97-98.  And on top of it all, there’s a little voice in my head telling me that maybe Jake would have had the exact same game that Cutler had, and that the Broncos still would have lost to the Seahawks, and that I need to shut up. 

But I don’t listen to the voices in my head.  I look at facts.  And occasionally, I let my inner fan sway me.  I won’t lie to you.  The season looks lost, and this sort of tumble is a complete team effort that unfortunately fell on the shoulders of the guy who’s really only the fifth or sixth person down the line in terms of culpability.  You see, the blame starts with a three-way tie:  head coach, GM, owner.  The owner has a weak end of the responsibility, but he has the most power.  Most owners aren’t well-versed in the X’s and O’s but even a ten-year-old can look at win-loss columns and playoff records and come to a reasonably accurate conclusion.  The GM has to put together a roster of capable, competitive players that give the head coach the best tools to win according to his coaching style and his owner’s pockets.  The head coach has to mold these individual players into a cohesive team that can consistently perform at the highest level and achieve a single, solitary goal.  There are many different methods of rating the performances of these three people, but in the end, I prefer cold hard facts.  You see, in the NFL, there are only two kinds of teams: The Super Bowl Champions, and the “Other Thirty-One.” 

This is going to be a long column, and rather than jokes and smart-ass comments, I am simply going to present the facts as I see them…does that make them opinions?  I suppose it does.

Last year, the Steelers were the Super Bowl Champions.  This year, it is obvious that they are one of the “Other Thirty-One.”  The Broncos have been among the “Other Thirty-One” for nearly a decade now.  Since 2001, the same core leadership has been in place: Head Coach Mike Shanahan; GM Ted Sundquist; Owner Pat Bowlen.  In that time, the Broncos have not won a Super Bowl.  This makes them no different than every team outside of New England, Tampa Bay, and Pittsburgh, whether it’s the awful Texans or the powerful Colts.  The next spot of blame down the line can go to the two top assistants, aka the offensive and defensive coordinators, but they are really extensions of the head coach and as such, they are simply a link in the chain of command.  Although coordinators can occasionally be uncommonly excellent or terrible, most of the time even the best coordinators are simply very good at taking care of the little details that a head coach requires when making big decisions.  The next person on the “Blame List,” and coming in at no less than #5 unless there is an unusually active assistant GM or co-owner, is the team’s starting quarterback.  Until last week, that man was Jake Plummer.  This week, it’s Jay Cutler. 

No one is going to fire Pat Bowlen, obviously.  And no one should have to if he remains a good businessman with an eye for results.  Results do take time.  There is always a better chance than not that you are going to be one of the “Other Thirty-One.”  Once you realize that you absolutely, positively, without a shadow of a doubt, have no way to even come close to winning the Super Bowl, it’s time to take steps to increase your chances for the following year.

Bowlen leaves this to Sundquist.  Since 2001, Sundquist has been putting together teams based on what Shanahan wants.  In 2003, he got the QB Shanahan wanted (really, the QB all of Denver wanted at the time,) Jake Plummer.  In 2004, he traded Denver’s most consistent running back since Terrell Davis (Clinton Portis) for an All-Pro defensive back (Champ Bailey) and in 2005, he let their leading rusher (Mike Anderson) go because he wanted to save money, mainly because Shanahan feels that he can make almost any runner look good and doesn’t feel the need to employ a premier back when an average one will do ALMOST as well.

So we get to Mike Shanahan.  In 1995, Shanahan took over the Broncos.  In 1997 and again in 1998, Shanahan won the Super Bowl with a roster of All-Pro-level talent: Terrell Davis, John Elway, Shannon Sharpe, Rod Smith, Jason Elam, Tom Nalen, Steve Atwater and other solid players.  The 1997-98 Broncos were undoubtedly a great team, but for those with short memories, know this: the AFC had been the weaker conference for most of the previous 20 years.  Currently, the far superior AFC is packed with impact players: Tomlinson; Brady; Manning; Palmer; Lewis; Bailey (Champ!); and Johnson.  Not so in 1997.  The NFC had most of the best players in the league up to that point, but suddenly at the end of the decade, many of them had either retired or were starting to show age.  Steve Young was in his decline.  Barry Sanders had no help (as usual) in Detroit.  The Cowboys dynasty had collapsed behind two coaching changes, locker-room turmoil, and Troy Aikman’s battered skull.  The only major Super Bowl threat was in Green Bay, where Brett Favre had hit his prime and Reggie White was leading a dominant defense.  They had managed to win the 1996 Championship despite the lack of a superstar receiver and a suspect running game.  With the NFC in a downward spiral and the AFC still not quite the dominant conference, the Broncos found themselves with the most talented all-around team.  Although Kansas City and Pittsburgh fielded tough units that season, in retrospect it isn’t really that surprising that the Elway-led Broncos beat teams with Elvis Grbac and Kordell Stewart at QB, respectively.  The tough test was against Green Bay, and even though the Packers put up a mighty effort, in the end it came down to the Broncos having the best player on the field:  Terrell Davis, who scored a record 3 TDs and rushed for 157 yards.  The next year, the best team in the NFC didn’t even go to the Super Bowl, as Atlanta upset the 15-1 Vikings.  Though Atlanta had been 14-2, Coach Dan Reeves was still recovering from a near-heart attack and their top defensive back Eugene Robinson had been arrested the night before the game for soliciting a prostitute.  The Broncos, with only Elway’s impending retirement really the only “controversy” (in truth, motiviation) simply had a better all-around roster and they beat the Falcons handily. 

