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ESPN Monday Night crew fails to match Broncos' impressive performance
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What an opening night for the Denver Broncos.
A strong game plan flummoxed the Oakland Raiders from the get-go. WR Eddie Royal got his wings. QB Jay Cutler gutted the Raiders' D. And a giddy Mike Shanahan ran it up on his old boss, the pitiable Al Davis.
Too bad ESPN Monday Night Football's talking heads failed to tie together the colorful threads running through one of the NFL's more-engaging stories in its first regular-season week.
The three Mikes – Ditka, Golic and Greenberg – stepped on each other's lines. They chewed over the Broncos' woes in finding a successor to John Elway. They jabbered about the Raiders' long-gone glory days. Royal's coming-out party? A parenthetical. Ditto Cutler's A+ performance.
Ditka, a wonderful one-on-one interview -- candid, salty, funny -- was awful. A coach at heart, he embraces cliches: Shanahan is “great,” the football is “the rock.” He mumbled. And he sure changed his tune on the late Gene Upshaw, who Ditka impaled every chance he could on behalf of injured ex-players when Upshaw ran the NFL players union. Last night, in Ditka's view, Upshaw deserved to be on Mount Rushmore.
Golic and Greenberg – of ESPN Radio's popular Mike & Mike in the Morning – didn't get it going as they do on their daily show. Greenberg, as lead commentator, doesn't have the voice or command to pull off the top-dog role as, say, his ESPN counterpart Mike Tirico does. The usually-over-the-top Golic had next to nothing to say, deferring all night to Ditka, who he childlessly addressed as “Coach.”
There was little relief at halftime, either, where the big question remains: Didn't everyone tire of Chris Berman's wind-bag act years ago? The poor guy's been nothing but a 300-pound cliché since John Lynch left Tampa Bay.
BOTTOM LINE: The Broncos didn't need anyone in the booth or along the sidelines -- Did anyone miss ESPN's go-go girls down on the field? -- to bring home their story last night. Superior play told the tale.
ON THE RADIO: 850 KOA color man David Diaz-Infante, who sidekick Dave Logan had to carry last season, apparently worked on his game plan over the summer. Diaz-Infante didn't merely mimic Logan's usually-trenchant observations last night; he offered a few of his own. On Oakland's psychotic, but apparently faithless, fans, who began to exit McAfee Coliseum in the third quarter: “They'll turn on you like a Doberman ...” The ex-lineman praised Raiders head coach Lane Kiffen as an intelligent fellow, despite his penalty-prone charges. Noted Diaz-Infante: “Kiffen must be asking himself, 'If I'm such a smart guy, why do I have such dumb players?' “
NOTED: Sports Illustrated's Peter King predicted a Broncos win, 24-17, Monday morning: “The story of this game [will be] Jay Cutler beginning to take his place among the NFL's elite quarterbacks with a 3-TD-pass opener.”
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