What a wonderful opportunity the Denver Broncos have in front of them. So much history to be made, so many challenges to be embraced, such stuffy precedents to be smashed.

This is exciting. What a time to be a Broncos player, a Broncos fan, a Broncos coach.

How envious must be all those good teams who enter the last month of the season stuck with talent and health and, you know, a defense. What dull tools to work with, how predictable their prospects.

What have the Oakland Raiders to look forward to the next four weeks except more of the same, and the Minnesota Vikings? By the third quarter of any game, attention is wandering and Randy Moss is looking for something interesting to do with his hands.

Ah, but the Broncos. No game is over until Gus Frerotte has matched his interceptions with touchdown passes, until the offense has dared the defense to equal its mistakes, until the game clock has just thrown both hands up in the air and shouted, "If you're not too proud to win with five turnovers a week, fine!" Instead of winning with competence and efficiency, try it with hesitation and doubt and gaffes out loud. What can be less satisfying than living up to expectations? How easy it is to strut into a future illuminated by open-field tackles and passes defended, by sacks and stops and three-and-outs.

Try it the way the Broncos are doing it, as ushers to the end zone, traffic cones on the freeway, turnstiles in the express line for six points or less. Imagine having to watch game films with one eye closed and nose plugs.

Sure, there might be those who argue for the innovation of the Baltimore Ravens, who tried to remain contenders -- did so and would host the Broncos if the playoffs started today -- without scoring any touchdowns for a month. Whereas this is worth a nod for originality, the Ravens also played defense and cannot be forgiven for that.

Just look at what the Broncos can accomplish. They can be the first team to win a championship with a defense no more sinister than bread mold, without a pass rusher who can leave a scar, a linebacker who can stop a yawn. How slow are they? If the Broncos' defense were delivering pizza, we'd all eat free.

Sure, it's easier with speed, but everyone does it that way. Watching Keith Traylor walk onto the field is like watching Jell-O set.

I can only imagine that the Broncos have taken the dare to become the first team in football to pass defend and pose for portraits at the same time.

Let other teams Run and Shoot and No Huddle and Blaze and Burn. How obvious can you get? First team to make the playoffs using the Oops Offense gets a waltz named after it.

Which brings us to another splendid opportunity for the Broncos: to win from a playbook designed from mistrust and desperation. The best pass catcher running out of the backfield? The Broncos are the first team to ever try to win with plays intended to avoid the quarterback and the running back.

Men like Sid Gillman devoted their lives to inventing sophisticated, imaginative, deceptive, artful offenses and didn't break as much new ground as the Broncos did against the Seahawks in one afternoon.

Not that the defense isn't doing its part to be original. We have seen Trevor Pryce rolling up the bodies of prone quarterbacks before and Terrell Buckley hitting a receiver with split-second menace, even Bill Romanowski covering a tight end. Let legendary defenses do it that way. The Broncos have won four in a row doing it exactly the other way.

Pessimists fret that the Broncos might not win another game with so erratic an approach to winning, that awaiting next are the New Orleans Saints, a team that also lost its starting quarterback and best running back yet still managed to beat the St. Louis Rams, which the Broncos could not do with everyone well.

In the Seattle rematch, the Seahawks might bring a quarterback with them, Kansas City is perpetually a hazard for the Broncos, and San Francisco could at any moment remember who it is and how it got to be so. Not to worry.

I say now is no time to start relying on logic and predictability. If the Broncos don't, why should Broncos fans? All the valuable lessons of November must not be wasted. No hole is too deep, no quarterback too ordinary, no number of injuries too debilitating to overcome.

What was it the e-mailer advised me? If you don't want to cheer the players the Broncos have, go find another team? Absolutely not.

I like these guys.

Bernie Lincicome writes for the Denver Rocky Mountain News.