So we move to 1999 and suddenly, the wheels fell off.  Elway: gone.  Terrell: career-ending injury.  Steve Atwater: gone.  Shannon Sharpe left a year later.  The replacement quarterbacks in that stretch couldn’t cut it: Bubby Brister and Brian Griese.  Shanahan was able to put together some winning records in that stretch, but the team simply wasn’t good enough to win a Super Bowl.  This continued, up and down, through the 2005 season.  In 2005, Shanahan finally had the team he supposedly wanted: Jake Plummer at quarterback with Rod Smith anchoring a receiver corps and his usual running back-by-committee; and a solid defense commanded by John Lynch and Champ Bailey.  The team responded by putting up their best regular season since the Super Bowl years.  They even managed to knock off the defending champion (though injury-riddled) Patriots, but in the end, as in the Elway-Reeves years, there were simply one or more better teams out there, in this case, the powerhouse Pittsburgh Steelers. 

I am going somewhere with this, I promise you.

Jumping ahead to 2006, the Broncos made no major off-season improvements.  They drafted like a 3-13 team rather than 13-3: they used their first pick on a quarterback despite having Jake Plummer in the middle of a seven-year contract and coming off a career season.  Shanahan flip-flopped between Tatum and Mike as his starting Bell at RB for weeks.  They got off to a great start, but even with a 7-2 record going into week 11, it was obvious the team was still not ready to join the elite.  The defense had shined early on, but they were having trouble as the season went on--particularly with Indianapolis, a certain problem for any AFC contender.  The offense was sputtering; Jake Plummer was having trouble both on and off the field as the media began questioning his status as starting QB before the season even began despite rookie Jay Cutler not taking a single regular season snap.  The running game was tallying up yards, but much of it in clock-killing garbage time with few touchdowns and neither Bell really stepping up consistently.  The receivers were having trouble finding openings and there were more dropped balls than usual.  The once-feared offensive line was now collapsing more and more as the games progressed, eliminating many potential holes for the backs and often sending Plummer scrambling immediately after the snap.  Worst of all, an entire city had turned against a single member of the team (Jake Plummer, of course,) for the simple crime of not being John Elway, an accusation leveled against Brister and Griese before him.  John Elway, whose numbers at age 32 mirrored 32-year-old Plummer’s almost completely; John Elway, who had never won a Championship until he had a superstar running back to get him an extra 20 touchdowns a year and change the face of the offense; John Elway, who did not win a Super Bowl until he was nearly 37 years old; John Elway, who unlike Jake, had the luxury of knowing that there were no great Denver quarterbacks or NFL Championships to live up to before his era--there hadn’t been any.  At all.

The Broncos hit their toughest stretch of the season at the worst possible time.  The defense began to unravel.  The passing game never clicked.  The running game fell to injury and poor planning.  Shanahan had to have been listening to the media and fans calling for Cutler game after game, but even moreso, he felt the season slipping away, and without making a major change, the fans focused mainly on the QB at the time would soon start questioning the man who actually drew up the plays and made the decisions. 

Since you can’t change the owner, and the GM is really only useful during the off-season, and since firing the coordinators simply looks like admitting personal failure, Shanahan had two choices: 

 

1.       Own up to putting the 2006 Broncos roster and schemes together poorly and take full responsibility, or

2.       Go with the media and fans and blame the QB for everything, and hope that the team squeaks out a win and appears to prove you right.

