Remembering a Play: Joe Flacco and the Mile High Miracle
Photo by photo.ua
Eleven years removed from this horror show, it still physically pains me to see Baltimore Ravens quarterback Joe Flacco heave up a prayer in my hometown and watch it turn into the Mile High Miracle. Denver Broncos coach John Fox subsequently giving up his thirty second opportunity to move into field goal range to try to win, and instead telling his GOAT-tier quarterback Peyton Manning to kneel and go to overtime, will be one of the last things I see when my life flashes in front of me before I die.
In my Meet the New Editor-in-Chief autobiographical post for Splinter’s launch, I detailed the very real and very legal customs of us extremely sane and normal and not at all over-the-top football fans out here in the Rocky Mountains.
It’s actually in the Colorado constitution that you have to get your blood dyed before every football season so you can literally bleed Bronco orange and blue for the next four months.
Comparing the Broncos to the sun in the Denver sports world overstates the sun’s importance to our solar system. They are truly our civic religion, and this play is a festering open wound on the city’s psyche.
This is the second installment in our new Splinter sports series of Remembering a Play, where we honor the Deadspin/Defector cultural phenomenon of Remembering a Guy. Our first was a joyous post celebrating newly-minted Hall of Famer Vince Carter dunking poor Frédéric Weis into the Earth’s core at the 2000 Olympics.
Remembering this Play evokes the opposite kind of emotion. I’m dragging you all to hell with me.
To set the scene, picture a group of friends in their early to mid 20s dressed in not at all obnoxious bright orange jerseys, drinking pitchers of cheap beer in a booth during the Divisional Round of the NFL Playoffs. The winner of the Denver Broncos versus the Baltimore Ravens would go to the AFC Championship game, and had my beloved Broncos won this home game, they would have hosted Tom Brady and the New England Patriots in Denver the following week with a chance to go to the Super Bowl.
Instead, my sports heart got ripped out and fed to me in front of a bunch of callous Patriots fans. Baltimore waltzed into Foxboro the next week and won, then they defeated both Colin Kaepernick’s San Francisco 49ers and the Louisiana Superdome’s failing power grid en route to a stolen Super Bowl Championship from its rightful owner, Peyton Manning and the Denver Broncos.
This first year as a Bronco was their best opportunity to win a title in the Peyton Manning era. The 2013-2014 offensive juggernaut that got stomped in the Super Bowl did not have a great defense, and the 2015-2016 championship team survived a litany of razor-thin margins that in hindsight look like a minor miracle. This 2012-2013 team that finished first in the AFC was the most balanced Broncos team Peyton commanded.
Manning had his annual showdown for AFC supremacy with Brady all lined up, and it looked like the NFL’s marquee game would feature Bronco orange and blue for the first time. We were back, baby! My team had finally made it out of the post-John Elway wilderness and was ready to reclaim its rightful spot at the top of the NFL’s pecking order.