Joshua Duplechian for The New York Times
The former quarterback Jake Plummer, on a handball court, retired at 32 to live in Idaho and get away from football.
On the eve of the N.F.L. season, inside a modest, newly purchased home in East Boulder, Colo., the former Denver Broncos quarterback Jake Plummer mounted a photograph of himself breaking free for a touchdown for Arizona State in the Rose Bowl on Jan. 1, 1997.
This was a big step. His previous home did not have any signs of his achievements as an athlete. Five years ago, Plummer could not pack up the mementos from his successful college career and his 10 seasons in the N.F.L. quickly enough. Plummer went 39-15 as a starter for the Broncos, but he was benched and then traded the season after taking them to within a game of the Super Bowl. Instead of honoring the trade and taking $5.3 million to play for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, Plummer retired at 32 and essentially disappeared from public view.
A quarterback known for his daring decisions and scrambling abilities, Plummer moved away with his wife, Kollette, a former Broncos cheerleader, to a remote pocket of northern Idaho.
"I had to get away; I wouldn't say I had social anxiety, but the common fan or the regular person would probably not understand it," he said in a recent interview.
"It's everyone's dream to be famous," he said, but when you are in a public restroom "and the guy wants to shake your hand, it's like, O.K."
Now, Plummer is tepidly toeing the edge of the spotlight that shines on football-crazed Denver, incited all the more by Peyton Manning's arrival. He wants to reclaim a part of himself that he once left behind.
"I was out of it for so long, I guess purging the game from my system," he said.
Plummer signed with the Broncos in 2003 after six seasons with the Arizona Cardinals. He led Denver to the playoffs three times, but in a city where John Elway became a legend, Plummer was never fully embraced.
Plummer feuded with Coach Mike Shanahan and had troubles off the field, including cursing at a gossip columnist and making an obscene gesture toward a fan.
Plummer says he is still irked by the way Broncos fans booed when the offense struggled early in games.
"It's like, what is wrong with you people?" he said. "This is a four-quarter game."
In the playoffs, Plummer lost to Manning's Colts in consecutive years and then to Ben Roethlisberger's Steelers in the 2006 A.F.C. championship game.
Plummer's affinity for improvisation and throwing on the run clashed with Shanahan's offensive philosophy, and toward the end of the 2007 season, Shanahan benched Plummer in favor of the rookie Jay Cutler.
The trade to the Buccaneers offered a fresh start, but the fun of the game was gone.
"A lot of guys would do it just for the money," Shanahan said. "Jake Plummer wasn't that type of guy. He had strong convictions in what he believed in, and I respect him for it."
In retirement, Plummer could be more Huck Finn and less Johnny Unitas. Rather than dissecting a playbook in training camp, Plummer hiked with his brother for six days through the Sawtooth Range in Idaho without a map. Plummer drank beer, attended reggae concerts and passed time at his lake house.
Yet he still had a craving for competition. So he devoted himself to a family tradition: handball.
Plummer's father picked up the game while working at a lumber warehouse and taught it to his sons. In the past 10 years, Plummer's older brothers, Brett and Eric, have combined to win six Idaho singles titles. Jake was part of a team that won the 2010 Idaho doubles championship. Plummer loved the game so much that in October 2008, he started his own leg of the American professional tour called the Helluva Handball Bash in Coeur d'Alene, Idaho.
"Handball is kind of cliquey," said David Vincent, the executive director of the World Players of Handball, a nonprofit organization that runs the pro tour in the United States. "He was able to within two years create a tradition in a city that never played handball. I've never seen that."
Plummer says he wants to play handball into his 70s. So in April, he began an 18-month hiatus to have surgery to repair his hips, injured from drop-stepping for a decade in the N.F.L. While sidelined, however, he realized he still missed football.
"Like my wife told me, 'There's opportunities and you never do them, but start living your life, start doing this stuff,' " Plummer said. " 'One day, you're going to be dead and gone and not have these opportunities anymore. Or you're going to be so far gone from the game and such an old has-been that they're not going to want to have you around.' "
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