Knowing that by doing so, he was putting his reputation on the line--but at least giving himself the built-in excuse of youth and inexperience under center--Shanahan benched his multi-million-dollar, hand-picked, veteran, starting quarterback in favor of the completely untested rookie against the NFC champion Seahawks.  The results were predictable, as Cutler had almost the exact same type of game Plummer had been having all season, rather than providing some sort of mythical “spark” to a team that wasn’t going to catch fire.  To me, this proves that #16 had a lot of help on his way down to the bench--the wrong kind of help.  This team is full of holes--not only on the field, but on the sidelines--and Jay Cutler isn’t going to magically fill them all.

To people saying Jake can never get better, I submit the careers of Steve Young, Randall Cunningham, Rich Gannon, Brad Johnson, and yes, John Elway.  All had their ups and downs early in their careers, but all of them put up their best seasons AFTER age 32.  There’s the chance that, okay, Jake may not get any better.  But from 2003-2005, he threw 60 touchdowns and 9637 yards against 34 interceptions on 769 completions in just 43 games.  He’s healthy.  He’ll have plenty of motivation if he’s cut or traded.  That sounds like a guy who can bring it, and he had some terrific seasons in Denver with little more than Rod Smith helping him along the way. 

Meanwhile, for better or for worse, Jay Cutler is now in charge of a team that helped bring down the numbers of a guy who had just had three consecutive great years.  He will now be blamed (unfairly, I’m not THAT biased) for the W’s and L’s along with all of the veterans who had been in there all year succeeding and failing week-to-week.  Broncos fans, blinded by the coach’s dazzling regular season winning percentage and the illusion that the Super Bowl rings were earned solely by their beloved Shanny and Johnny, now view Jake Plummer the way Yankees fans used to gripe about Steinbrenner before the ‘96 World Series; the way the Red Sox turned on Roger Clemens in the 90’s; the way that Chicago fans dogged Scottie Pippen before the Bulls finally clicked.  Those fans blamed individual players for the franchise’s failures and didn’t realize what they had until much later--and when these “fans” looked back, oh, of course they always knew they guy was great, in fact, they used to be one of the only true believers!

Will Jake prove his critics wrong?  I believe he will, but it will take time and a well-coached team willing to take him in and stand behind him for the duration of his contract--as long as the team consistently wins more often than they lose (although in Denver, this doesn’t seem to factor in.)  Unfortunately, it won’t be this year unless Cutler goes down.  Realistically, no one wants that, not even me (unless the injury isn’t career-threatening, in which case: turn that ankle, Jay.)  Gary Kubiak--the offensive coordinator who worked with Jake in his best years--is coaching down in Houston, and his QB is the perennially-shaky David Carr.  The Raiders have had nothing but stinkers since Rich Gannon went down.  The Ravens must realize that Steve McNair contemplates retirement after every season.  The Lions?  Well, they’re the Lions and they’ll always audition a new arm.  If the Broncos cut Jake loose, and they most certainly will, Jake should have no trouble finding a starting job somewhere.

Will Cutler become a great quarterback?  If he works his butt off, gets some new blood at receiver, and gets a real star running back, sure, why not?  In Denver that’s all you need.  Sure sounds easy, doesn’t it?  Yeah, well, John Elway had to wait nearly a decade and a half, so don’t hold your breath.

Will Denver ever reach the mountain again and be the Champions, rather than one of the “Other Thirty-One?”  Well, see, that’s mostly up to Mike Shanahan.  It won’t be this season, because despite the players grinding it out and working hard for eleven grueling NFL games; despite having won the AFC West and going to the AFC title game the previous year; despite a 7-4 record and a playoff berth; despite facing the tail end of the toughest stretch of the season, a time when you need an experienced and focused team playing at mid-season form…Mike Shanahan decided before week 13 that the Broncos’ season was done and that it was time to play for the future.  Because that’s what’s you’re doing when you slap down your Pro Bowl quarterback before week 13 and throw the rookie out there against the NFC champs.  You are giving up on the current team in favor of “next year.” 

I’m sure the entire Broncos team--a hard-working NFL squad that had played against almost every current Super Bowl contender in the tough AFC--appreciates their “genius” head coach deciding that at 7-4, they had better start working on ‘07 because ’06 is done.  The Seahawks beat the Broncos in a game that was winnable.  The Broncos were cleanly out-coached before the game even began when they started Cutler, and compounded the error by running several questionable plays.  Shanahan admitted to sub-par planning in an effort to beef up Cutler’s performance, but in the end, it wasn’t Cutler’s fault anyway.  It was the fault of the coach who gave up at 7-4 and is now responsible for 7-5.

Thanks for letting us know how it ends 6 weeks early, Mike.  Now I can concentrate on my Christmas shopping.