The greatest championship ever was won on January 25, 1998, when the Denver Broncos upset the Green Bay Packers in Super Bowl XXXII.
Why do I call it the greatest? The Broncos are my favorite team in any sport: I’d root for them even if I was playing against them. But the stars aligned so well for that team that I will never root for a group of athletes in quite the same way again.
First off, the agony: the 1996 Broncos had burst out of the gates to a scorching 12-1 start and clinched homefield advantage way too early. They began resting players, they said, but perhaps really just screwing around, and I remember a picture in the paper of someone like Alfred Williams trying to kick a field goal in sweats. Not that you can’t relax a little bit, but the Broncos seemed satisfied with their ability to take care of business and were just waiting for the playoffs to begin. John Elway, the 36-year-old quarterback in his fourteenth year, would finally get the chance to return to the Super Bowl, which he’d lost three times in his career, his last trip coming in the first month of the nineties. Though the Green Bay Packers were also very good, this appeared to be Elway’s best team and his one last shot at a ring.
In the wild-card round, the Jacksonville Jaguars, a nearly brand-new expansion team, upset the aging Buffalo Bills. Pretty cool game, and I remember liking them. The Jaguars, led by lefty Q Mark Brunell and powerhouse runner Natrone Means, traveled into Mile High to face the Broncos the next Saturday. The Jags had no reason to be rusty, but Denver scored the first touchdown. Jason Elam’s PAT was blocked, but Denver scored the next touchdown, too. However, the Broncos were missing just a little crispness, as they went for two, but Elway’s pass, a little behind Shannon Sharpe, fell incomplete. I remember that 12-0 lead, an awesome start that to others felt ominous.
So many things went wrong in that game: defensive tackle Michael Dean Perry couldn’t get off the field, promising young corner Tory James got hurt, and the defense couldn’t tackle Means to save the dream. I’ll never forget the end, when Elway marched out onto the field, his team down, his chances dwindling, his shot at career redemption slipping through his fingers with time running out in the fourth quarter. Up popped the famous graphic: Elway’s X-number of career fourth-quarter comebacks, and how he’d done so, famously, even in the playoffs, where he was supposedly so awful. I remember he looked ready, but the rest of the team didn’t, and the comeback never came. They lost. It was heartbreaking: Elway would never get his ring. (Until he did, one year later.)
Another reason why the ’97 team’s win was so sweet was Denver’s head coach, Mike Shanahan, the local assistant made good. When I was a kid we had Broncos team posters on the walls some years, with pictures of all the players and all the coaches. Shanahan had left the Broncos to coach the Raiders, and later worked with Steve Young on the 49ers, but even at my young age he was literally a household name at the Gores and I knew he was a very good coach. That he was the one to lead Elway to the promised land just felt extra sweet. The Mastermind felt like a homegrown hero.
Also, the timing was perfect for me personally: I was in high school when the Broncos broke through, at a time when I was falling in love with sports and coming into my own in all kinds of ways. I got to read about the Broncos in the paper every single day, and the Denver Post sports section at the time was just loaded. The beat reporter for the Broncos was Adam Schefter, who’s only gone on to national acclaim in the job. (On the night Mark McGwire hit his 62nd home run, I met Schefter at his and Terrell Davis’ book signing at the Tattered Cover in Denver. Not sure whether I miss Davis or the Cover the most. Schefter seemed genuinely appreciative that someone even spoke to him, but I really was a fan.)
Really, though, it’s all about the players. And that ’97-’98 team had so many players on it that I’d been rooting for for years. Forgive me if you find this exercise mind-numbing but it blows my mind, even now, how many members of that team I had liked forever.
Small but tough: Let’s start with Tyrone Braxton, no. 34, a 5-11 cornerback who had moved to safety at that late stage in his career. He was somehow known for being undersized and slow, which doesn’t feel entirely accurate in retrospect, but he was a terrific pass defender and had picked off nine passes for the team that lost to Jacksonville. He spent one year in Miami and later remarked that while Elway was a real leader, Dan Marino also said hi to him…once.
