Elam goes to the Falcons

This weekend brought sad news for Denver Broncos fans: Jason Elam, the team's long-time kicker and one of the few remaining links to the franchise's Super Bowl championship teams, has signed a four-year, $9 million deal with the Atlanta Falcons.

The article at the link points out one cool fact I'd either missed or forgotten: as of last season, Elam has played in more games than any other player in Broncos history.

Two of Elam's performances stand out in my mind. The first, of course, was his 63-yard field goal during the Broncos' dominant 1998 season. The Broncos were playing the Jacksonville Jaguars, their hated rivals who'd ended their season prematurely in 1996. Yes, the Broncos got sweet revenge in the playoffs in 1997 with a 25-point victory, but the Jaguars were still despised in Denver, and the game was almost Raiders week-like in its buildup, at least for me.

Man, that was one of the most memorable regular season games ever. It was the seventh of the season, a game in which Denver ran its record to 7-0 and in which eventual MVP Terrell Davis crossed the 1,000-yard threshold. But anyway, right before halftime, the Broncos took a delay-of-game penalty, moved back five yards, and gave Elam a shot at immortality.

The kick was true, right down the middle, and probably would have gone in from a few more yards...not that it needed to be any longer to impress. Tremendous and, I should point out, slightly longer than Tom Dempsey's original 63-yarder.

Perhaps even more crucial was Elam's performance in the AFC Championship game against the New York Jets that year. The Broncos were favored in the windy home game, but the Jets took a 10-0 lead early in the second half. John Elway got off to something of a rough start, but I'm pretty sure Vinny Testaverde started off 13-for-13 or something. Just ridiculous. Anyway, following New York's touchdown was the memorable play in which Ed McCaffrey and Rod Smith lined up on the opposite ends of the field from which they were supposed to, followed by Elway's frantic flip-flop signal to them to switch their routes, followed by a 47-yard bomb to McCaffrey. After a touchdown pass to Howard Griffith, Elam kicked off, the ball bounced around, and the Broncos fell on it: it was the longest onside kick I'd ever seen.

On that possession and the next, Elam hit two clutch field goals to regain the lead, and he added another in the fourth. I remember his two field goals not for their distance (though 44 and 48-yard kicks are nice indeed), but because Elam said after the game that he had actually had to aim outside of the uprights and let the wind do the rest. In Elway's last home game, the Broncos were lucky to have a kicker so smart.

Obviously Elam has slipped over the years; his record kick was almost ten years ago, after all, and the Broncos have brought in various kickoff specialists in recent seasons to protect his aging right leg. But he's been rock-solid at a position where shakiness can submarine a team, and he's been incredibly clutch for years and years. It was clear that Elam would be moving on soon anyway, but it's always sad to see a great Bronco go.