Jake the Flake. Nothing is ever easy with Jake Plummer. Nor is it dull. He will be missed, more for his quirks than his quarterbacking, and whether he quits or goes to Tampa Bay or sticks his tongue out in church, the Broncos will be less interesting without him.

The Broncos don't want him, the Broncos can't get rid of him. Plummer doesn't want to stay, Plummer doesn't want to go. If here at the end, the game comes back to Plummer's whims, at least that is where it was always the most stirring.

It is possible yet that Tampa Bay may convince Plummer he is wanted, that competition is good for everyone, not that Mike Shanahan was ever able to make the point stick.

Given the challenge to compete, Plummer shrank, and a Bronco season turned to crud. If Plummer is willing to run away from $5 million or so, not only is he more damaged than it seemed, but his spirit is as weak as his arm.

The Bucs would be every bit as happy to get Jake Plummer as were the Broncos, back when faith and confidence masked honesty, which was that anyone would be better than Brian Griese.

Bucs coach Jon Gruden has his reasons for wanting Plummer, all of which are as certain as Mike Shanahan's for not wanting him.

Those were, if memory serves, that his unformed quarterback, Jay Cutler, gives the Broncos a better chance to win. And how is that working out, exactly?

Plummer is less than he seemed, a feisty, original creature, if he at least does not try to get even with Shanahan.

Not for demoting him as much as ruining him, changing him from a free spirit to a drone, replacing daring with tedium.

The last impression of Plummer should not be of a cautious attendant passing out the football as if it is a hand towel.

Plummer would always take a dare, take a risk, so if it is just Tampa Bay or Gruden, may he use whatever leverage he has to get the best place he can. Tampa might very well be the best that he can do, a team that is a quarterback away from being a challenger, a team where the young quarterback has already shown the doubt yet to come to the one in Denver.

The faith of one of the coaches, Gruden or Shanahan, would be validated and if Plummer would succeed for Gruden, return to the loose and carefree quarterback in doing so, judgments would follow.

Not that Gruden is any less the autocrat than Shanahan, nor that Shanahan has less passion than Gruden, who wears his emotion like lip gloss, but Plummer's success or failure from here can reflect not just on himself but on them as well.

The truth is that Plummer was never more a success than as a Bronco and never as great a failure. Reaching higher matches falling further.

Shanahan expected as much from him as would Gruden, or any other coach that may yet take the chance, to lead a team beyond its limits, the job of any special quarterback, and so Plummer will remain until again proven otherwise.

The page was turned on the Broncos with five games left in a season abandoned for later. When Cutler replaced Plummer, what happened next to the Broncos was inevitable and what happened to Plummer was merely a blank to be filled in.

Possibly the end for Plummer came even earlier than that, the season before when, constrained and controlled, he traded instincts for obedience and got the Broncos as far as he would ever take them.

Football has never taken as much of Plummer's devotion as his coaches would have liked. He never studied film as if it were full of secrets, the way coaches do.

Plummer has not been a student of the game as much as a consumer; it might be easier for Plummer to leave it behind, like a used car or old shoes.

But he should not allow Shanahan to spoil however much football has meant to him.

Just as Griese was once seen as the next Joe Montana and Plummer the next - oh, somebody good, somebody better than Plummer proved to be - so now is Cutler seen as the next John Elway.

At some point, a quarterback who plays for Shanahan will have to be himself, not an easy thing to be on the end of a leash.

lincicomeb@RockyMountainNews.com

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