“By the world’s standards, he has earned the right to be a prima donna, yet he does everything everybody else does. … He is still humble and committed and I really respect that about him.”MARK SCHLERETH ON JOHN ELWAY’

MIAMI – It is time, before John Elway possibly leaves a field for the last occasion tonight, before his fifth Super Bowl appearance turns into his second victory, before the final numbers that place him in the most exclusive company of only Joe Montana and Dan Marino are crunched, before the last of the uncountable words about one of the most praised athletes of all time are written, that he finally be given the due he deserves.

That is because the most important thing about Elway is overlooked.

“What people don’t know is how charismatic and caring he is,” said Ed McCaffrey. “He is a friend as well as a teammate, and that’s not true for a lot of stars in this league.”

“There is nothing you can’t ask him that he won’t do for you,” said Neil Smith.

“I’ve learned a lot from the way he conducts himself,” said Rod Smith. “He tries just to be a normal guy. It bothers me a lot that somebody who puts his family first can’t do normal family things like takes his kids to the mall.”

“By the world’s standards, he has earned the right to be a prima donna, yet he does everything everybody else does,” said Mark Schlereth. “Running, lifting, he doesn’t miss those things. He is still humble and committed and I really respect that about him.”

The question put to those Broncos was: Is there anything you appreciate about Elway that doesn’t get the attention it should?

In no case did it produce a scramble for faint praise, eyes shifting to the pocket or a fallback to the obvious of how he puts money in theirs. No one even brought up football.

The Broncos would take one of his hard, taut spirals in the chest for Elway, and that, 51,475 regular-season yards and 26 postseason touchdown passes later, says more about him than anything.

They will miss him terribly, even though among the public musings of Elway this past week about the reasons to go and temptations to stay, was his thought that the Broncos are so strong that he wouldn’t be abandoning them.

At the same time, he has wondered if it will be possible to leave on the same high that brought him back for this year.

“I always thought it would be nice to go out a winner, but the thrill of winning the game is really hard to walk away from,” he said. “That will a be a problem if we win this year. I hope to have the same problem.”

If he quits, it will be out of fresh memories of how many days this season he regretted sticking around.

“You get up and you hurt,” he said. “I got banged up a couple of times, and any time you get banged-up ribs, there’s a lot of pain that goes with that. There were times I said, ‘What the heck are you doing?’ And that’s when we were 8-0, 9-0, 10-0, too.

“Of course, in my rookie year I said that every week.”

Check-off. Just a little reminder to himself that if the game has gotten harder physically, Sundays never have been easier.

“The diminished physical skills I don’t think are a big enough factor to retire,” he said. “I don’t want to slide, you always want to be as good as you can be, but our talent makes up for a lot of my weaknesses.

“I can’t run around like I used to, but I think mentally I’m a lot better and am probably throwing the football better than I ever have. I don’t think I’ve lost a lot, honestly.

“I don’t think you ever really want to stop playing. And yeah, the question of what am I going to do afterward and how I’m going to react to not having games is a scary thing. There are going to be a lot of things I’ll miss. But a lot of things I won’t miss, either.”

Such is the way Elway has spoken through a perfectly gracious week, not shutting of retirement questions as a distraction to the game, almost using them as cross-checks towards his decision.

Our gut is that, win or lose today, he is gone. It was a hard decision, fueled mostly by his family’s desires, for him to come back for this season. The rule of thumb is that any football player who begins to question what he has to go through to keep playing is most of the way out the door.

But we also think that other than from a personal standpoint, Elway’s decision is almost moot. It’s going to make only the most marginal of differences in how his career is judged if he leaves with or without a second or third championship.

He’s got the one it looked like he might ever get, that’s the big one. It’s not when he retires that matters, but with how great a sense of fulfillment.

That part already seems assured.

“It makes me go out a lot more positively that I never have to answer that question anymore about not winning a Super Bowl,” he said. “I answered it 10 years straight, so to finally get over the hump last year, it’s just made this whole week a lot more positive.”

So, whether he goes 16 seasons or 17, how does he lose? He is either willing to push his body through another year or he is not. Otherwise, there are no incompletions left in this career, no mental demons to intercept Elway’s happily-ever-after.

There is nothing left to prove, not a whole lot else to be said, except to suggest that the numbers Elway has always placed secondary, even the victories he has made primary, do not credit how close to the perfect quarterback he has been.

“John is the smartest football player I’ve ever been around,” said Bronco offensive coordinator Gary Kubiak. “He is a coach on the field.”

The enduring image of Joe Montana is as the great surgeon. Elway has been the gunslinger with the rifle arm, time and again riding into town in the nick of time to save it.

“Montana had a knack of doing things in a smooth way, said Neil Smith. “John, it seems like he has struggled, always scrambled to make things happen.

“It almost sounds like the stigma of the black quarterback,” said Bronco offensive tackle Harry Swayne. “John’s athletic ability is so great everybody talks about it, but he couldn’t succeed in the system we have without knowing what he was doing.

“The other thing I think they overlook, that you wouldn’t appreciate as much if you weren’t an offensive lineman, is how he moves around in the pocket. He has what you call pocket savvy, feeling the pressure of a rush and getting rid of the ball. He makes you look good in your block.”

The definition of the great player is not his statistics, not even, as evidenced by Dan Marino, his championships. It is how he makes his teammate better, draws their respect and in Elway’s case, their love.

“It’s always been my perspective that I’m just another guy in the locker room, except that I take the snap and hand it off and throw it to certain guys,” Elway said. “No matter how much praise and attention I get, everybody else in that room is as important as I am. I’ve never taken the quarterback position for granted, never put myself above anybody else.”

Such is how he has risen above almost everybody else who has ever taken a snap. That’s how John Elway works, the way it should.