Fairy-Tale Opening Meets Harsh Reality for Crush
Andrew Mason
Monday February 3, 2003
The first two minutes of the Colorado Crush`s existence could not have been more perfect. Winning the coin toss, stopping the Georgia Force on its first two snaps, forcing an interception on the third, and then scoring a touchdown on the first offensive play -- via a 14-yard pass from John Dutton to Damian Harrell.
The crowd erupted; the sold-out, standing-room-only throng rose with their pom-poms to create a sea of orange and white. From his owner`s box, John Elway exulted along with his team`s new fans.
The moon was in the seventh house; Jupiter was aligned with Mars. It was a glorious moment, a football Age of Aquarius that this city -- with its championship-caliber NFL and NHL clubs in recent years -- knows quite well.
It also couldn`t last. Leads of 13 and 10 points evaporated, and the promise of the early afternoon ended in the disappointment of a 44-40 defeat.
Like his fellow Denver pro football head coach, Mike Shanahan, Crush coach Bob Beers went with the scripted opening, a concept that grew to prominence with the San Francisco 49ers of the 1980s and is now common practice in the NFL.
"Maybe we should have scripted the whole game. We had the first eight plays scripted, and then we went away from it," Beers said. "They adjusted well to us."
The Crush bounced back to reality -- a harsh one, of being 0-1 and having to live with a game that was in their hands for most of the afternoon and eventually slipped away -- literally as well as figuratively. All Dutton could ponder after the game was not his five touchdown passes to Damian Harrell or the fact that his lone interception came on a deep pass and forced Georgia to start at its own 1, but his two fumbles -- particularly one in the fourth quarter where the ball simply slipped out of his hands as he faded back to throw.
But Dutton did so many other things right during the game. So many that when the notion of making a change was brought up by a reporter following the contest, Beers swiftly brushed it aside, squelching the mere thought of a controversy.
"He could have eaten the football and we wouldn`t have changed quarterbacks. No. It`s a new ball. The thing they did was the gold label -- and we knew it coming in, that it was a little slick -- you`ve just got to move your hand up a little more on the football and play it like you have a smaller hand. So you just move the hand up a little more. He`s so used to doing it that it`s slick and he dropped it."
Added a frank Dutton: "We were both using the same ball, so it wasn`t a problem for (Georgia quarterback Donnie Davis). Those are mistakes that I put all on me."
Correcting that, Dutton knows, will help send those frenzied Rocky Mountain football fans home happy next time.
"You come here, and you don`t know what to expect. You hear all these things about sellouts and stuff. They were great. They were into the game; they were loud, so that`s helping us out," Dutton said.
"Now, we`ve got to bring victories here to reward them for coming out."
Andrew Mason was at the Tampa Bay Storm`s first home game on June 1, 1991 and has followed the game ever since. While in college, he served as content editor and co-founder of The Storm Shelter, a Web site which covered the Tampa Bay Storm on the Internet from 1996-99. He also volunteered with the team`s media relations department in 1998 and currently contributes to ColoradoCrush.com. He's covered the NFL for various on-line outlets since 1999.
