“You can’t go on, thinking nothing’s wrong … who's gonna drive you home, tonight?”
—The Cars
Miners know well to escape quick like from the cracking weight of a
hollowed mountain when its earthy pillars start to collapse. So do, it
seems, Hall of Fame place kickers.
Down in Bronco land, proven but aged pillars have been shamelessly
tossed aside and replaced with poorly prepared rookies, questionable
veteran freelancers, and, in particular, an ever-revolving facade of a
defensive line.
It seems that Mount Shanahan is no longer supported by anything but
pride and arrogance, notably after the curious departure of the
golden-booted Jason Elam, who signed a $9 million dollar contract
recently to become the kicker of the perennially inept Atlanta Falcons.
Elam left town on a wire, gleefully running to the sheltered halls of
the Georgia Dome, where typical kicking hazards such as ice, snow, muck
and wind are reserved for just a few away games and adventuresome
drinking competitions.
Elam takes with him several NFL records, including a tie with
mallot-footed Tom Dempsey for the longest field goal ever kicked (63
yards), 15 years of clutch, accurate service to the Broncos, and two
Super Bowl rings. He is the last player to have tasted sweet victory in
a Broncos Super Bowl win to depart the team. Jason Elam was a Bronco
lifer.
But why did Elam leave? Is Atlanta the new Indianapolis? Are they
primed to become the Patriots of the NFC? Not likely, despite what Elam
says (or un-says — if you read on, I will explain).
Having spent the past season in a disillusioned shock after having to
endure a year’s worth of Michael Vick's lies, scandal and controversy;
an equally dysfunctional tryst with job-hopping, megalomaniacal Coach
Petrino; and now with a new general manager and head coach, no real
quarterback or offensive minded personnel to speak of, and a middling
to less-than-average defense, the Falcons will almost certainly have
their talons clipped for the next season, and probably longer. This is
not the Shangri-la all veteran kickers aspire to.
But they will have themselves a veritable sure thing when it comes to
that last minute of the game — the time when leggy men buck up and
snatch victory from the drop toilet of defeat.
Just ask the Broncos, a team who rode Elam's platinum right leg to four
last-second victories in 2007, two of them coming in the first two
weeks of the season. Without Elam's magic, Denver could easily have
been looking at a shameful and depressing 0-8 record to start the
season.
Which begs the question: Why let him go? In the middle of a minor
rebuilding effort, why let your anchor, your one sure thing, skip town
like a gleeful Kiwi on the day after ski season?
The answer seems to be that Jason Elam wanted out of town, which,
Bronco fan, is usually the relationship equivalent to hearing your
loyal spouse of ten happy years telling you that you should just be
friends over a martini. Not a good thing to hear any lifer say.
In comments to the press on the day of the announcement that he was
fleeing to Atlanta, strange, ominous tides surged forth out of Elam's
traditionally quiet mouth regarding the Falcs.
Things like "I like their direction,” which in kicker-speak (not a
standard football lexicon — in fact it is commonly believed that Tom
Brady used kicker-speak at the line of scrimmage to befuddle the hated
Jets in week one last season) usually means the opposite, as in, “I
don't like the Broncos’ direction.”
Add that telling white smoke to the jettisoning of a key offensive
member, Javon Walker; the firings of GM Ted Sundquist and Defensive
Coordinator Bill Bates; and strong-but-karmically challenged receiver
Brandon Marshall's filleting of his forearm in a “family scuffle,” and
there exists the distinctive fixings for a downward-spiral cake to be
baked this coming season in the Mile High City.
In fact, the only really good news out of the Broncos’ camp this winter
have been the return of everyone's favorite human missile, safety John
Lynch, for one last go, and that quarterback Jay Cutler looked “trim”
and was not “shy” in his assessments of wayward Brandon's latest folly.
But that is really only one click north of his appearing “sober” and
“not in jail” on the trusty Anderson Posito-meter. No, this team is
going to miss its kicker, the only one we have known for a generation
and a half.
And the sad thing is that Elam was just (pardon the expression) hitting
his stride as an interesting Bronco-type person. Well known as a
devout, born-again Christian, Elam now gets to take on critics who will
claim that his new “adventure” novel, Monday Night Jihad, is an unfair
and unbalanced portrayal of a terrorist act committed at the Super Bowl
in the name of fundamentalist religion.
Last off-season, Elam spent time dodging tracer fire in a Gaza
Strip foray (which sounds more risqué than risky, but probably wasn't,
I'm sayin’…). He once was holed up for hours in his crash-landed plane
by a mad Alaskan Grizzly bear.
Did I mention that he blasted the winning points through the ever-cruel
uprights four times last season? He was directly responsible for well
over half of the victories the Broncos scavenged from their tragic (two
deaths in the off-season, if you recall), maddeningly dodgy season. The
man lives on the edge. He is the Tom Cruise of the kicking world, or
something.
Meanwhile, the same old company line filters out of Dove Valley.
Another veteran tossed into the trash heap of Bronco history like a
winter’s worth of freshly de-thawed dog poop. More coaching changes.
Same old head cheese.
Corby Anderson's column returns to the Aspen Daily News Roaring Sports
section for a one-month run from Marina, California, where he is in
exile for unspecified reasons. Next week, Hang Time examines whether it
is a good thing that we chug “Tiger-ade.”