Columnist Dean Juipe: Denver is 8-0 yet will find 16-0 unlikely

Dean Juipe

Monday, Nov. 2, 1998 | 10:11 a.m.

Football fans will continue talking about it.

They'll project, they'll analyze, they'll run the pertinent statistical numbers through every sort of data base in an effort to uncover a little insight.

Can the Denver Broncos win all 16 games in the regular season?

It appears as if people hope they do, just for the sake of conversation if nothing else. After all, a 16-0 record would certify the Broncos as one of the greatest teams of all time.

But they're not going to do it.

They almost slipped Sunday, needing three fourth-quarter touchdowns to edge 11-point underdog Cincinnati by a 33-26 score.

The Broncos were not particularly impressive, even factoring in a natural letdown after a nice victory last week over Jacksonville. They made Cincinnati -- a team best known for its bumbling ways -- look like playoff contenders for much of the afternoon.

Maybe 11 was a tough number to cover under the circumstances, yet the Broncos appeared far too lackadaisical defensively for a team with top-flight personnel and aspirations of eternal greatness. Nonetheless, they're 8-0 and halfway home.

That's more than the Minnesota Vikings can claim.

Losing 27-24 to Tampa Bay in a surprisingly offensive game, the Vikings fell to 7-1 and left the Broncos as the National Football League's only perfect team. It was a puzzling afternoon for the Vikings, who allowed Tampa's previously dormant offense to move up and down the field much too effortlessly.

But Minnesota's loss only goes to show how difficult, if not impossible, it is to win every time out.

The Broncos have to be thinking the same thing even with their still-unblemished record intact.

It was 1978 that the NFL went to a 16-game schedule and in those 20 years only two teams finished 15-1. San Francisco did it in 1984 and Chicago did it a year later.

No team in the 1990s has lost fewer than two games in any regular season and most years a 13-3 record will get you the first seed in the conference playoffs. Kansas City, Green Bay and San Francisco each went 13-3 last season.

Denver, the eventual Super Bowl champion, went 12-4.

Look for the Broncos to better that record this year while failing to match the 1972 Miami Dolphins, who posted the only perfect regular-season record in league history: 14-0. (The Dolphins also won three playoff games that season, including the 1973 Super Bowl vs. Washington.)

Denver's remaining schedule isn't conducive to a clean sweep. In order, the Broncos play San Diego, at Kansas City (on a Monday night), Oakland, at San Diego, Kansas City, at the New York Giants, at Miami (on another Monday night) and Seattle. Given the topsy-turvy nature of the NFL, eight more victories seems highly unlikely.

The Broncos have the game's best running back in Terrell Davis, a masterful quarterback in John Elway and outstanding coaching on a staff headed by Mike Shanahan.

But 16-0? No way.