Just a thought. The next time the Broncos honor one of their greatest players and their first Super Bowl championship team, they might want to pick a weekend when their opponent is someone other than the Jacksonville Jaguars.
On another overcast Sunday afternoon at Invesco Field, the Broncos inducted running back Terrell Davis into their Ring of Fame and honored their Super Bowl triumph by losing to the Jaguars, 23-14.
The defeat came while the Broncos were celebrating the 10-year anniversary of their first world championship and trying to forget the 11-year anniversary of their most devastating defeat.
What is about those Jags, again spoiling what figured to be a Broncos’ party?
“I know, huh?” said Terrell Davis, the great Broncos running back who had his career immortalized at halftime Sunday. “But no, we got our revenge against Jacksonville before we won our first Super Bowl.”
The loss dropped Denver to 2-1 and it came against a Jacksonville team that lost its opener at home to Tennessee and struggled to beat lowly Atlanta last week.
Figures. Before the Broncos’ back-to-back Super Bowl run in 1997-98, the Jaguars prevented what could have been the start of a three-peat. The Broncos had the AFC’s best regular-season record in 1996 but lost their second-round playoff game at old Mile High Stadium to the upstart Jaguars.
A year later, the Broncos began their Super Bowl-winning playoff run by trouncing Jacksonville, 42-17, but come Sunday with a sellout crowd giving a final Mile High Salute to T.D., here were the Jaguars again.
The biggest problem the Broncos had Sunday was it seemed like they never had the ball in the first half. Hard to score when the offense is wearing baseball caps. From the start, the Broncos couldn’t find their rhythm. A 34-yard pass from Broncos quarterback Jay Cutler to tight end Daniel Graham on the team’s second play was eradicated by an illegal motion penalty.
The Broncos wound up punting it away and didn’t see the ball again until the second quarter. Preposterously, the Jaguars held the ball for the next 11 minutes and 44 seconds of game clock. Their drive took 18 plays. David Garrard mixed in short passes with the occasional scramble and handoffs for effective runs by Jacksonville tailbacks Fred Taylor and Maurice Jones-Drew.
Garrard had a 7-yard touchdown run nullified by penalty late in the first quarter only to come back early in the second quarter and scramble right, scramble some more and hit a wide-open Reggie Williams in the back of the end zone for a 3-yard touchdown.
When the Broncos’ offense finally got the ball back, the pressure was on. With their defense in a bend, bend some more, and bend again before breaking, the offense needed to make the most every possession.
It did by making the most of the wondrous talent of receiver Brandon Marshall. A 49-yard rainbow on third-and-16 from Cutler to Marshall got the Broncos moving. On second-and-24 from the Jaguars’ 31, Cutler escaped a sack from blitzing cornerback Terry Cousin, then dumped the ball to Marshall on a crossing route.
Marshall broke tackle after tackle until he was nudged out of bounds at the 1, setting up an easy touchdown pass from Cutler to Jackson.
But whatever momentum the Broncos had, their defense allowed to be taken away. Jacksonville took nearly 5 minutes to score on their next drive. A fumble by backup tailback Selvin Young gave Jacksonville a gift field goal near the end of the half for a 17-7 lead.
After an emotionally charged halftime ceremony for Davis, Broncos returner fumbled away the opening kickoff, which Jacksonville converted into another field goal and 20-7 lead.
The Broncos had their chances for a third consecutive late-game rally but their luck evaporated with two failed gambles on fourth down. The first came on fourth-and-a-long-1 on the Jacksonville 3 yard line. A quarterback sneak went nowhere.
Travis Henry’s first touchdown as a Bronco narrowed the score to 20-14 but with the ball deep in their own territory and more than 4 minutes remaining, Broncos coach Mike Shanahan went for it on fourth down. Cutler hit Graham for a lengthy gain across the middle, but the ball popped loose for an incompletion.
The defeat was especially difficult for the Broncos because they play against the defending Super Bowl champion Indianapolis Colts next Sunday in Indy.
Mike Klis can be reached at 303-954-1055 or mklis@denverpost.com.
