truebluefan

Broncos pay the price for not putting enough pressure on Manning

For a quarterback, time is money.

Time is big contracts, it's cell phone deals and face time. Time is touchdowns. And, most of all, time is victory.

And once again, with the ball in his hands, Peyton Manning had the time, so he used it to simply dole out plenty of misery for the Broncos.

"We had no sacks, none, and hardly any pressure," Broncos defensive end Ebenezer Ekuban said. "You let him stand back there 4, 5 seconds every time, and bad things are going to happen. No excuses. We had to get the pressure on him and we didn't."

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truebluefan

Give most NFL quarterbacks a world of time, and most defenses will have to brace for a long game.

Give Peyton Manning the luxury of pitching a tent in the pocket, and any defense, including the streaking defense of the Broncos, will be picked apart with surgical precision.

Wary of using blitzes that would expose the defense to big plays, and unable to muster any sort of pass rush with its front four, the Broncos defense could only watch helplessly as Manning calmly completed pass after pass during the furious second half of Denver's 34-31 loss at Invesco Field.

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truebluefan

The defense of the Baltimore Ravens might be more physically intimidating. The Chicago Bears might be more athletic and more capable of turning in game-breaking plays.

But through the first seven weeks of the NFL season, no defense had been better at bending but refusing to break than the Denver Broncos.

That changed in a hurry during the second half of the Broncos' thrilling-but-disappointing 34-31 loss Sunday against the Indianapolis Colts.

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truebluefan

The performance Erik Pears gave the Denver Broncos was just about as expected.

Pears, starting his first NFL game at left tackle, had a few hiccups going against one of the league's premier pass-rush threats in the Indianapolis Colts' Dwight Freeney.

But overall, he held up fairly well in place of Matt Lepsis, who was lost for the season because of a torn ligament in his right knee.

Freeney did have a half-sack, when he came inside on a stunt and hit Broncos quarterback Jake Plummer along with linebacker Gary Brackett to force a fumble.

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truebluefan

Darrent Williams might find his sleep to be fitful this week. Replays of Colts receiver Reggie Wayne making plays might give the third-year Broncos cornerback frightful visions.

That's about how it looked at Invesco Field on Sunday.

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truebluefan

Mike Bell wouldn't call it a demotion, but he lost practice carries last week. That probably won't happen again this week after Bell revitalized the Broncos' offense Sunday.

"It's a crazy league. You just have to adjust to what happens each game," Bell said after he rushed for 136 yards on 15 carries.

All but 1 of those yards came in the second half as the Broncos' offense showed an uncanny spark in a 34-31 loss to the Indianapolis Colts at Invesco Field at Mile High.

Moral victories don't fly in this town. The Broncos couldn't keep up with Peyton Manning. But Bell's out-of-nowhere second half is noteworthy with nine games left to break a tie in the AFC West between the Broncos and the San Diego Chargers.

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truebluefan

To those who closely observe or support the Broncos, and even those who don't, this was a great lesson.

For the majority of this season, the Broncos were winning, but not in the stylish manner required to soothe fan and foe alike. The offense was sputtering, the quarterback position was in controversy, and those winning ways assuredly would be numbered.

Against the Indianapolis Colts in an AFC showdown on a gorgeous late-October afternoon in Denver, a sellout crowd watched Broncos quarterback Jake Plummer play his best game of the season. The Broncos moved the ball with such consistent precision, they made the Colts' defense look like an 11-man gang of arm tacklers.

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truebluefan

There is the outcome of one game, and there is what's best for a long season.

The Broncos lost to the Indianapolis Colts, 34-31 on Sunday, a defeat that snapped what had been the NFL's longest running regular-season home winning streak at 13 games.

But in the big picture, the Broncos' expectations are centered on Super Bowl XLI. This is why, despite a 5-1 record, there was concern because quarterback Jake Plummer was not playing Super Bowl-caliber ball.

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truebluefan

A rhetorical question really, but here it is. Would you rather have Jake Plummer at quarterback from in front or Peyton Manning at quarterback from behind?

Just as it had not been Plummer's fault that the Broncos won five football games in a row, neither was it his fault that the Broncos lost to the Colts on Sunday, and that is the limit of encouragement on a day when the Broncos led the football game three times and tied it late.

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truebluefan

Notes in the nick of time ...

Where should we rate Peyton Manning among the NFL's all-time greats? Rod Smith, when asked if Manning was the best he had ever seen: "No ... Seven. But you know what? He's real freakin' close. He's amazing." ...

That's seven, as in John Elway, who, for the record, never completed 32 out of 39 on the road against a defense that had allowed 44 points in six games. ...

Tony Dungy, when asked how the Colts could keep winning with such a shaky defense, "You can't overemphasize how good the quarterback is." Gee, ya think? ...

Tell you what. I've covered the Broncos since 1984, and Manning's performance in the Colts' 34-31 W was the best I've seen by an opposing quarterback in Denver. The only one remotely close that comes to mind was Jacksonville's Mark Brunell, who almost single-handedly beat the Bronx in the 1996 playoffs. ...

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