Denver’s Win Was Just One More Stunner

They said it

National columnists and sportswriters have their say on the Super Bowl:

Mitch Albom, Detroit Free Press Well, if the Pope can visit Cuba, the Unabomber can confess, and the President can be accused of making whoopee with an intern, I guess the AFC can win a Super Bowl.

Debunked. Dethroned. Demystified. No more NFC domination. No more annual blowouts. Only a game in which John Elway ran better than he passed, in which Brett Favre couldn’t make a crucial wide open completion, in which a wild card team won the championship and a sixth-round draft choice who once dreamed of making the taxi squad instead won the MVP award - only a game which could give all that could give you this: a major upset, and maybe the best Super Bowl ever.

“I have only four words,” screamed Pat Bowlen, owner of the Broncos, as he stood on the victory stand with the trophy. He turned to the player on his left and hollered, “THIS … ONE’S … FOR … JOHN! …

Melissa Isaacson, Chicago Tribune

Walk away now.

That’s what logic and emotion and the exploding sky above him had to be telling John Elway on Sunday night.

It is what the rules on fairy-tale endings dictate, what his fans and his coaches and the teammates who carried him off the field have suspected and feared.

It is too perfect, too rare.

Forget closure. Who gets to dictate the perfect exit, a crystallized memory wrapped up, hermetically sealed and suitable for framing?

An underdog victory. A dramatic victory. Good God, a Super Bowl victory.

No one is granted these moments. And he should resist them all.

How can he not leave?

William C. Rhoden, New York Times

A pro football coach in Green Bay will never overtake the ghost of Vince Lombardi. But Lombardi had advantages when it came to building a dynasty. He was one of many lords in a feudal era when players were in relative bondage.

Today, players are not tethered as tightly to the land. The lack of guaranteed contracts in the National Football League is still a hammer over their heads, but the good players can move. What counts in the 1990s is knowing when to make that move; knowing how long is too long. Careers are fragile, and dynasties are elusive.

Should Mike Holmgren stay in Green Bay? In the late 1960s, Lombardi wrote a book called “Run to Daylight.” In these lush but fragile times, an appropriate sequel for Holmgren might be “Take the Money and Run.”

Bernie Lincicome, Chicago Tribune

It’s OK to exhale now.

Thirteen years is a very long time for the AFC to hold its breath, longer for Denver quarterback John Elway and longer still for a forgotten time zone where the top of the world is outside the window.

Sitting there are the Denver Broncos, finally and indelibly, implausibly and properly, a team for the ages, most of them extinct.

“You wonder,” Elway said, “if you’ll run out of years.”

Tony Kornheiser, Washington Post

What a game, huh? Best Super Bowl ever. Elway got his ring. Brett Favre and Antonio Freeman were fabulous. Terrell Davis was even better - at this point a five-star general would salute him.

It’s Elway, though, who was the centerpiece of this game. He came here as a huge underdog, dragging a painful history of three miserable Super Bowl failures. He couldn’t throw the ball as hard, or as far as he used to - but he was everybody’s sentimental favorite. And so it doesn’t matter that he didn’t have much of a game: 12 of 22 for 123 yards. What matters is that at the end of the game Elway had the ball in his hands and the world at his feet.