Forget It, Broncos, It Looks Like You’ll Find a Rocky Mountain Sigh

Denver, don’t bother.

Don’t go. Don’t show. Stay home. Skip the Pasadena trip. Go to Aspen. Do some skiing. Go to Colorado Springs. Climb Pike’s Peak. Drop by John Denver’s place. Sit around the campfire. Sing some songs.

Stay away from Super Bowl XXI. You won’t like it. The New York Giants are going to be there. They’re rough. They’re tough. They’re good. They’re baddddd. They are definitely going to beat you and they are possibly going to eat you. They are going to bust you Broncos at Alvin Rozelle’s Rose Bowl rodeo, so do yourselves a big, big favor. Don’t be there.

These are not the same Giants who squeaked by the Broncos earlier in the season, 19-16. They have gotten bigger and uglier and meaner. They mug people now. Even New Yorkers are afraid of them. If a Giant gets on a subway, everybody else gets off. Even Guardian Angels get off.

These guys give quarterbacks concussions. They did it to Joe Montana last week and they did it to Jay Schroeder on Sunday. They have knocked quarterbacks out of games nine times since November, 1985. They grab halfbacks by the legs and say: “Make a wish.” They knock receivers on their ends. They get penalized for illegal use of the hands, fists, elbows, knees and teeth. They can throw you for three-yard losses with their breath.

In their first playoff game, the Giants beat the San Francisco 49ers, 49-3, and put Montana in an ambulance. In their second playoff game, the one they played here Sunday, the Giants beat the Washington Redskins, 17-0, and before it was over gave Schroeder a mild concussion. These guys don’t just beat you. They mess with your minds. They put you in the Stupor Bowl.

Denver, do you really want to subject John Elway to this? Sure, he’s good. Sure, he’s slick. Sure, as New York tackle Jerome Sally commented Sunday, he’s slippery as “a wet snake.” But he is made of flesh and blood. And if there are two things the Giants feed on, it’s flesh and blood. They’re the NFL’s Little Shop of Horrors.

They scare you. They creep up on you. You hear footsteps coming. Jerry Rice of the 49ers caught a pass, ran away and dropped it, even with nobody near him. Gary Clark of the Redskins beat his man, ran under a perfect pass and dropped it, even with nobody near him.

“We like to cause receivers to develop the disease known as Alligator Arms,” said Giant safety Kenny Hill, the former Raider.

Alligator Arms?

“You know,” Hill said. “Short arms.”

Hill probably knows about these things, having studied molecular biophysics at Yale. Wasn’t Yale the school doing research on alligator arms during the ‘70s? Anyhow, Hill is also one of the few Giants with on-the-job Super Bowl experience, having played for the Raiders against the Redskins in Super Bowl XVIII, so when he talks, you should listen.

Same goes for Jim Burt, the 260-pound nose tackle. No, that doesn’t mean he tackles noses. But he could. He could rip your whole face off if you’re not careful. “I get pretty crazy on game days,” Burt admitted Sunday. “I get up in the morning, go sit by myself, don’t talk to anybody and just think. Then I get in my car and drive 90 miles an hour to the game with the radio full blast. I feel sorry for my wife. She’s got to deal with me.”

Best to keep Burt in a pleasant frame of mind. After Sunday’s game, he felt so happy, he scaled the tall wall that surrounded the field, just so he could celebrate in the stands with some of the fans, including Mrs. Burt. Had he been unhappy, he might have scaled the wall just so he could strangle some fans.

“When I lived in Buffalo, I’d ring somebody’s doorbell and then jump on their roofs,” Burt said.

Is this the kind of guy Denver wants to make mad? The kind of guy who climbs the walls of football stadia and houses the way a certain ape visiting New York City once climbed the Empire State Building?

Does John Elway really want a man like this pursuing him in Pasadena?

“Elway’s tough,” Burt said. “He made us tired last time. He seemed to have eyes in the back of his head.”

He’s gonna need ‘em.

These are not the old Giants any more. These are not the wimps who went 3-12-1 in 1983. These are not even the same men who lost this year’s season opener at Dallas. Same names, maybe, but different people. Vicious people. Ruthless people. Giant people.

Furthermore, they can even score points now.

“Lawrence Taylor and I were in the Pro Bowl one year,” linebacker Harry Carson said, “and Bill Walsh was the coach, and the offense kept moving the ball up and down the field, and Lawrence and I kept looking at each other and saying: ‘Must be nice to have an offense.’ Now, things are different. Now, we have an offense.”

“Joe Morris and I were here when we were 3-12-1, when everybody said: ‘The Giants couldn’t beat a cold,’ ” said Sally. “We’re a hell of a lot tougher now. Somebody pinch me.”

No thanks.

Anybody who pinches, punches, pushes, bites, blocks or tackles a New York Giant is really asking for it. You mess with the Giants and they are going to dump a big tub of trouble on your head.

Denver, you won your conference. Be satisfied with that.

Don’t go to Pasadena. You can run and you can hide. Crawl under your beds and stay there. The lives you save may be your own.