His running mate was Steve Atwater, the more famous partner-in-crime who was the next (the last?) in a long line of outstanding Denver safeties. Atwater went to eight Pro Bowls, made the league’s All-Decade team for the ’90s, and belongs in the Hall of Fame. As a young kid, I remember hearing about an unstoppable running back on the Chiefs, a massive guy we’d have to face for years with no hope of bringing down…but then Atwater stepped in and stopped all that.
Also in the d-backfield: Darrien Gordon, who returned two punts for touchdowns in a single game against Carolina that year, a game in which he raised his return average to what was then the highest in NFL history.
The linebackers rocked, too. The young John Mobley was a beast, and knocked down Brett Favre’s last pass in the Super Bowl. Bill Romanowski, though now deep in disfavor after all kinds of intensity-gone-wrong, was absolutely beloved in Denver. Romo was the kind of ferocious player who personified the term linebacker. In San Francisco he’d gained a reputation for his devotion: when receivers like Jerry Rice would finish practice routes by sprinting the rest of the field, Romo would be right there, running behind them. We learned before the ’97 season that he’d hung a picture of Brunell where he’d see it every day to fire him up before his workouts. I loved it then and I love it now: the passion, the honesty, and the desire in that.
The defensive line was deep and star-studded. On one end was Alfred Williams, captain of CU’s national championship team, a Butkus Award winner, and a force in the NFL. On the other was Neil Smith, a longtime division rival who came straight to Denver when the Chiefs broke his heart and cut him. In between was Keith Traylor, who played incredibly in the road playoff win over Kansas City the week after his mother died. I can still remember seeing him on TV in the locker room, not-quite-devastated but inspiring. Other players, like pass-rush specialist Maa Tanuvasa (a pass-rush specialist on a team with Williams and Smith!), would have been starters in other towns or years.
The offensive line was a thing of beauty, the AFC Offensive Player of the Week after the revenge win over Jacksonville in the playoffs. Gary Zimmerman, Mark Schlereth, Tom Nalen, Brian Habib, and Tony Jones made up my favorite group of blockers ever assembled. I still remember when I found out we had Zimmerman. Zim was a tackle so good that even as a kid, I’d known who he was. I was so excited to find out years later he was on our roster. Though he had a mild Brett Favre streak in his later years as he waffled on retirement (a little different as he was supposedly unable to lift his hands above his shoulders), he could still block on the left like no one else. It may have been the first case where my team ended up with someone I already loved, as I later experienced with Jake Plummer, Allen Iverson, and Shammond Williams. Jones was an absolute stud who dominated from the left side of the line a year later when Zim retired. Plus I told him where to eat lunch once.
Sharpe, the tight end, was already a huge star in Denver as Elway’s breakout target. I remember his picture on McDonald’s cups. He was so strong, fast, and an exceptional trash-talker. He was one of my very favorite players. I remember wanting him to win it all a second time because he’d given his first ring to his brother Sterling, a fellow NFL star forced by a neck injury to retire early.
The other receivers were Rod Smith and Ed McCaffrey, who later became a 100-catches-each tandem. Both were terrific blockers: Easy Ed had a memorable one in particular on Denver’s go-ahead drive in the Super Bowl against the Packers when he leveled a Green Bay linebacker and pointed at him as he went down. Both were big and physical and had their share of huge catches. Smith was the deep threat, who certainly got more of Elway’s go routes than anyone in the last few years, but Eddie Mac got open deep, too, and sacrificed himself so many times to make catches in traffic, even as he played with ridiculously light padding. I really liked Smith, but everyone loved Ed.
Jason Elam was just a kicker, perhaps, but an offensive threat with range from the wrong side of the field.
Terrell Davis…wow. What can you say? He’s one of the best backs in NFL history. He surely belongs in the Hall of Fame, but if he doesn’t make it, he’s in a more elite club: one of the few players who was ever the best at any position in the league. On the way to Denver’s first Super Bowl win he set a record for the most combined regular season and postseason rushing yards. The next year, he broke it. He broke 100 yards in all seven playoff games in the championship years. He’s widely regarded as the man who finally got Elway his ring. That’s an oversimplification, perhaps, but not exactly false, either.
