Broncos Can’t Run From Loss To Jaguars Last Season’s Playoff Upset Still Talk Of The Town In Denver

The discussion this week that passes for highbrow debate in the Denver Broncos locker room is not much different from the arguments that fill the smoke-filled air in taverns across Colorado.

Boiled to their simplest forms the questions are these: Who and what went wrong in Denver’s 30-27 playoff loss to Jacksonville last January?

Were the players at fault or were the coaches more to blame? Were the calls that went to the defense poor or did the players do a poor job of carrying them out?

Broncos defensive tackle Mike Lodish was right in the middle of the furor created by Jacksonville quarterback Mark Brunell and the Jaguars’ giant-sized running back Natrone Means and he chooses to sit squarely on top of the fence.

“We just didn’t do a very good job as players or coaches,” Lodish said. “We made mistakes, all of us, but I think it was more what the Jacksonville team did. They beat us.”

The Jags were aggressive and decisive in their approach to the playoff game. They ignored the odds and followed the boxing tenet that says the man who makes the fight often gets the judge’s decision.

The Broncos have had nearly a year to chew on football’s biggest upset since Joe Namath’s New York Jets defeated the Baltimore Colts in Super Bowl III.

The harder they’ve chewed, the more difficult it has been to swallow.

“I’ve heard it all,” defensive end Alfred Williams said. “We took Jacksonville lightly. We were playing a bad scheme. None of that was it. Jacksonville simply made more plays than we did.”

The Jacksonville loss was hard on players such as Lodish and Williams and especially linebacker Bill Romanowski, who had some coverage responsibility on Brunell

Lodish, in particular, said it took him weeks to get over the defeat.

“For me, it’s one of the toughest games I’ve ever lost. And I was with the Buffalo Bills when we lost three Super Bowls,” Lodish said. “Last year was my first year to start and I was thinking how great it would have been to go to a Super Bowl as a starter. It was just an extremely disappointing loss for all of us.”