MIAMI – John Elway had pitched his perfect game on football’s grandest stage, climaxing his second consecutive Super Bowl championship and – likely – capping his storied 16-year career. And now it was time for him to take a final bow.
So, with less than a minute remaining in the Broncos’ 34-19 Super Bowl XXXIII rout of the Falcons last night at an electrically charged Pro Player Stadium, coach Mike Shanahan, like a baseball manager, gave his pitcher the hook.
The moment, as if choreographed by Shanahan as a final act, truly was one for the ages as Elway was relieved by Bubby Brister so he could make that glorious walk to the sideline the way a winning pitcher gets to walk from the mound to the dugout with the lead in the seventh game of the World Series.
The game well in hand, the ring about the be fitted and all fear-of-losing stress behind him, Elway soaked in the cheers and adulation in what’ll surely be a slow-motion memory for him.
“That is the kind of walk you dream about as a kid,” Elway would say long after his Broncos dominated the Falcons and defended their Super Bowl title, becoming the seventh team in NFL history to repeat as champions and the first since the 1993-94 Cowboys.
“That walk,” said Elway, who was voted unanimously as the Super Bowl MVP for the first time in his career after completing 18 of 29 passes for 336 yards, one TD and one INT, “I will remember that walk for the rest of my life.”
It’s the way they script the closing scenes of momentous occasions on the big screen in Hollywood.
The party that’s sure to go into this week and beyond actually began at the start of the fourth quarter. Elway’s walk was the coronation, a gift.
The beginning of the fourth quarter is when the Broncos, showing the talent, resolve and dominance that places them among the elite teams of the ’90s, began to separate themselves from the suddenly mistake-prone Falcons, who turned over the ball four times.
The game was decided in a couple of explosive flurries that the Broncos thrived on and the Falcons failed to survive.
The first game-changing moment came when Atlanta’s reliable kicker, Morten Andersen, pushed a 26-yard FG wide right with the Falcons trailing 10-3. The miss stunned the Atlanta sideline and the capacity crowd of 74,803.
As all parties were just catching their breath from the rare Andersen miss, Denver took the game by the jugular.
On the very next play after the missed FG, Elway, operating from his own 20-yard line, faked a handoff left, rolled right on a bootleg, stopped, planted his feet and rifled a pass to WR Rod Smith up the field.
Smith, running past Falcons’ FS Eugene Robinson at about midfield as if Robinson were jogging in a wading pool, caught the Elway missile at the Atlanta 40 and sprinted into the end zone for a shocking 17-3 Broncos’ lead.
Whether the shamed Robinson – who’d been arrested on a charge of soliciting an undercover officer for oral sex the night before the game – was guilty of letting his jumbled mind wander isn’t known.
But aggressive Denver knew when and where to attack, and it changed the complexion of what had been a tight game.
“That was putting the knife to the neck of the Dirty Bird about to slit it’s throat,” Denver backup RB Derek Loville said. “We knew they would give up, because they had doubts about beating the defending champions.”
To Atlanta’s credit, it answered the score by Smith, who finished the half with four catches for 144 yards and the game with 5-for-152, with a 28-yard Andersen FG, cutting the lead to 17-6, where it ended at the half.
But, because they got careless with the ball, the Falcons never got closer.
The next killer sequence for Atlanta, which finished 16-3 and had a 12-game winning streak stopped last night, came when Denver CB Darrien Gordon made the first of his two INTs.
Picking off Chris Chandler (19-of-35, 219, one TD, three INTs) with 1:46 remaining in the third quarter, Gordon returned the ball 58 yards and set up the second of two rushing TDs by unheralded FB Howard Griffith for a 24-6 Bronco lead, igniting the repeat party in full force.
“That’s when we cut the jugular,” Loville said.
The Broncos rubbed it in on the Falcons’ next series, with Gordon picking off Chandler again, this time returning the ball 50 yards. For Gordon, who picked off Vinny Testaverde twice in the AFC Championship win over the Jets, it was his fourth INT in his final two games of the year.
Three plays later, Elway, at 38 the oldest starting QB in Super Bowl history, scored on a two-yard designed quarterback draw for a 31-6 Bronco lead.
It was Elway’s fourth career rushing TD in the Super Bowl, second only to Dallas’ Emmitt Smith, who has five.
“His performance, the MVP, the second Super Bowl win speaks for itself,” Shanahan said. “I don’t know if John’s going to come back. I don’t think he will. But, if you’re going to go out, this was some way to go out.
“I know we’ve got a bunch of guys in there [the locker room] trying to talk him into a three-peat.”
No team in NFL history has won three consecutive Super Bowls, and Elway conceded after the game that the prospect of making history and winning three in a row “definitely puts a kink into the thinking on what I decide to do next year.”
The Falcons, who were making their first Super Bowl appearance in the 33-year franchise history, know what they’ll be doing next year – trying to get back to the Super Bowl, which will be played in Atlanta.
For Falcons’ coach Dan Reeves, who had quadruple bypass heart surgery on Dec. 14 and is one of the class people who’s ever been a part of this game, it was an unceremonious fourth Super Bowl loss without a win.
“They don’t get any easier,” Reeves said. “The more [missed chances] you have, the more they hurt. It’s like that movie ‘Chariots of Fire’ when the guy says, ‘I don’t want to run if I can’t win.’ Well, you aren’t going to win if you don’t run.
“We’ll try to fight for home-field advantage in the Super Bowl next year.”
Somewhat lost in the dramatics of Elway’s heroics and Terrell Davis rushing for 102 yards on an Atlanta defense that had allowed one 100-yard rusher in the previous 26 games entering last night, is what the Denver defense accomplished in this postseason.
In three playoff games, the Broncos, known most for their prolific offense, allowed a total of 32 points, including only two touchdowns. “I always go back to what John Wooden said,” said Bronco defensive coordinator Greg Robinson, formerly of the Jets. “Great teams keep getting better.”
The Broncos, who finished this year 17-2 and have won more games (46) in the last three years than any team in NFL history has won in a three-year span, were great last night.
And the greatest moment was that well-deserved walk Elway took from the Denver huddle to the Denver sideline. It was a snapshot that’ll last a lifetime.
