Well Rusty and I made the long flat trip from Kansas City to Denver last weekend. We got to meet Vaughn Thompson, a fellow blogger friend. It was good times hanging out and meeting Vaughn. Those meetings are few and far between but very cool when they happen. Truly a great guy. After dinner and coffee with Mr. Icthus we drove up to Windsor and spent the night at Covenant Bible College with the hospitible folks there. Early Sunday morning we got up to make our Mile High visit (my first). After stopping by Rusty’s Uncle’s place we watched a bit of the pregame warm up before we settled into our lofty seats. The atmosphere at Invesco/Mile High was awesome! It’s such a nice stadium. Arrowhead has nothing on this place and the fans were great. There was so much excitement, it was electric.

Alas, the Broncos had a really rough day against the Steelers. My favorite bearded QB, Jake Plummer, made some costly turnovers but Jake also kept the Broncos in the game making a strong 2nd half comeback attempt. In the end though the Broncos defense, the strongest part of the team all year, just couldn’t hold the dam to back up Jake’s comeback. The whole team really had a bad day and forced Plummer to try to win it all by himself and even John Elway wasn’t going to do that. Most of Plummer’s turnovers came from plays where he was playing his heart out, scrapping to get some points on the board. A lot of the Denver fans who had grown to love “no-mistake-Jake” this year quickly turned on him after the game, saying he’d never be John Elway and whining about the “good ol’ days.” They seem to quickly forget that even John couldn’t win the big game until he had a complete team around him and while I think this team is far more balanced and defensively impressive than the two bronco Super Bowl teams, that defense just didn’t show up against the Steelers.

Despite the big let down, the game was a ton of fun. The crowd at Mile High was great and finally seeing a Broncos game on home turf was so much more fun than being the tiny minority at Arrowhead. At the very least all 76,000 of us could all leave in peace, heads hung low, a far cry from the long long walk back to the car pushing past rowdy Chiefs fans (win or loose).