SUPER BOWL XXI : DENVER vs. NEW YORK : Morton on Elway: : He’ll Lead Denver to Super Bowl Win

It was an unexpectedly beautiful midwinter day, so clear and warm that it was impossible to resist looking out the window of Craig Morton’s corner office in this Denver suburb at the snow glistening on the distant peaks of the Rocky Mountains.

“Enjoy it now,” Morton’s warm smile seemed to be saying, “because it will not last.” Snow was on the way. He said he could feel it in his bones. Morton, veteran of 11 knee and 2 shoulder operations in an 18-year career that ended with the Denver Broncos in 1982, had scooped the weathermen again. Less than two days later, a major storm dumped almost a foot of snow on the Denver area.

“My right knee is the best barometer,” Morton said, laughing. “Every time, I can feel a change in the weather coming.”

Another of Morton’s feelings, which has nothing to do with his arthritic joints, is that John Elway will find a way to lead the Broncos to the Super Bowl victory Sunday in Pasadena that, nine years earlier, eluded Morton in New Orleans.

Morton, a businessmen in suburban Denver, was the quarterback who led the Broncos to the Super Bowl in 1978. Once there, Denver was trounced by the favored Dallas Cowboys, 27-10, as Morton threw four interceptions and was terrorized by Cowboy pass rushers all game.

Now, as then, the Broncos aren’t given much chance of winning by the odds-makers and other experts. But Morton believes that Elway has the ability to be a Giant killer. His faith was reinforced by the 98-yard game-tying touchdown drive orchestrated by Elway in the final minutes of the AFC championship game against Cleveland.

“He is the only quarterback I’ve ever seen that could pull that off,” Morton said. “John has this great ability that, no matter what time of game it is, he still can really hurt you. The game is never over with John in there.”

Mortoncalled the Elway-led 98-yard drive the best he has ever seen. That declaration might be a tad biased, considering that Morton still is a Bronco supporter and a close friend of Elway.

“Seeing how well John is doing makes me feel good,” Morton said. “It didn’t take him very long, just four years, to get to the Super Bowl. When I started playing (in Dallas), (Coach) Tom Landry would never let us play until the fifth year with the team. That’s ridiculous. John is just going to keep getting better as long as he plays.”

The styles of Morton, in his prime a decade ago, and the Elway of ’86 are at extremes. Elway is one of the game’s best scramblers, although that scrambling is also something for which he has been criticized by people. Morton was criticized for being about as mobile as a mountain range, but he could still complete passes with tacklers hanging on him.

Yet, Elway approached Morton for advice recently. And Morton is not shy about giving his critique.

“John certainly doesn’t do a lot of things now that he will in the future, but he’s doing enough to get him where he is, which is a lot,” Morton said. “But I think he’s going to have to change a lot of things he does. He’s got to work on throwing and timing and (staying) in the pocket, because eventually, (scrambling) is going to catch up with him.

“I’m not criticizing what he’s done. It’s not justified, the criticism he gets. But he knows he has to improve some things. But a plus to (scrambling) is that, unlike a pocket quarterback who has an off-day and can’t recover from that, John can start scrambling around, get his confidence back and start a drive. Nothing was more evident than in the championship game. He wasn’t playing well, then, all of a sudden, he brings them back.”

Although it seemed as if Morton played forever, he and Elway were not teammates. Morton retired his beat-up, 39-year-old body after the 1982 season, and the Broncos traded for the rights to Elway in the spring of 1983.

But Morton and Elway quickly became acquainted. “We talk and play golf a lot,” Morton said. “He asks me things about how to handle certain situations. What to do when they are booing you.”

And what did Morton say about the booing?

“This is all I said to him,” said Morton, going into pantomime.

First, Morton put his fingers in his ears. Then, he made a throwing motion with his right arm. Finally, he raised both arms, signaling a touchdown.

“That’s it,” Morton said. “John just laughed.”

It may not be really profound, but it does seem like sound advice from someone who has been there. Morton said his Super Bowl experience with the Broncos in 1978 was not pleasant. But the games leading up to it certainly were.

“We were 12-2 and people (in Denver) went berserk because they had never seen anything like it,” Morton said. “By the time we had beaten Oakland in the AFC championship game, this place was absolutely delirious.

“That was their biggest high, the Oakland game. Then we got to the Super Bowl in New Orleans, which is supposed to be the best moment in a player’s life. But we were stuck in a hotel that was the worst place I’ve ever been in--moldy, cockroaches everywhere. We had to bus to the practice field in our uniforms. It was such a letdown.”

That was just before the game. The experience got a lot worse during the game.

“Our best offensive lineman (guard Tom Glassic) was injured, and I knew then we wouldn’t have a chance. If I had had Elway’s ability to scramble, I’d have had a chance. But there was no way.

“It wasn’t much fun, going back to your room on Saturday night, knowing there would be no way to avoid those two guys (Dallas’ Randy White and Too Tall Jones). We couldn’t block them. They killed me that day.

“Basically, it just wasn’t much fun losing that day.”

Morton said he didn’t mind all the pain that opponents inflicted upon him over the years, as long as it was in a winning cause.

In his nine years with the Cowboys, one year with the New York Giants and the final eight years with the Broncos, Morton more than paid the physical price for staying in the pocket. He said besides his knee and shoulder operations, he also had surgery on an elbow and a foot.

By 1980, the joke was that Morton could barely get around without a walker. But whenever it looked as though Morton was down for good, he found a way to revive his career.

Morton had his best season in 1981, at 38, when he threw for more than 3,000 yards and 21 touchdowns. His 90.6 rating as a passer was second to Cincinnati’s Ken Anderson that year.

Morton finally ended his career on his back in a hospital bed Dec. 8, 1982. He underwent arthroscopic surgery to remove scar tissue from both knees. The problem was, scar tissue was about all that was left.

He had no choice but to finally quit.

Life after the NFL hasn’t turned out quite as well as Morton hoped. He coached the Denver Gold of the USFL for a season before he and owner Doug Spedding “resigned from each other.” Morton and a partner then suffered losses in a restaurant and a travel agency.

Now, Morton is the executive director of the Denver-based American Pain and Stress Clinic, which seems fitting given his injury history.

The clinic treats patients suffering from everything from headaches to pain in the joints with electricity. The procedure has been used by marathoner Joan Benoit Samuelson, runner Mary Decker Slaney and former Pittsburgh Steeler quarterback Terry Bradshaw. Not surprisingly, Morton tried it during the late stages of his career.

“That’s exactly how I found out about it,” Morton said. “I started getting some treatments of this and I thought that it really worked. The medical group here in Colorado that decided to go public and start the company asked me if I wanted to be a part of it.

“I’ve been here a year now. Even now, whenever my knees get feeling real bad, I’ll go and get zapped--that’s what I call our treatments--and I feel a lot better.”

Good enough to put on the uniform again?

“No, it’s fun just to watch,” Morton said. “At the end (of the Bronco-Cleveland game two weeks ago), I felt like I had been in on every play. I was exhausted.”