Broncos and Raiders -- Surprise!!

Living on the East Coast, I rarely get to see the Denver Broncos' games. Including today, when their longtime rival, their nastiest rival, the dastardly Oakland Raiders, came to visit.

So at the beginning of the preseason, I signed up, as I have before, for the NFL Field Pass, which allows me to listen to any NFL game's radio broadcast during a game. Then I can hear what's going on while "watching" the action on the NFL.com site. Unfortunately, it's not streaming video or any video at all. It's a largely dead Web page that refreshes itself every few seconds with the new score, new time and a little field with lines for the lines of scrimmage and where they need to get to for the first down. The only animation, which is a generous term in this case, is when little green dotted lines move down the field to signify a kick. Pretty lame for a bigtime site for such an action-oriented sport.

So that's how I experienced today's Broncos-Raiders debacle. The Raiders have been playing dismally, the Broncos well, and it should've been a slam-dunk (to borrow a basketball metaphor) for the Broncs. The first half was great for Bronco fans -- Broncos dominated (as they should) and the half ended with Broncos 17, Raiders 3. I heard the live radio feed from the Denver Broncos Network and watched the little field on NFL.com.

The second half was a blazing disaster for both teams. Broncos and Raiders alike just kept messing things up. But the Broncos seemed to fall apart and the Raiders caught up, helped in part by the Broncos spotting them two points, via a truly unnecessary safety. Suddenly it was 20-20 and the game went into overtime.

Then a miracle. Two, actually. The first was that right after the Ravens-Jets game ended (Ravens actually won! 20-13), CBS went to Denver and showed the entire overtime. Wow! (Glad I was multi-sporting and had the Ravens game on tv as I kept up with the Bronco game.)

I called my mom and her significant other, Lloyd, a former Raiders fan that we've "persuaded" to become a Bronco fan. They're in Phoenix, where they didn't get the Bronco game either. But there, who knows why, CBS did not air the overtime. So I kept Lloyd on the phone while I gave him my own play-by-play as I watched the live game. Involuntarily I punctuated it with groans, light profanity, squeals and, ultimately, cheers, as at first it looked like the Raiders had won with a Janikowski field goal....But the Broncos had called time out just before (JUST before) the snap, so it was deemed a practice kick. He had to do it all over again and this time it went wide right. That was the second miracle. The highly motivated Broncos jammed the ball down the field and gave superkicker Jason Elam an easy field goal for the true overtime win of 23-20.

The recap video of this incredibly twisty-turny game isn't nearly as much fun to watch as it would've been to see live. But I can't have DirectTV where I live now to see the NFL games so I have to settle for whatever CBS, Fox, ESPN or NBC give me. The NFL Field Pass is a pretty poor workaround for Bronco fans who can't see the games. But I'll take what I can get. And thanks to my local CBS station for airing the overtime part of today's game!