Ten pages of the Broncos playbook have been lost in John Elway’s sofa cushions since the legendary quarterback retired. What made Denver so dangerous was entombed down there, buried with the loose change, cookie crumbs and dust bunnies.
The first job of rookie Jay Cutler is to retrieve those lost X’s and O’s, rediscover the deep throws and find the answers to a conservative offense’s woes. His mission? Put the big bang back in the Broncos.
Can a 23-year-old rookie without a single snap of meaningful NFL experience restore the pizazz to a playbook that coach Mike Shanahan dumbed down for Jake Plummer, who was finally pink-slipped on Monday as the starting quarterback? Will the Broncos cut loose, run wild and score big with Cutler?
“I don’t know. It might make things worse,” said Cutler, with honesty as blunt as his arm is strong. “We’ll find out.”
The Broncos, a 7-4 team in disarray with playoff dreams headed the wrong way, desperately needed a fresh reason to believe.
“Tom Brady didn’t have any experience, (Ben) Roethlisberger, he didn’t have a whole lot, and they won Super Bowls. Who says this guy can’t do it?” said Denver cornerback Champ Bailey, giving the rookie a hint he won’t be graded on a slacker’s curve.
The lone way for Denver, averaging a pathetic 17.7 points per game on offense, to get its groove back is to expand the playbook and see if the kid from Vanderbilt can throw some serious heat. Coddling this new quarterback would make no sense. The Broncos already tried the color-inside-
the-lines strategy with Plummer for the better part of four years, after trying to disguise the physical limitations of Brian Griese from 1999-2002.
Cutler will make mistakes, have his brain rattled by the blitz and at times appear as if he could not read Dr. Seuss, much less the nuances of the “Tampa Two” pass coverage. But there can be no high reward for Denver without the acceptance of higher risk. Can I get a show of hands in Broncos Nation from those of you sick and tired of watching Shanahan stare at his cheat sheet on the sideline, only to approve another run by the tailback when the team needed to pick up 4 yards on third down?
“When I first came in over here,” wide receiver Javon Walker said, “they were talking about Jay and how strong his arm is and saying he’s a young Brett Favre. And you can see that in the strength of his arm. For me, that’s obviously what I like.”
Although Plummer committed more than his share of blunders, everything wrong on offense cannot be stuffed into his Honda Element. There’s not enough Bell between Tatum and Mike to give the rushing attack a ringing endorsement. The offensive line is so broken, it’s hard to connect the dots from center Tom Nalen. Finally showing his age, veteran receiver Rod Smith too often runs routes patterned after holiday queues at Denver International Airport that go on forever with no space in sight.
But to realize Shanahan needed to do something so drastic as dump a quarterback, all you had to do is watch the Broncos march off the practice field in a silence so somber it appeared a bunch of grown men were taking a third-grader’s long walk to the principal’s office.
“You look at the situation, we all haven’t done our jobs well enough, so one guy’s losing his job as a result. When that guy’s your teammate and friend, it hurts,” safety John Lynch said.
With Seattle, San Diego and Cincinnati remaining on the schedule, Cutler could throw 10 touchdown passes against five interceptions in the final five games of the season and the Broncos could still lose three times and miss the playoffs. So the rookie will certainly be baptized with boos if he flops.
Creating fear, however, was never going to be a factor in Shanahan’s offensive scripts so long as Plummer remained at quarterback. And there was no future in that.
“You know I don’t usually talk after practice on Monday,” Broncos veteran Al Wilson said, after peeling off his No. 56 jersey in the locker room. But, as much as Wilson likes Plummer and as much as it pained the linebacker to say it, there was an important point that couldn’t wait.
Way back in 1999, when Wilson was a rookie, his head spun with bewilderment upon hearing Shanahan was benching Bubby Brister for Griese before the season opener.
“At that particular time, the decision came out of nowhere. It came as a surprise to a lot of players, because we all felt Bubby was going to be our quarterback and Mike came into a meeting and switched it. It threw everybody off,” Wilson said.
“But this time, the change in quarterback didn’t hit us so hard. People have talked about it for so long and put it out there, it’s more like, ‘OK, the time is here, they’ve finally made the change, so let’s move forward.”‘
No quarterback will ever make Denver forget Elway.
After eight-plus years of watching the Broncos be haunted by the past, Cutler might be the first quarterback with the strength of arm and spirit not to be spooked by a ghost.
Staff writer Mark Kiszla can be reached at 303-954-1053 or mkiszla@denverpost.com.
