SUPER BOWL XXI: DENVER vs. NEW YORK GIANTS : Elvis Probably Won’t Be King of the Super Bowl, but He May Be the Key

You can knock him down. You can step on his face. You can slander his name all over the place. You can do anything that you want to do. But don’t fake Elvis Patterson out of his shoes.

Gary Clark did last Sunday, and made Elvis’ knees shake. Clark, the Washington Redskin receiver, put a move on Patterson, the New York Giant defensive back, in the first quarter of the National Football Conference championship game at Giants Stadium. Patterson was shocked out of his socks. He tried in vain to catch up to Clark, who was several strides ahead of him upfield.

“I was beat, like bad,” Elvis said.

Redskin quarterback Jay Schroeder put the football right on the receiver’s fingertips. But Clark muffed it. And Elvis was spared. The Redskins never did score--not on that drive, and not in the game--so Elvis did not have to find a new place to dwell, down at the end of Lonely Street.

Asked afterward for his thoughts on that play, Elvis looked up at the locker-room ceiling and said: “Thank you, Lord!” After all, had Washington scored first in Sunday’s game, against the wind, New York’s 17-0 victory might not have been the piece of cake that it turned out to be. The Giants might have gotten a little jumpy, falling behind so quickly.

As it was, Schroeder spent the rest of the afternoon trying to make connections. He fired 50 passes in the playoff game, and 30 of them were incomplete. Time and again, the man in the secondary under attack was Elvis Patterson, who evidently was perceived to be the weak link in this great defense’s armor. Time and again, Schroeder picked on Patterson, only to be denied. It got to the point that the 5-foot 11-inch, 190- pound, not-so-giant Giant felt that Washington’s whole game plan must have been designed to attack him, personally.

“I’d chase a guy 50 yards down the field, they’d try to hit him, they’d miss, and the next play they’d come right back at me again,” Patterson said. “I was beginning to feel, what you call it, prosecuted. Persecuted. You know.”

Every time some Redskin raced the length of the field, it looked as though Patterson was left to cover him all by himself.

“Shouldn’t somebody be backing up Elvis?” a guy in the press box asked.

“Yeah, the Jordanaires,” another guy said.

And the Elvis jokes kept coming, as did the passes. The 26-year-old native Texan, who played college ball at Kansas, has been hearing them all his life. He is used to it. Patterson is by and large a good-natured fellow, so he takes this stuff in stride. You can make Elvis jokes if you like. Just don’t be cruel.

Nobody realizes it yet, or at least nobody has been talking too much about it, but Elvis Patterson is probably the most important player of Super Bowl XXI.

He won’t be the most valuable player. Not unless he intercepts about five passes. But Elvis is the key man, the man who can make or break the heavily favored Giants. Elvis Patterson is the MVP.

Most vulnerable player.

See, the Denver Broncos have one chance in this game. John Elway, the heroic quarterback, star of stage, screen and 98-yard sustained drives, must pass the Giants dizzy. He must pick the New York secondary apart. And, since Denver’s scouts undoubtedly are as observant as Washington’s scouts, you can bet your bottom dollar that the quarterback is going to be zeroing in on you know who.

You got it: Elway vs. Elvis.

“Bring him on,” Patterson said. “He’s a good one, and I’m going to have to be on my toes. I imagine Mr. Elway’s going to be going my way.”

Someone reminded Patterson that when the teams met earlier this season, Elway passed with great precision, but put only 16 points on the board. The Giants won that game, 19-16. But Patterson didn’t want to hear about it and didn’t want to think about it. Just as he hadn’t wanted to think about previous meetings with the Redskins, or the previous year’s meeting with the Bears, or any other Giant game of old.

Elvis, who has a way with words--what way, we cannot exactly say--had definite opinions with regard to looking back. “If you look in the past once, you lose one eye. If you look in the past twice, you go blind,” he said. This was Elvisese for: Forget yesterday; tomorrow is what counts.

“Talking about last week or last year doesn’t mean a thing,” Patterson said. “Right now, we got an opportunity to play for a Super Bowl ring, and that’s the most unique thing in the world.”

He knows he will be on the spot. The Giants have a very good defensive line, a remarkably good set of linebackers and a remarkably ordinary secondary. There are no Ronnie Lotts back there. Opposing offenses have been searching for ways to exploit the Giant defensive backs--without much success so far, as witness the three total points New York surrendered in two postseason games.

The Giants went with a lot of man-to-man coverage against Schroeder and the Redskins, when a zone, to some, might have seemed wise. Kenny Hill, another smooth talker in the Giant secondary, said later: “To attempt to play ‘man’ against a team that is so creative is quite problematic.”

Elvis said much the same thing.

“We had to work our butts off,” he said.

Well, that’s almost the same thing.

The Giants had several things working for them, though. First, there was the stiff wind, which made Schroeder’s passes shake, rattle and roll. “Defensive backs cherish days like this,” Hill said. “Our eyes get big as silver dollars.”

Then there was the 17-point lead New York took before halftime. “You give us 17 points,” Patterson said, “and we play like absolute gangbusters.”

Will there be a big breeze at the Rose Bowl? Maybe, maybe not. Will the Giants breeze to a big lead? Maybe, maybe not.

Elvis sounded unconcerned. He was thrilled just to be making the trip, just to be “able to come have some fun in the sun,” he said. Viva Los Angeles.

“Mostly, I’m glad for some of these other guys,” Patterson said. “I’m young. I’ll be around a while. Do you know who the three happiest people in this room are? (Offensive tackle) Brad Benson, (linebacker) Harry Carson and (defensive end) George Martin. They’re old. They’re legends. They’re ancient. They’re history.”

And he loves them tender.