Jim Saccomano

This week the Denver Broncos travel to Detroit to play the Lions in beautiful new Ford Field.

I was fortunate to have been able to work the Super Bowl for the NFL when it was played in Detroit, so I am very familiar with the Lions’ new stadium.  A spectacular edifice, both functional and attractive.

Of course, everyone knows that Detroit has bounced back in a big way this year, coming into this game with a 5-2 record, but there are still a few fun facts about this franchise that most do not know.

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Rod Smith is back. 

Those four words carry a meaning to this football team well beyond the simple declarative sentence that they form.

The unquestioned leader of the Broncos over the better part of the past decade, Rod (I just can’t call him “Smith”– I can call him Captain, but I can’t call him Smith) played the entire 2006 season with a left hip that badly needed some cleanup work.

In that time, he never missed a workout (in fact, the 37-year old wide receiver has never missed an offseason workout in his entire Broncos career), never complained, kept playing, and kept stoking the fire of enthusiasm for the team.

He had a left hip debridement during the offseason, and Wednesday returned to practice for the first time in 11 months.

No one ever wore the crown of leadership and spokesmanship better than Rod, and having him back is a big thing for this football team.

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“Who’s got next?” is a common playground expression, referring to the concept that the winner keeps the field while awaiting the next challenger, the next would-be champion.

Watching the Denver Broncos’ exciting 31-28 Sunday night win over Pittsburgh gave me a great press box view of the crowd, and it was exciting to watch the swirl of colors in the stands.

Broncos fans showed a lot of orange — blue too, to be sure, but it does not show up as well at night — but the orange sure did, while the Steelers’ yellow was unmistakable even when in the minority.

Plus, fans would stand and wave orange pom-poms or yellow towels, as the circumstance warranted, so there was a continuous wave of orange and yellow, up and down, flags swirling at 360 degrees.

And one of the things you just can’t help but notice is how many people wore jerseys to the games, or even don them just hanging out around town. 

Old player jerseys, new player jerseys, vintage jerseys, throwback jerseys, alternate jerseys, they have become a fashion statement for the young and the would-be young (I think I fit into the latter group).

As you look at the jerseys, with any sense of perspective, you notice that the pattern of popularity is always adjusting to the reality of this moment.

New players come, new stars are born, and it can really happen fast.

And that’s what we started to see some of Sunday night for the Broncos.

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Every season starts with promise for all teams, and when it is over one stands as the champion, but sometimes there is an air of improbablilty to the accomplishment.

In no way does that imply that the champion is unworthy, just that the path taken to a title is different for every team, and sometimes the destination is reached in the strangest of ways.

Few paths ever have seemed as improbable as the one being traveled by the Colorado Rockies, who began a mid-September run that has seen them win 21 of 22 games in a streak that includes a playoff game against the San Diego Padres and postseason sweeps of the Philadelphia Phillies and Arizona Diamondbacks, the latter giving the franchise its first ever National League pennant.

The best and most recent comparison in Denver sports history is the Denver Broncos’ 1977 trip to Super Bowl XII.

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Sometimes you just can’t say anything at all in the way of an explanation for what we have watched.

The National Football League is structured for parity.  We all know that, and most games reflect scores that show one team that barely won and one that barely lost, with a half-dozen scenarios that could have changed the result, sometimes several times over.

But once in a while we witness a game that just starts off bad, gets worse, and before we know it is not even recognizable as being representative of the way we expect a team to play.

There is no sense in looking back at the Chargers game with any eye toward saying that if this had happened, or that had happened, the results would be different.

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Some of the most interesting things in Denver Broncos history have happened against the Chargers, and while all these facts are readily available and thus no new information is presented here, I do think it is notable to consider a few things that have happened over the previous 47 years of play.

Tobin Rote was the Chargers quarterback when they began in 1960, in Los Angleles, and he actually ended his great career as a part-time player for the Broncos.

The only time Denver has ever scored 50 points in a game in franchise history was in 1962 against the Chargers.  John McCormick was the quarterback and Gene Mingo kicked five field goals for the Broncos in that game.

And in spite of having some of the league’s greatest offensive teams in the John Elway years, the Broncos have never again scored 50 points in a game.

Of the 17 shutouts the Broncos have ever posted in a Bronco win, a franchise high six have come against the Chargers.

And of the nine times when the Broncos have failed to score in a game, three of those have been recorded by the Chargers, also a Denver high.

So the Chargers have been involved in nine of the 26 total Bronco shutout games.  Just an oddity.

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The baseball playoffs are upon us, and that puts me in mind of a book written by a Cincinnati Reds pitcher about four decades ago.

I would expect only the most obsessed of baseball fans (yes, my hand is raised) to have heard of The Long Season, by Jim Brosnan.  A really fine book, one of the finest insider books I have ever read, the more so because it was penned by an actual major league player during the season.

Brosnan also wrote Pennant Race, an equally fine addition to the literary world, but I again digress.

The point of mentioning The Long Season is in reference to the way everyone feels about the Broncos right now.

I have some degree of agreement with the concept that the sky is falling, but only to this degree:  when you raise your head, you can see the sky.

And that’s as far as my agreement goes.

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