The art of the sack/ Broncos love inflicting pain on opposing

NEW ORLEANS - There is that one moment, that split-second, when everything goes silent, when the eyes become the size of manhole covers, when the muscles tighten and the player sucks in his breath in anticipation.

Trevor Pryce lives for that moment.

"It's the best feeling," Pryce said. "For just a second, you realize - yeah, here it comes."

In an instant, everything goes from pause to fast-forward, into a symphony of noise and chaos and eye-popping pain and swirling colors.

The quarterback has been sacked.

It's a great word. Sack. Webster's offers several definitions, and they all seem somehow appropriate. To bag. To dismiss or discharge. To plunder or loot someone else's territory.

It's the ultimate individual victory in what is persistently described as a team sport. It is one man beating another man with strength and speed and balance. It is one man beating another man whose sole job is to not be beaten, to protect the more fragile man behind him.

"A sack is you by yourself," said Pryce, Denver's sack-bagging defensive tackle. "It says, look, I can play the game."

"It's personal," said Denver center Tom Nalen, offering the mindset from the other side. "It's something that's attached to you."

Whatever side you're on, there's no denying the sack's importance to the game. It sends a message. It can alter a game's momentum unlike any other play, even without causing a turnover. It can jar a quarterback into fear. It can jar a quarterback into retirement. It can move a large, rhythm-deprived man to shake his booty in front of millions of people.

"For us, it's the single-most important thing we do," defensive end Harald Hasselbach said. "It's what we hired on for. We're there to stop the run as well, but I think everyone who plays defensive line knows that all the glory and all the accolades come with rushing the passer."

It's an art, really. Large men spend five days every week deciphering the best way to get to that week's quarterback. Hall-of- fame careers are built simply on the ability to chase and capture the quarterback. It's football's ultimate act of barbarism. Sleeping, eating and breathing only get in the way of the main goal: Inflicting pain.

"You go to a quarterback, you want to beat him up," veteran defensive end Lester Archambeau said. "You blitz a quarterback, half the thing isn't just to get the sack, but to knock the living crap out of the quarterback. He's got to pay his dues. And if he can't get up and throw the ball the next time, all the much better for the defense."

Offensive tackle Tony Jones is one of the best in the business. But he admits his toughest test in years will come today when his Broncos face the Saints in the Louisiana Superdome. With 55 sacks already, the Saints are on pace to break the all-time single-season record of 72, set by the 1984 Bears. Jones said the front four of the Saints, the defensive line, is as good as any he's seen in his 13 seasons in the NFL.

Football writer Phil Barber once wrote that offensive linemen "are the only athletes in any major American sports who are utterly without individual statistics."

"Sacks allowed" isn't an official NFL statistic. But it is kept.

"As an offensive lineman you can say, 'He gave up this many sacks,'" Nalen said. "It's a stat that we have."

But you can't look it up.

"It's kept in the head."

That's why Nalen and guards Dan Neil and Lennie Friedman have spent the past week studying the tendencies of tackles Norman Hand and La'Roi Glover. Glover, with 16 sacks, is the first player in history to win three NFC defensive player of the week honors in the same year. Denver coach Mike Shanahan called him the best defensive lineman in the league.

Jones took home tapes last week showing nothing but right end Joe Johnson, who has 10 sacks. Jones nearly wore out the pause button to examine the moves in freeze-frame.

"I want to take away what he does good and make him do something he doesn't want to do," Jones said. "You don't want to keep playing against his best move every time. Eventually he's going to beat you."

Every defensive lineman has a bag of tricks. Pryce, with 22 sacks over the past two seasons, has three signature moves. He won't say what they are, but he has a favorite. He usually breaks it out once a game.

"It always works," he said. "When we need a sack, if I get single- teamed, it always works."

The Broncos are so concerned about getting to the quarterback that they added a "pass rush specialist" to their coaching staff four seasons ago, in addition to the defensive line coach. Since John Teerlinck's arrival, only two teams, the Saints and Rams, have more sacks than Denver.

"The pass rush disrupts the fulcrum of the offense, which is the quarterback," Hasselbach said. "Break up his rhythm, even if you don't get the sack. If pressure is there, it's enough to do the trick."

Hasselbach makes the process sound complex, and it is, but it's still football's version of the street fight. Fighting to cream the quarterback - "Hey, let's go get the pretty boy," as Archambeau described the rallying cry - is the rawest, purest mini-battle staged on the football field.

It's also a good way to get attention.

"A sack is the only glory a defensive lineman gets," Pryce said. "We don't score touchdowns, we don't get first downs, we don't throw the ball. But get a sack, you feel like you've done all the above."

- John Branch may be reached at jbranch@gazette.com Edited by Larry McFarland; Headline by Scott Gremillion

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