East Rutherford, N.J. – You saw it. I saw it. The Broncos felt it.
Maybe you did, too.
The sting of losing leads of 3-0, 13-7, 13-10, 20-10, 23-10 and 23-17.
The Broncos fell for it.
Eli Manning lulled them to sleep, offering a nice, comfy pillow, a cozy blanket and a lullaby to boot.
Then Manning and the New York Giants cranked up the music. Such rude hosts. He came alive. They came alive. Fourteen straight points. Game over. Streak over.
We strode into Giants Stadium on Sunday afternoon expecting a football game, and a Broadway extravaganza broke out. A new dance busted loose, a new slide – The Electric Eli.
What a rush.
What a fall.
Do you know how many things had to happen in the final 9:07 for New York to score 14 straight points – including the game-winning touchdown with five seconds left – for the Giants to trump the Broncos 24-23?
“Do you know how many things would not have to happen for that to happen?” Broncos linebacker Ian Gold said. “Like my coverage on Jeremy Shockey’s corner route. If I make sure he doesn’t make that catch on me down at our 8-yard line, they don’t get that last score.”
Tough cover on that one, he is told.
“But that’s what I get paid to do,” Gold said.
Domonique Foxworth was assigned Giants receiver Amani Toomer on the play that became the game-winning 2-yard catch.
“He ran a shallow route, felt his way through the linebackers in the end zone and the rest of the players, and I got caught up,” Foxworth said. “He slipped through.”
Tough find on that one, he was told.
“It’s a play I should have made,” he said, shaking his head. “It’s a play I’ve made before. We just kept losing the momentum until we lost the game.”
So, there you have it, about the best thing that can be said about the Broncos’ jaw-dropping loss here was that no one ran, no one hid afterward. Fault was everywhere and nearly everyone was willing to absorb it.
The worst that can be said?
Of course, it is the “here we go again” chorus. A 5-1 start that disintegrates into a 5-5 finish and a third straight season of 5-1 starts and 10-6 records. No, no, no, the Broncos say. But, really, if there was ever a way to begin the process of getting back there to that sour place and that stinky ending, this was it.
This was absurd.
The Broncos kicked the Giants around for much of the game. Denver produced six offensive drives of seven or more plays, seven drives of 32 or more yards and six drives that took at least 3 1/2 minutes apiece. The Broncos defense forced a fumble early and gained a late interception.
Champ Bailey’s theft of Manning with 4:46 left appeared to finish the game. That made it look like a 23-17 Broncos victory, even though Jason Elam had missed a 49-yard field goal wide right a few plays before Bailey’s theft.
“That interception probably shut it down for them,” Giants end Michael Strahan said. “They probably thought that would do it. It probably should have. I don’t know how they lost that game.”
They lost it because the offense entered after Bailey’s big swipe and went three-and-out, punted and gave Manning another swing.
Just when we thought the Broncos had matured and could finish their business, they profiled. They styled. They shut it down.
And the Giants, in the end, made one more play than the Broncos.
“This one is going to stay with us for a minute,” linebacker Keith Burns said. “This one could take 48 hours. We’ve got to get ready for Philadelphia coming to town, because they don’t care what happened here. You preach playing 60 minutes all of the time, and we just got comfortable. We let them hang around.”
They let Eli Manning lull them to sleep.
Then he orchestrated the unimaginable.
How could the Giants not realize it is in the kid’s blood?
“This is not something to sit and dwell on,” Gold said. “We are 5-2. There is nothing we can do about this. It smells. But we can’t start looking around and walking in this. There are so many things I am thinking right now that I am going to try not to open my mouth.”
The Broncos had already played the final minutes of this game with their mouths and eyes wide open, in sheer shock.
They allowed a comeback that was comical as much as it was magical.
It made for a special night for the Giants.It put the Broncos on severe notice – watch that chorus.
Staff writer Thomas George can be reached at 303-820-1994 or tgeorge@denverpost.com.
