No More Close Shaves

Jake Plummer tidied his game, shaved his interception total by more than half and helped the Denver Broncos clean up nicely this season.

The same could not be said of the quarterback’s appearance.

No longer unbridled but still unkempt, with long hair and a dark full beard, Plummer is a curiosity -- and not only because his uncharacteristically efficient and unspectacular play (in his case, that’s a good thing) won over critics.

Impatient and unpredictable in seasons past, he has been steady and sure in his third season under Coach Mike Shanahan as the Broncos won the AFC West division title, ended the New England Patriots’ hopes of a Super Bowl three-peat and reached Sunday’s AFC championship game against the Pittsburgh Steelers.

But what really turns heads is when he pops off his helmet.

“It just reminds me that life is funny,” Plummer said before last Saturday’s 27-13 victory over the Patriots. “That my beard and long hair could be of significance to someone else, that people in a downtown office building could be standing by the water cooler talking about it right now, that’s funny, man.”

It has been speculated that Plummer’s flowing mane is a hair-raising tribute to Pat Tillman, a close friend and free-spirited former Arizona State and Arizona Cardinal teammate who famously rejected NFL riches to join the U.S. fight in Afghanistan, where he was killed by “friendly fire” in April 2004.

Alex Garwood, Tillman’s brother-in-law and executive director of the charitable foundation named in the late soldier’s honor, declined to speculate, but he too is amused by the attention given Plummer’s appearance.

Not that it doesn’t intrigue him.

“I think it’s hysterical,” Garwood said this week in a telephone interview. “Like Pat, Jake is a good-looking guy -- great smile, great personality. ... When he’s in a room, people want to be around him.

“So, it’s pretty funny when somebody like that has shaggy hair and a shaggy beard. He looks like Grizzly Adams.”

Early in the 2004 season, Plummer wore a No. 40 decal on his helmet to honor Tillman, running afoul of NFL rules prohibiting personal messages on uniforms. Under threat of weekly fines, he reached a compromise with the league, participating in a public-service announcement honoring Tillman and other war veterans.

League officials were not so forgiving later in the season, when Plummer made an obscene gesture to Bronco fans at Invesco Field after throwing an interception in a December victory over the Miami Dolphins. He was fined $5,000 and predictably savaged by local columnists, who already were down on his flighty play, one describing it as “constantly inconsistent and occasionally brainless.”

Addressing what he called “the fickle finger of Jake,” Woody Paige of the Denver Post wrote, “By sticking that one finger behind your head, what exactly were you trying to signify, Jake the Flake?

“The number of playoff games you’ve won in your career? ...

“The number of dim-witted mistakes you made each series against the Dolphins?

“Your IQ?”

Plummer’s second season in Denver, which included 27 touchdown passes but a league-high 20 interceptions, ended the same way the first did, with the Broncos losing decisively to the Indianapolis Colts in the playoffs.

Afterward, Plummer and Shanahan reviewed videotape of every pass that Plummer had thrown during their two dissatisfying seasons together.

Their conclusions: Less is more. Steady stays the course.

A less spectacular, more measured Plummer emerged this season, resulting in the 31-year-old quarterback experiencing a home playoff game for the first time in his nine-year career. Plummer, who had never before played on a team seeded higher than sixth in the playoffs, had claimed only one playoff victory before last weekend, leading the Cardinals over the Dallas Cowboys seven years ago.

His passing yardage and touchdown passes were down from last season, but his quarterback rating was up and, most important, only seven of his passes were intercepted, matching a career low and 10 below his career average.

He completed 60.2% of his passes, 18 for touchdowns, and in the heart of the Broncos’ 13-3 regular season threw 229 consecutive passes without an interception, breaking John Elway’s previous club record of 190. That came during a stretch in which the Bronco offense went 28 consecutive quarters without a turnover.

“The un-Snaking of Plummer may be Mike Shanahan’s proudest achievement, certainly more so than the Montana-izing of Brian Griese, as once imagined possible by Shanahan,” wrote Bernie Lincicome of the Rocky Mountain News, who had once called Plummer “unfixable” and was one of his harshest critics. “What he had to do with Plummer was easier; he had to subtract talent rather than add it.

“This has required the cooperation of Plummer, who cannot dodge the credit. A player of wayward instincts has been sanitized into a lobster bib.”

Shanahan had predicted a breakthrough season for Plummer, arguing that it was unfair to judge a quarterback until his third season in a system.

“I think most quarterbacks in their third year have a good feel for the terminology, a good feel for the supporting cast and you are hoping that in the third year your quarterback is playing at a very high level,” the longtime Bronco coach told reporters this week.

“He feels a lot more comfortable with our system and a lot more comfortable with the supporting cast, and he has played well.”

Elway won his first Super Bowl in his third season under Shanahan, but Plummer probably wouldn’t want anyone reminding him of that.

He has been burdened by comparisons before, Hall of Fame coach Bill Walsh saying before the 1997 draft that Plummer, who had guided Arizona State to an 11-1 record during the 1996 season, reminded him of Joe Montana.

As Plummer, a first-round Cardinal pick, told the Rocky Mountain News this month, “How could I not be a failure with that comparison?”

But after six mostly losing seasons with the Cardinals, he chose to walk in Elway’s long and considerable shadow when he signed a seven-year, $40-million contract with the Broncos before the 2003 season.

Quarterbacks, he reasoned, are measured by Super Bowls won, and joining Shanahan and the Broncos would give him a better chance to play in one.

Now a trip to the grand finale is a hairbreadth away, a victory over the upstart Steelers on Sunday at Denver, where the Broncos are 9-0 this season, separating Plummer from his first trip to the Super Bowl.

His season has been charmed.

And, like his hair, Plummer would prefer not to have it cut short.

“I am not looking at the way I’ve progressed,” he said this week when asked to assess his growth as a quarterback. “I am looking at this game.”

*

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX)

Jake in progress

Quarterback Jake Plummer’s three seasons with Denver and his season averages during his six seasons with Arizona:

*--* TEAM YEAR(S) ATT COM YDS TD INT Arizona 1997-’02 459 256 2,937 15 19 Denver 2003 302 189 2,182 15 7 Denver 2004 521 303 4,089 27 20 Denver 2005 456 277 3,366 18 7

*--*

Source: NFL.com