Hard Driver

He sensed his opening and charged into the clear, and then Bubby Brister, a bayou thunderbolt on a Rocky Mountain high, exhaled and told himself, It's all downhill from here. Brister and his bride-to-be, Bonnie Creaghan, were two of the happiest skiers on Aspen Mountain back in February 1994. New Orleans Saints coach Jim Mora had just told Brister, who grew up in Monroe, La., that he was the Saints' quarterback of the future and offered him a three-year, $6 million contract. Ecstatic over his return to his home state, free-agent Brister, coming off a solid season with the Philadelphia Eagles, canceled visits to three other teams and headed to the winter playground of the wealthy while his agent, Jim Steiner, and the Saints fine-tuned the details. For 12 days he and Bonnie lived it up—skiing, sipping cocktails and chilling, at least as much as the NFL's most hyper quarterback could pretend to chill.

The happy couple returned to Monroe on a Tuesday, with a press conference to announce Bubby's signing scheduled at the Saints' headquarters the following afternoon. They threw down their bags, switched on the TV and, within seconds, watched their two-week buzz turn into a three-year bummer. A sportscaster announced that New Orleans had signed quarterback Jim Everett, leaving Brister out in the cold. "No one from the Saints called to tell me," Brister says.

It was all downhill from there, all right. His other opportunities extinguished, Brister slinked his way back to Philadelphia as a $900,000 backup for the 1994 season and then spent '95 as a human tackling dummy for the 3-13 New York Jets. The following fall he was back in Monroe, unable to land so much as a spot on an NFL team's training-camp roster. In football circles Brister's name had become a synonym for washed-up quarterback. Against all reason he kept his Remington 280 arm and lanky (6'3", 205-pound) body in shape. During his daily throwing sessions to anyone not afraid of breaking a couple of fingers, Brister would think, If I could only have one more chance....

Now, five years after his career began sliding down that slippery slope, Brister is riding high again in Colorado, hoping to seize the chance of a lifetime. When the Denver Broncos open their season on Sept. 13 against the Miami Dolphins at Mile High Stadium, in the first game of the post-John Elway era, coach Mike Shanahan's intricate offense likely will be in the hands of a man named Bubby. Not only will Walter Andrew Brister III, slated to be the Broncos' first opening day quarterback other than Elway since 1982, perform in the shadow of history, but he'll also have a chance to make some of his own. If Brister can parlay his two-year Denver apprenticeship—one launched after Broncos linebacker Bill Romanowski, Brister's former Eagles teammate, recommended him to Shanahan—into an unprecedented third consecutive Super Bowl title for the Broncos, all the slights he has endured during his four-team, 13-year NFL odyssey will be washed away. "I went about it in a roundabout way, with a lot of pain and agony along the road, but now I'm here and all that stuff's a wash," says Brister, who turns 37 in August. "There are a lot of people I can prove wrong, but the biggest thing is that I want to prove Mike Shanahan right for taking a chance on me. I'm going to bust my ass for him and for this team, give them every ounce of energy I've got."

In Brister's case, that's a scary prospect. He's a morning radio deejay after too many cups of coffee, a guy who makes playing quarterback look like an X-Games event. Consider the first time Brister appeared for Denver in a game that counted, in the late stages of a season-ending rout of the San Diego Chargers in 1997 He came roaring into the huddle at the start of the fourth quarter with the Broncos leading 31-3 and bellowed, "All right, guys, let's take it 90 yards and score!" Guard Brian Habib, a notorious griper, grimaced and said, "Hey, man, why don't you slow down a little bit?" The other players nodded. "No, you speed your asses up!" Brister barked. The Broncos marched down the field and scored on a six-yard Derek Loville touchdown run, which Loville hoped to celebrate with a spike. But before he could get off the ground, Brister flattened him with a celebratory body slam.

Brister was so restless during his time as a backup in Philadelphia and Denver that he volunteered his services for the kick-off-coverage unit. (The offer was refused.) Brister has been known to head-butt his receivers after completions, pollute NFL Films sound tracks with his R-rated rants against officials, and engage in hand-to-hand combat with larger and stronger opponents, such as Kansas City Chiefs linebacker Derrick Thomas. During one practice in 1988, his first year as the Pittsburgh Steelers' starter, Brister brawled with 260-pound defensive end Keith Gary.

Off the field Brister is similarly amped. All you need to know is that Bonnie regards Bubby as a "carbon copy" of the couple's ebullient daughter, Madeline, who's two months shy of her third birthday. Bonnie says Bubby, like Madeline, "has to take naps every day, because he's so hyper."

The Broncos have pegged Brian Griese, a third-round pick in 1998, as Elway's eventual successor, and in April, shortly before Elway announced his retirement, Denver signed veteran Chris Miller, who quit playing football in 1995 after suffering a series of concussions. But for now Shanahan is entrusting his offensive machine to the popular Brister, who auditioned for the role last year by filling in brilliantly whenever his good buddy Elway went down. Brister started four games and played most of two others, all of which Denver won, and he finished with a higher quarterback rating than Elway did (99.0 to 93.0).

Still, there's a huge difference between stopgap and starter. "Everyone's saying I'm under pressure," Brister said last week after completing his daily three-hour workout at the Broncos' practice facility. "Hell, pressure was playing for the Jets in 1995, knowing you were going to get your ass kicked every week." That disastrous season completed a harsh slide for Brister, who six years earlier had looked like an emerging star when he nearly led the Steelers to a second-round playoff upset of the Broncos at Mile High Stadium. (Elway pulled out a 24-23 comeback victory.) Brister, a third-round pick out of Northeastern Louisiana in '86, had seemingly willed those Steelers to the brink of glory. "We were this ragtag group of young guys," recalls Brian Blankenship, a former Pittsburgh lineman who is Madeline's godfather, "and everything we did revolved around Bubby's excitement and exuberance."

The next season the Steelers replaced offensive coordinator Tom Moore with Joe Walton, who revamped the team's entire system, and Brister began his backslide, throwing 20 interceptions and only 14 touchdown passes in 1990. The public turned on him: That year a Pittsburgh rock station began playing a song parody, Manias, Don't Let Your Bubbys Grow Up to Be QBs. When Brister was knocked out of the '91 season opener with a concussion, Steelers fans cheered. He tore up his right knee, lost his job to Neil O'Donnell and four depressing autumns later found himself back in Monroe, helping his father beat prostate cancer while smart alecks across the country took potshots at a good man with a bad rap.