ENGLEWOOD, Colo. -- The beard is a monument to a fallen friend. The beard is a testament to his resolute spirit. The beard is cover, so much mountain scrub and brush hardly hiding a fact that never escapes the suffocating, Orange-crush fandom around the Rockies: He's not John Elway, whose local legend casts a shadow over him larger than Pike's Peak.

"It's very long," said his backup quarterback and buddy Bradlee Van Pelt, a rookie from nearby Colorado State. "Very long."

Van Pelt is referring to the shadow, not the beard. Although the more talk about cutting it, the longer Jake Plummer will let it grow. Just to show people. But will they ever understand him, understand his drive, understand that his reason for playing the part of The Shaggy QB is merely because Jake Plummer wants to be only Jake Plummer?

This is the kid who bounced around the neighborhood passing out business cards at age 5. This is the quarterback who, sensing his Arizona State teammates were nervous before playing Nebraska with its 26-game winning streak, stripped naked and chicken-danced around the showers pregame (he then dressed and steered them to a 19-0 upset). This is the man who remarked recently how, despite a newspaper critic writing that Plummer will never lead the Broncos to the Super Bowl, a smile from a little girl in line at a Denver-area Qdoba restaurant made his day. Qdoba? Yes, the quarterback with a seven-year, $40 million contract eats Mexican fast food, drives a Honda Element, drinks beer with family and friends and lives how he wants.

Life in the Elway shadow demands more.

'An Idaho boy'

On Wednesday, the Rocky Mountain News published a sports editorial cartoon depicting a little boy shaving his dog and gluing the hair into a Plummer scruff on his face. The angry mother snaps to the father wearing a No. 16 Broncos jersey: I tried to tell you that Jake Plummer would be a bad role model. Even in this week of hype, with the guy leading the Broncos to their first playoff victory since Elway's final season, a 14-3 record and an AFC championship game Sunday against the 13-5 Steelers at Invesco Field, he just can't seem to win for winning.

"I don't think it ticks him off anymore," Van Pelt said. "I think Jake has learned to program critics, the media in general."

"He's an Idaho boy," added Steve Plummer, his father, a lumber broker in Coeur d'Alene, Idaho. "He doesn't care about impressing people."

That brings us to the hair. He strode to the podium Wednesday at the team's practice facility in suburban Dove Valley, a blue Broncos cap tightly tugged down to his eyebrows. He was in no news conference mood, either.

About the ever-present Elway, who has a restaurant and car dealerships in his name and owns the Colorado Crush Arena Football League team here: "I haven't talked to John in a while. I see him around occasionally. Done plenty of interviews talking about our relationship." Next question.

His improvement from 20 interceptions last year to seven this season, from a 4,089-yard thrower to a successful manager of Broncos coach Mike Shanahan's offense? "I've talked about that a lot this year. Let's keep it on the Steelers, man." Next.

Then he gave a glimpse into Justin Steve Plummer, born 31 years and one month ago: If he were any other man in the NFL, it would be Steelers safety Troy Polamalu. "If I played defense, that's how I'd want to play. Just flying around. Doing crazy stuff. Making plays."

Look beyond the beard, beneath the shadows, and find a man on his own terms.

The Snake is born

The son unwittingly resembles the father around the same age.

"I think it was Thanksgiving we were down there," Steve Plummer said, picking up the story. Jake's mother, Marilyn, "brought some pictures from our old hippie days. Jake said, 'Jesus, dad, I look just like you.' I said, 'No, you look like Jesus.' " The father laughed.

To appreciate the Plummers, a body would need to walk miles in their hiking boots. When Jake was just 18 months old, his hippie father carried him in a chest "papoose" on a backpacking adventure trip. They were so competitive -- along with the half-dozen boy cousins who lived nearby -- they made up games, such as long-dart throwing contests in the forest. "We're sitting around the campfire one night, about 10,000-foot elevation in the Sawtooth Mountains, and we put a plate on a tree," the father recalled. "See who could throw knives more accurately."

Sunday's QB matchup
Ben Roethlisberger	vs.	Jake Plummer:
9-3	Won-Lost	13-3
268	Pass attempts	456
168	Pass completions	277
2,385	Yards	3,366
62.7	Completion percentage	60.7
17	Touchdown passes	18
9	Interceptions	7
23	Times sacked	22
5	100+ passer rating games	5
98.6	Passer rating	90.2
4	NFL ranking	7

Competition dotted the landscape, too. Elder brothers Eric and Brett once started a lawn-mowing service in Boise, and 5-year-old Jake just had to be part of it, demanding that his mother print up business cards the same as his siblings. The father remembered, "So he went around the neighborhood passing around cards, 'Jake Plummer, Friend at large.' "

Brett grew into a record-setting runner at Brown. Eric -- like his father -- became a Montana handball player who reached the NCAA elite eight, a sport in which all four Plummer men still compete. Yet the youngest Plummer sprouted into a star quarterback and went to Arizona State.

There he turned into something of an idol, the Elway of the Valley of the Sun, with championships on a smaller scale.

