Elway Has Come Full Circle Denver Star Revisits Site Of His Worst Super Bowl

Even Brett Favre knows this is John Elway’s week.

“It’s great for John. I know he wants to win one bad,” says Green Bay’s three-time MVP quarterback, the Elway of the ‘90s. “If we were to lose, what better guy to lose to than John Elway.”

Super Bowl week began Sunday, seven days before the Packers and Elway’s Broncos play for the NFL title on the same field where 10 years ago Elway was subjected to one of his three Super Bowl nightmares - a 42-10 loss to Washington.

In some ways, that game was the defining moment of Elway’s 0-3 Super Bowl career.

He had lost the year before to Lawrence Taylor, Phil Simms and the New York Giants. He lost two years later to Joe Montana, Jerry Rice, Ronnie Lott and the San Francisco 49ers.

But these were Joe Gibbs’ starless Redskins who beat the Broncos on the turf of what was then Jack Murphy Stadium - those were the days before high-tech companies bought naming rights to football fields. This week, it will be “Jack Murphy Field” at Qualcomm Stadium.

And this was one of two times in the NFC’s 13-year Super Bowl winning streak in which an AFC team was favored - by 3 points in the closing line.

So all the Redskins did was break the Super Bowl record for breaking records.

Doug Williams, who recently took over for Eddie Robinson as the coach at Grambling, was the first black quarterback to start a Super Bowl. He spent the week attempting to answer questions like, “How long have you been a black quarterback?” He then finished it by throwing for 340 yards and four TDs - both records broken two years later by Montana against Elway’s Broncos.

Timmy Smith, unknown before the game, ran for a record 204 yards - that one still stands - then dropped back into obscurity. And Ricky Sanders caught 193 yards worth of passes, a record that lasted only until Rice got 215 a year later against Cincinnati.

The stars of that team? Probably the offensive line - “the Hogs,” who won three Super Bowls with three different quarterbacks in Gibbs’ time there.

Elway could only stand and watch during that game as the Washington offense zoomed toward the end zone, scoring 35 points in 13 minutes during the second quarter - another record, of course.

“Nineteen plays and 35 points from a guy who wasn’t even in the league two years later,” Elway says of Williams, who retired prematurely because of injuries. “That’s kind of mind-boggling.

This week, it’s Elway who will try to boggle the Packers’ minds as he tries to avoid tying Buffalo’s Jim Kelly for the worst record by a starting quarterback in a Super Bowl - 0-4.

If he loses, it would drop the record of the vaunted quarterback class of 1983 to 0-10 - Miami’s Dan Marino (1985) and New England’s Tony Eason (1986) have lost one apiece. That runs concurrently with the 13-game losing streak the AFC is trying to break - its last victory came after the 1983 season, when the Raiders, then in Los Angeles, beat the Redskins 38-9.

The Broncos, naturally, enter the week a 13-point underdog to the Packers, who last year beat New England 35-21.

But at least Elway, now 37, has some weapons other than himself. There’s Terrell Davis, who ran for 1,750 yards to finish second in the NFL this season to Barry Sanders, and a defense that’s bigger and more physical than the defenses of the ‘80s.

“This is definitely the best-rounded team I’ve been to the Super Bowl with,” he says.

It’s also the first time he’s been the sentimental favorite.

His first two times he was the golden boy with the golden - make that slingshot - arm. Those games amounted to Elway vs. the Giants and Elway vs. the Redskins. The third time, he was a co-star with Montana.

Now he’s in his final years - perhaps his final year if the Broncos can win - a last hope for the class of ‘83 against a new generation symbolized by Favre, another mobile quarterback with a shotgun arm.

“I hope that when I’m 37 I can move around like him,” Favre says. “At 37, he’s still better than most of the guys in this league.”

This is probably Elway’s last chance for the ring. And it’s most definitely his week.