First impressions cannot be trusted, but they last the longest. So it must be concluded off one brief rehearsal that Broncos quarterback Jay Cutler is the greatest thing since raspberry jam.

Look at him pass, look at him run, look at him lead. Look at him sit.

Certainly, coach Mike Shanahan had seen enough in one drive, one moment - the completion, not the worm burner - that Cutler was given the rest of the night off against the 49ers, this when of all the essentials Cutler does not have, the most obvious is experience.

More will come against Dallas, maybe as many as 15 plays instead of eight and maybe 10 minutes instead of four.

By the time the all-important third preseason game against the Browns arrives, the one taken most seriously for reasons not quite clear, Cutler may have a whole half of football before he then turns the last game over to whomever.

This is the sort of summer schedule that all veteran quarterbacks assume, keeping just enough of an edge, getting familiar again with game speed, working on things and working out things.

Except, of course, Cutler is a veteran in the same way that a shrub is a tree. Hardly enough there for shade, never mind a stiff wind.

These exhibition games are not contests as much as tryouts, neither team as interested in the other as in their own purposes. Results of these things do not require a final score as much as a check list.

That full price is charged, or that a new design of Monday Night natterers work on their chemistry and out their kinks, is part of the sham to which we all subscribe, though there is probably more respectability in a lazy, cut-rate spring training baseball game than in the whole month of an NFL August.

What do the Broncos need to find out from these little practice rumbas? Oh, much indeed.

They need to know if they can patch together a cohesive and dependable offensive line, and off the other night, clearly those pieces seem as interchangeable as the running backs.

If the receiver corps is in any way credible, save Javon Walker with a solid season behind him here, and Rod Smith, indulged as he should be but this summer's Jerry Rice. For now, it would seem that not only is the jury out, but it is memorizing names.

If all those defensive linemen, stacked like cordwood around the Broncos locker room, can amount to as much, in fact, as they do in numbers, that problem being eased with the concession that Cleveland was right about Gerard Warren and the Broncos were duped.

And, by the way, I take no credit for planting the notion that Warren was not worth the trouble when, in another column, I had counted him as already gone. It just seemed so obvious.

If the run defense is as ragged against minor rushers such as the 49ers used, how easily must LaDainian Tomlinson and Larry Johnson (or Priest Holmes) move from here to there.

The Broncos must learn if D.J. Williams is a middle linebacker, and it would seem he has much work left do, as well as the general meshing of the segments of defense, the highly lauded, if a bit ripe, secondary included.

Whereas there were successes and failures against the 49ers, this was a very soft chew to open with.

Yet of all the things this month must determine, the most vital is if Cutler is a quarterback worth the inflated estimation that allows him to throw a ball, tip his cap and take a seat.

Confidence is a worthwhile thing, both in the quarterback and in the coach, but that was settled when Jake Plummer found himself not holding the football but the end of his rope.

What may be more important for Cutler is not a quick result on the summer's opening drive (and while his 16-yard scamper was both stirring and disturbing, it was just that sort of thing that finally did in Plummer) but some real adversity, handled now because it is certain to be faced later.

This may have been the absolute worst way for Cutler to start, to get a relatively easy score, to find himself a reliable running back in Travis Henry, to find picking up where he left off even easier than it was when he . . . well, left off.

lincicomeb@RockyMountainNews.com