| It's preseason, so you can take a mulligan, and Monday's 28-23 loss will have no impact on the Broncos' playoff pursuit, and may someday be remembered as an aberration as confounding as the box-office success of Freddy vs. Jason.
But to the Broncos themselves, the performance was inexcusable -- a night that saw three turnovers, four first-team drives inside the Colts 25 that netted a total of just six points and 12 penalties.
"I thought we played pretty sloppy throughout the whole football game offensively and defensively," Head Coach Mike Shanahan said. Offensively, we moved the football and then we stopped ourselves. Anytime you're oh-for-two in the red zone, it comes back to haunt you. I believe they were three-for-three in touchdowns in the red zone. We had more turnovers than they did and that's how you lose football games."
Perhaps no Bronco took the evening's difficulties more personally than tight end Shannon Sharpe. His eyes bore the look of exasperation; his voice conveyed a tone of overwhelming frustration.
"We looked bad," Sharpe said following the loss. "And the bad thing is that you're on national television. Now everybody's licking their chops, saying, 'Hey, this is the same team from last year; they're making the same mistakes they made last year.' It's just very disappointing."
The red-zone frustrations were particularly galling to Sharpe. While the Broncos' first-string offense never worked its way into a goal-to-go situation, it did repeatedly find itself in scoring position, only to have drive after drive peter out short of the end zone. Denver ended the first half with a drive that ended in a blocked field-goal attempt, and came out of intermission by advancing to the Colts 22 before Mike Anderson fumbled following a 7-yard carry.
"From an offensive standpoint, if we walk off the field with anything less than three points in any drive, we should be disappointed. If we walk off the field with less than 30 points (in a game), we should be ashamed," Sharpe said. "We have too much talent. We've got a 1,500-yard rusher in the backfield; we've got two 1,000-yard receivers, we've got two tight ends that have been to the Pro Bowl, we've got a guy that's got Pro Bowl potential at wide receiver that's coming off the bench; we've got a 1,500-yard rushing fullback. And you mean to tell me that all we can score is (23) points tonight? That's unacceptable."
The reverse was true on defense. Indianapolis cashed in on its red-zone journeys, going three-for-three in finding the end zone. That efficiency allowed the Colts to rack up 28 points in spite of gaining just 231 yards from scrimmage, a relatively pedestrian total for such an explosive offense.
"I think that there were a lot of opportunities that we could have gotten ourselves off the field," defensive end Bertrand Berry said. "For whatever reason -- penalties, jumping offsides, mental breakdowns -- we just didn't get the job done. We made some plays out there; we did some good things, but in order to be a great team, we're going to have to eliminate those mistakes and be more consistent in our play and not be so up and down from series to series."
The baffling part of Monday's loss to Sharpe was the fact that the struggles were contrary to what the team has experienced on the practice field -- particularly in red-zone drills.
"We've worked so hard on it during the course of the week," Sharpe said. "That's one thing Mike really emphasized during the course of the week is red zone. Whether it's team, seven-on-seven, it really doesn't matter. We're concentrating on that, trying to get seven instead of three. And right now it hasn't carried over. That's what's very disappointing, because we're moving the ball up and down the field. But when we get in the money zone, where it really counts, we're not doing anything."
The stat sheet would seem to be a harbinger of a Broncos victory. Total yardage: Denver 398, Indianapolis 231. First downs: Denver 23, Indianapolis 15. Yardage per play: Denver 5.9, Indianapolis 4.4. Passing yardage: Denver 310, Indianapolis 153. Mistakes nullified those advantages.
"We just didn't look like a team that was coached by Mike Shanahan," Sharpe said. "You know how organized and how attentive to detail he is. And tonight, nothing went well for us."
"We get the groove, we're driving, all of a sudden the ball comes out, somebody jumps offsides, or there's some kind of a penalty," wide receiver Rod Smith said. "It takes 11 guys; Mike stresses that all the time. And if we don't have all 11 guys, that's what happens."
Lost on Monday night was the chance to show the rest of the league that the last two non-playoff years were the aberration. Now, the Broncos will have to wait until the regular season -- and a Monday night game against the Oakland Raiders on Sept. 22 -- for another chance to demonstrate a revival to their peers around the league.
"This is an opportunity (for) you to send a message -- to say that we're for real, (that) in 2003, it's going to be the year of the Broncos," Sharpe said. "For two drives, we looked great. And people watching the game said, 'You know what? This is a new team.' But then we lapsed back into the same thing.
"It's very, very disappointing for me, because I realize -- and I don't know how many guys realize this -- that you don't get very many opportunities. Everybody thinks, 'Well, next year, it'll happen.' The next thing you know, you're 10 years deep and it hasn't happened. And I realize that I don't have very much time to be saying, 'Okay, I've got next year. I've got next year to worry about getting in the playoffs and getting to a Super Bowl.' Next year is now for me, because I said that in 2002. So now that 2003 is here, we need to get the job done."
Source: DB | |