"When he was here, his first three years, he was average," said friend Doug Tammaro, an Ellwood City native who got to know Plummer through his job as the Arizona State assistant sports information director. "Not in terms of average player, but average record. Then all of a sudden, all the parts came together. If you look at it, he ended Nebraska's dynasty [with that streak-busting upset in Tempe]; they were the USC of that decade. The team then went 11-0, and was 100 seconds away from beating Ohio State in the 1997 Rose Bowl. If Arizona State finishes undefeated, we would've been national champions.

"And with the [NFL] Cardinals, people talk about it being only one playoff victory -- but that's the Cardinals' only playoff victory in 50 years." That 1998 postseason foray helped wrest a new stadium in Glendale, Ariz., for the woebegone franchise.

The only previous time Plummer played against the Steelers -- he rolled off the couch and injured his right shoulder before a 2003 game in Denver -- was his rookie season at Sun Devil Stadium. He was sacked a Steelers record-tying 10 times that game but still made enough plays to force the Steelers into overtime, where the visitors prevailed. The Cardinals kept losing, and the quarterback whom Bill Walsh once likened to Joe Montana, suddenly was a free agent in 2003 and ready to get out of Arizona. Chicago and Denver bid for his services, and he chose the two-time Super Bowl champion franchise with the shadow.

Steve and Marilyn flew to Denver for the news conference, where their youngest pointed to Broncos Super Bowl rings and offered matter-of-factly, "That's what I want. That's why I'm here."

Hello, Denver

Denver and Plummer embarked on a scraggly start.

The Broncos went 10-6 and lost to Indianapolis in the playoffs in 2003 and '04, and the mantra began anew: no postseason victories since Elway. He responded to booing home fans by flipping a one-finger salute behind his helmet ... and the Broncos beat Miami that game, 20-17. He opened '05 -- one that Elway threw in a harsh light when he offered the quote, "Everything is in place" for a breakthrough season -- with a 34-10 stinker at Miami. He got into a tiff with the Rocky Mountain News gossip columnist after she revealed that he was dating a Broncos cheerleader, an unveiling of the private life he treasures, though he publicly apologized a day later.

Perhaps he was best known beyond the Rockies the past two years for his helmet. Last season, he refused to remove the sticker in memory of his old Arizona State teammate and pal, Pat Tillman, long after its initial one-day wearing. This year, he refused to don the sticker for the NFL's Cardinals-49ers game in Mexico.

And then there's the beard. It's a novelty around the region. The Denver mayor declared this Shaggy Week. Female fans joke about growing them. Even then, they all miss the point with Plummer.

"A tribute to Pat," Tammaro said simply.

Tillman wore his hair long in college. Then, between 9/11 and the time he walked away from a multimillion-dollar Cardinals contract to join the Special Forces, Tillman sported a beard. Partly to remember the man who was killed in the line of duty in Afghanistan, partly to do something in inimitable Plummer fashion, he let his hair go.

"He finds it so amusing that they put so much energy into his beard," his father said.

At its core, the chin growth conceals his personal growth as a quarterback.

He reports to practice at 5:30 most mornings. He rallies teammates, where predecessor Brian Griese riled them. He studies tape, some of it forced. Last offseason, Shanahan and offensive coordinator Gary Kubiak had him review each and every throw of 2004: What was the defense? Who was open? Why did you throw it? The message: Don't try to do so much.

After that season-opening loss, he directed the Broncos to 14 victories in their next 16 games. He beat defending-champion New England twice. He completed 62 percent of his passes for 18 touchdowns, just six interceptions and a gaudy 7.6 yards per attempt. The guy with 141 interceptions in eight seasons went 229 attempts this season without one of those trademark Plummer picks, without trying to force a pass for another of his 21 career fourth-quarter comebacks.

True, he had quite an offense around him. Halfbacks Mike Anderson and Tatum Bell came 79 yards short of joining Franco Harris and Rocky Bleier in the double 1,000-yard rusher category. The Broncos trailed in but seven games, and only once by double digits.

Acceptance comes

"He's just played smarter," said receiver Ashley Lelie, who caught 42 passes this season. "That's why we're winning games, because he hasn't been forcing balls, he's been making the right reads."

"From the first year to where he's at right now," Shanahan said, "I've seen him feel a lot more comfortable with the offense, personnel, terminology, and obviously he's been a lot more effective."

The more he hears talk about how he is more careful, more of a manager of the offense, the more he bristles. The more he hears about his appearance -- the fans' unspoken criticism looms like a dark cloud: Elway never had long hair -- the more his bristles grow.

"It's always tough following a legend," Shanahan said, even though Bubby Brister (who played in Pittsburgh after Terry Bradshaw), Gus Frerotte, Steve Beuerlein and the unpopular Griese came before Plummer. "Obviously, the expectations are very high. I think Jake has handled that quite well."

"The people here don't forget John," Van Pelt continued. "He went to, what ... five, six Super Bowls? I don't know how many [five]. Most people think he's one of the best quarterbacks ever. That's a darn imposing figure. And he's still here, around town.

"It's something that Jake has learned to deal with, but it hasn't consumed him."

Not beyond the jaw line and scalp.