His lead blocker, Howard Griffith, was awesome, too. Griffith just cleared paths most games, but he scored a touchdown in the conference championship game three straight years and scored twice in the Super Bowl against Atlanta. He blocked for something like five different 1,000-yard rushers. Even better, Blaine got me his autograph.
Griffith’s backup was Detron Smith, the Human Bowling Ball, who supposedly blew guys up while covering kickoffs, not that you’d ever see it on TV. When I had the immense privilege of seeing the Broncos live against the Jaguars, I watched him, and all the stories were true. I can still see one Jag starting to backpedal once he recognized his fate.
The greatest of all Broncos, and the most meaningful of all the Super Bowl champions that year, was John Elway. He joined the Broncos in 1983 after forcing a trade from the Colts, and stayed in Denver his whole career. Technically I was around for some Broncos games before he joined the team, but I had never known the team without him.
Elway had led the team to the Super Bowl three times, losing to the Giants, Redskins, and 49ers. The 1996 team felt like a gift. We’d had some good teams, and even went to an AFC Championship game against Buffalo in the ’90s which we lost after Elway got hurt, but we’d been up and down and didn’t look like we’d ever make it back to the big show before Elway retired. Football is a very young man’s game and Elway, who was in some ways revitalized under Shanahan, was clearly losing some of the extraordinary physical skills that had set him apart. When he lost that chance I thought it was all over.
Growing up in Colorado a Broncos fan was kind of weird. Almost everyone liked the Broncos, though at times kids would make fun of Elway, or of me, for liking him. He was beloved, had the rocket arm and made plays no one else could, but he’d lost in that Super Bowl again and again. While our defense had been universally awful, surrendering 39, 42, and 55 points in those loses, Elway hadn’t been lights out, either. For his career, though, he had great numbers and durability, and the only thing he was missing was the ring.
In XXXII 7 became the oldest player ever to score a touchdown in the Super Bowl, and while he didn’t throw a touchdown pass, he gave it all he had. Elway finally earned his ring. Like Traylor’s play just a few weeks before, Elway’s overcoming the odds at the tail end of his career is inspiring to me in a way that transcends football. Elway was one of the most physically-gifted athletes of all time at his position, only the most significant one on the field, and he still worked fifteen more years after years of pre-professional preparation before he achieved his goal and had his career deemed a success. Kind of good to think about if you’ve ever spent year after frustrating day on something that means the world to you.
As far as I’m concerned, it’s the only way to win a championship. The next season, when the Broncos repeated, was one big exercise in don’t-take-this-for-granted, but it was almost impossible not to. Seinfeld says we root for laundry, but I don’t. It’s all about the fear, the fire, the story, and the triumph. It’s the same reason the Avs’ 2001 Stanley Cup was a million times sweeter than the one they moved in with in 1996. Only a few teams, players, and fanbases really know what it’s like: Walter Payton’s 1985 Bears and Boston’s 2004 Red Sox are some of the few that probably resonated in the same way. As sad as I was after the Broncos missed the Super Bowl a few years ago, I’ll never care about the team as much as I did that day in January years ago.
* * *
What does this have to do with anything? Nothing, and everything. This year’s Broncos still look playoff-bound, even after the last two weeks, but they probably aren’t on the short list of teams truly in contention.
The real problem, minor though it is, is how little I cared about Pittsburgh’s demolition Monday night. No, I’m not a teenager any more, so I don’t really internalize the losses anyway. But there has just been way too much turnover on this roster this year. Outside of Champ Bailey, there’s probably no one on this team I love as much as any of the guys I listed above. Okay, that’s a stretch; I probably like Eddie Royal and Elvis Dumervil more than Habib or someone, but it’s close. The thing is, if Kyle Orton & Josh McD came in and won it all in year one, it just wouldn’t be that cool. It wouldn’t mean that much. It’s like anything in life. The more you struggle, the more you appreciate. And years of struggling together helps teams come through when their moment finally comes. Losing, as Michael taught us, becomes a good thing.
Otherwise, you’re just rooting for the Yankees.
