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Seven on 7

John Elway has provided fond memories for SI's writers
Seven of them reminisce ...

Issue date: February 10, 1999 Special Collector's Edition: 1998 Denver Broncos

Knowing his place

The man with the best perspective on the John Elway legacy is John Elway

By Peter King

It was the weekend of the game that most of us figured would be John Elway's last in Denver, and it was touching everyone in different ways. Consider, for example, his coach, Mike Shanahan, whom I've always thought of as a personable yet steely commander. In the roughly 30 conversations I've had with Shanahan over the years, I had never seen him become even a little bit emotional--until the eve of the Broncos' AFC championship meeting with the New York Jets on Jan. 17.

That night I sat with Shanahan in the tiny eight-by-eight-foot control booth that bridges the Broncos' offensive and defensive meeting rooms. We were alone in the booth, which was dimly lit by fluorescent light filtering through the windows from the adjacent rooms. I asked the Denver coach if this was it for his quarterback.

"I think it is," Shanahan said, a sad smile creasing his lips. "But I don't want to bring it up with him. John doesn't want that attention. Never has."

I asked him what it meant to have been Elway's coach during his best years. What it meant to him now that the end was apparently near.

"I've thought about how lucky I am to have been around him," Shanahan said. "Truly lucky. You know, everybody thinks this game is so physical. If it was just that, John could play two, three more years. But there are so many other things involved, things that wear on him."

He paused for a few seconds, trying to think of the precise thing he wanted to say--either that, or he was trying not to choke up. I wasn't sure. Finally he continued. "But you know what the greatest thing is about John? The fact that every action he takes, everything he does, says one thing: The game is bigger than John Elway."

The next day, after Elway's 128th start and 103rd victory at Mile High Stadium, I followed the Broncos quarterback through his usual postgame media maze. It was one of the few times I've felt sorry for an athlete after a game. I've always figured that players are going to be heroes sometimes, goats other times, and it's part of the game; revel in it, face it. By my count, Elway had been asked 26 questions that had to do with retirement. Number 26 came from a serious-sounding TV guy, who asked, "John, what about the drama of playing almost certainly your last game against your old coach, Dan Reeves, and then--"

At that moment, the crow's-feet at the corners of Elway's eyes seemed to grow a quarter inch. He interrupted the guy in mid-sentence.

"Will you stop it?" Elway said, his voice not angry, just annoyed. "I haven't decided if I'm retiring. I won't till after the Super Bowl. Can we please all just concentrate on the game, not on me?"

As Elway dressed at his home locker for perhaps the last time, I knew we'd all remember what a great player he was. But I hoped we'd also recognize the way that Elway would want to be remembered: as a player who would want his football epitaph to read, simply, THE GAME WAS BIGGER THAN JOHN ELWAY.