SAN DIEGO — They tore apart history and wrote their own. For the first time in 38 years, for the first time ever, the Denver Broncos are masters of the football universe.
World champions.
It has a ring to it.
In a Super Bowl XXXII classic, the Broncos played a classic game, mastering football, conquering the sport, humbling the defending world champions. The Broncos beat the odds and the Packers 31-24. They halted the AFC’s ignominious 13-game Super-Bowl losing streak, became the second wild-card team ever to win the Super Bowl, notched the second biggest upset in Super Bowl history and, in the process, made an entire city’s heart somersault.
And as Broncos owner Pat Bowlen stood on a postgame platform that made him feel a Mile High, accepting the Vince Lombardi Trophy from NFL commissioner Paul Tagliabue, he delivered a message loud enough for the 69,812 in San Diego’s Qualcomm Stadium and everyone partying across Colorado to hear.
“There’s one thing I want to say here tonight, and it’s only four words,” Bowlen said. “This one’s for John.”
Wonder boys come and go. But Elway remained. And endured.
And, in the end, triumphed.
“That,” said a teary-eyed Elway, who just might have wrapped up his 15-year Hall-of-Fame career with the most memorable game of his career, “was the ultimate win.”
Elway’s numbers did not match up to MVP running back’s Terrell Davis, he of the 157 yards and Super-Bowl record three touchdowns, including the 1-yard game-winner with 1:45 remaining. But winners don’t count numbers.
Not until Broncos linebacker John Mobley swatted away a fourth-and-6 Packers pass from Brett Favre to tight end Mark Chmura with 28 seconds remaining could Denver celebrate. Mobley ran downfield, the Broncos’ sideline spilled onto the field, and champagne flowed into the night.
“Who cut the cheese?” Broncos linebacker Keith Burns screamed. “WHO CUT THE CHEESE?”
The Broncos, 12-point underdogs, the second biggest underdogs in Super Bowl history to win, did. Now they are the NFL’s big cheese. And the losers are a local story that only Green Bay cares about now.
The win was for Elway who had won support, admiration, games, hearts, everything but a Super Bowl. It was for the trumpeted Class of ’83. It was for coach Mike Shanahan’s three-year plan that built a champion from rubble. It was for Bowlen, who had compared the feeling of losing a Super Bowl to the feeling of losing his father. It was for papa Jack Elway, Denver’s director of pro scouting. It was for a new stadium that now can be called the House The 1997 Broncos Built.
It was for the 53 Broncos, and the rest of the organization, who have been working for their shining moment since July and a whole lot longer. It was for all the Broncos past who wore predominantly orange uniforms but never a Super-Bowl ring. It was for the American Football Conference that no longer has to answer questions about its 13-year inferiority complex as if it were sitting in a psychologist’s chair rather than a press conference.
And mostly this Super Bowl XXXII win that Denver will talk about from now until September, and beyond, was for a city whose heart has pumped orange all these years only to have felt it broken on four other super-miserable Sundays.
“Oh man,” said Broncos defensive end Alfred Williams, who now has won a national championship with the University of Colorado and a world championship with Denver. “Our city must be going crazy. I was there when the Avalanche had their parade after they won the Stanley Cup. And all I can say is, I can’t wait until we have our parade.”
At the front of it should be Davis, the soldier who beat down the oncoming migraine Sunday night as well as a stout Packers defensive front. Davis is scheduled to be at Disneyland today, on the “Tonight Show with Jay Leno” tonight, and burned into the Packers’ psyche and history for a long time.
After a first quarter in which he rushed nine times for 64 yards and a 1-yard touchdown run that gave Denver its first score of the game, tying the score at 7, Davis took a blow to the head from Packers safety Eugene Robinson and defensive tackle Santana Dotson. It triggered the symptoms of a migraine for Davis. He lost his vision. The Broncos lost their way. With Davis out of the lineup, the Broncos had three second-quarter carries for zero rushing yards. Meanwhile the Packers strung together a half-ending 17-play, 95-yard long march, culminating when Chmura beat safety Tyrone Braxton — the same player beaten on Green Bay’s first touchdown of the game, a 22-yard strike to wide receiver Antonio Freeman — to narrow Denver’s lead to 17-14.
The only consolation for Denver? The Dihydroergotamine nasal spray that Broncos trainers treated Davis with halted his migraine. Davis was able to return for a second half in which he would run for 93 more yards and two more touchdowns. The only headaches going around were hitting the Packers’ defense. Davis ran on a defense many said couldn’t be run on.
“Like I told the students at Lincoln,” Davis said of his San Diego high school where his jersey was retired last week. “Don’t listen when someone tells you that you can’t do it.”
Davis did it. He was instrumental on Denver’s two second-half touchdowns, scoring both of them on 1-yard runs, one giving Denver a 24-17 lead, the other their 31-24 lead. But then, fittingly, Elway also was instrumental. He engineered a 92-yard drive that featured maybe the highlight play of his career.
On a third and 6 from the Packers’ 12, Elway scrambled, dived, collided with Packers Pro Bowl safety LeRoy Butler and wound up with 8 yards and a first down. Thirty-seven-year-old quarterbacks are not supposed to be duplicating the moves of the helicopters that flew over Broncos practices last week. But then, no other 37-year-old quarterback besides John Unitas had ever won the Super Bowl.
“You could just see it in his eyes how badly he wanted it,” Broncos wide receiver Ed McCaffrey said.
The Broncos had a chance to ice the game and the champagne. On the ensuing kickoff after Davis’ second touchdown run, Broncos safety Tony Veland hit return man Freeman and forced a fumble that cornerback Tim McKyer recovered on the Packers’ 22. But on the ensuing play, Elway tied a Super Bowl record he did not want any part of.
Throwing to Smith, Elway instead threw an end-zone interception to safety Robinson. The Packers turned the interception into a tie game, when Freeman did a Yancey Thigpen on Broncos cornerback Darrien Gordon and beat him on three successive plays, the final one a 13-yard touchdown pass that tied the score at 24. But the Broncos had Davis. And they had a defense that forced Favre into two turnovers that led to 10 first-half points; a defense that stopped Green Bay on its final series the way it stopped Kansas City,
And then Elway had it. They all had it. Denver’s first NFL championship.
A season that had great expectations and great expectorations … ruptured biceps and torn triceps … snowmobiles in Denver and helicopters in San Diego … crushing road losses in Kansas City and Pittsburgh and even bigger road wins back in Kansas City and Pittsburgh on a Revenge Tour … will be saluted through the winter and beyond.
“Nobody gave us a chance,” said Broncos linebacker Bill Romanowski, the great “expectorator” who won his third Super Bowl. “But we knew in our hearts that we were the best team.”
All season long, Shanahan had compared the Broncos’ plight to that of a boxer’s. Like a boxer, the Broncos had many rounds to fight before a decision could be rendered. But one was rendered Sunday night, unanimously, after Denver finished with a 16-4 record.
In the back of the Broncos’ locker room hung a white banner with blue writing that read: “Round 20. Knock ‘Em Out.'”
The Broncos obliged. They knocked out all the history and Packers that stood in their way.
This article was originally published on Monday, Jan. 26, 1998, on Page AA-01 under the headline “Broncos take the fifth behind Elway, Davis”
