The Nfl

Heir Waves
John Elway's successor is an intriguing choice

Dumb NFL Theory of the Week: Broncos coach Mike Shanahan switched quarterbacks two weeks before the season—from veteran Bubby Brister to 24-year-old Brian Griese—to flex his giant ego and show he can win an unprecedented third straight Super Bowl with an untested second-year man at the helm.

True, the move is a risk. Griese might stink it up, beginning with the Monday-night opener at home against the Dolphins. The spurned Brister might not thrive in a relief role as he did last year, when he went 4-0 starting in place of an injured John Elway. The locker room might turn against Shanahan, who had named the popular Brister his starter when Elway retired. But Bubby was feeling the heat of trying to be a full-time Elway; his last 13 preseason drives before his demotion had netted no touchdowns, one field goal, a safety and no spark. "I knew I'd get killed when I made the decision," Shanahan says. "But I had to do what was best for the team, like I did when I replaced [receivers] Anthony Miller with Rod Smith and Mike Pritchard with Ed McCaffrey."

Shanahan saw the future on Aug. 14 in the fourth quarter of a 38-7 rout of the Cardinals. With the ball at the Arizona 13, he called a pass Griese had never run in practice. The Cards came with a blitz Griese had never seen. Griese had never been schooled to look for the fifth and final receiver, tight end Byron Chamberlain, on this play. "But as soon as Brian dropped back," Shanahan says, "he knew from the way the rush was coming and the way his receivers were deployed that his fifth read would be open. So he hit Byron on a post route. No hesitation. I thought, Now that's unusual."

The 6'3", 215-pound Griese lasted until the 91st pick of the 1998 draft because he didn't put up the numbers of Peyton Manning or have a powerful arm like Ryan Leaf's. But examine him for a minute. He looks as if he's been shaving for about three weeks, but he talks and acts like Ward Cleaver. He began to grow up quickly after his mom died of cancer when he was 12; instead of being a normal teen in Coral Gables, Fla., he would stay home to keep his dad, Hall of Fame quarterback Bob Griese, company on some lonely weekend nights. At Michigan, Brian crafted his own major, environmental policy, then earned a 3.6 GPA. He guided the Wolverines to a share of the national championship as a senior, completing 62.9% of his passes. On the NFL's 50-question intelligence test, the Wonderlic, he scored higher than any Denver draft pick ever.

Griese was eating his normal breakfast of champions on Aug. 30—banana-nut muffin and coffee—in the trainer's room when Brister told him he'd just come from getting demoted in Shanahan's office. The marrying of the cerebral Griese to the obsessive Shanahan, in fact, seems almost too good to be true. Last Friday night during a 34-3 wipe-out of the 49ers in the preseason finale, in his first appearance ever with Denver's starting offense, Griese twice set up completions with deceptive play-action fakes. Three times he hit receivers in the numbers when corners were draped on them. He connected on 12 of 17 passes (two were dropped) for 111 yards.

Bob Griese led Miami to two Super Bowl wins, and Brian is much like him: thoughtful, quietly confident, supremely accurate as a passer. Yet father never coached son, and son never badgered father for stories of the good old days. "I was five when my dad stopped playing," Brian says. "I really didn't see him much as a Hall of Fame quarterback, just as a Hall of Fame father. When my mom died, my dad and I were left in the house alone. We became almost like best friends. When he'd be preparing for a college game he was going to announce on TV, I used to test him. Say he had USC and Cal. I'd take USC's defense and he had to tell me the guy's height, weight, position, stuff like that. As I got further along in high school, I almost had to be two people—a high school student and the guy who was there for my dad."

He'll have to grow as a quarterback pretty quickly, too. Denver opens against five teams with top defenses—Miami, Kansas City, Tampa Bay, the Jets and Oakland. "Now that I'm playing, nobody gives us a chance to win it all," Griese says. "As long as I don't believe that, we'll be O.K."

Salary Cap Changes?
Proposing Year-End Bonuses

Concerned with the rapid rise in signing bonuses, which have made some contracts heavily guaranteed, commissioner Paul Tagliabue has talked to the players' union about setting aside a percentage of the salary cap to be divvied up by the top performers on each team at the end of the season. (There has been no discussion yet of the formula by which that pool would be split up.) He told SI that veteran Patriots tackle Bruce Armstrong suggested the concept to him. "There would still be healthy salaries and bonuses," Tagliabue said, "but if you set aside, say, 10 percent of the cap, or about $6 million, it would ensure that more money goes to the players who at the end of the year have shown they really earned it."