Seems This Guy Is Your Regular One-Man Gang

It’s real easy to recognize the Denver Broncos.

The Denver Broncos wear No. 7. The Denver Broncos are about 6 feet 4 inches tall, weigh, oh, 215, have these dimples, an easy smile and are a 9 1/2-point underdog to the New York Giants.

Most teams have 45 guys in the game plan. The Denver Broncos are going to try to get by with one.

Fortunately, the rules permit you 11 men on the field at one time. But they don’t say you have to have them. If you think you can do it with one, I guess that’s your business.

You get the impression down at the Super Bowl training camps here this week that the New York Giants are going to play John Elway in Super Bowl XXI Sunday. And they’re only favored by 9 1/2.

You wonder what would happen if Denver showed up with a whole team.

You show up at picture day in Costa Mesa and all of a sudden someone says, “Oh-oh, here comes the Denver Broncos.” You look over, expecting a stampede, and here comes this one blond guy, smiling and walking this kind of pigeon-toed walk to the center of the field, and it’s the team.

You talk to the Giants individually or in groups and all they talk about is Elway. The Giants seem to have as much trouble as the rest of the world remembering who the other guys on the team are--or if there are any.

You hear people talk and you get the impression Denver must have gotten the rest of the team out of the Yellow Pages. Or maybe they’re just migratory workers.

You get the confused notion that John Elway cranks up and throws this long pass--and then runs out and catches it.

He must not need blockers because nobody ever mentions them.

You know, at a Super Bowl, it’s a media crush and the league sets up an hour and a half a day for the thousand or so print and electronic types to crowd around the players who are seated at marked tables in the interview area.

The room opens--and about 988 guys rush to John Elway. One or two wander up to other players and say airily, “How’s it going, Studs? Now, you’re--a, ah, er, wait a minute, don’t tell me--oh, Keith Bishop, right? Oh, no? You’re who? Oh, you’re Rulon Jones? Er, exactly what is it you do on the Broncos, Rulon? And what do you think of John Elway?”

Now, the Giants open their room and groups stand indecisively. Do they want the quarterback, Phil Simms? Nah, how about the superlative running back, Joe Morris? Big crowd around him? OK, how about the ferocious linebacker, L.T.? Jim Burt, the mauling tackler? Maybe Harry Carson, the all-everything linebacker? Carl Banks, the unsung?

Then, there’s Mark Anthony Bavaro, the strong, silent type. Or Phil McConkey, the helicopter pilot, officer and a gentleman.

There are eight million stories in the naked city. This is an all-star cast. A repertory company.

There is only one story in the Mile High City. Elway is like Caruso in the opera, Paderewski at the piano, Nijinsky at the Bolshoi.

If he wins, it’ll be “Elway Slays Giants.”

If he loses? Well, how about “Elway Can’t Do It All Alone.” The whozits let him down.

Is this pressure? How does it feel to be the key to the game? Horatius at the bridge? The boy with his finger in the dike. The only hope.

Elway grins this little crooked grin. “It’s fun,” he says.

Fun being chased around by 280-pound defensive ends, strangle-held by homicidal linebackers, having your knees cut from underneath you by a blitzing safety, a cutting cornerback?

“It’s fun till you get caught,” he says, grinning.

Is he that good? Is anyone that good?

Well, John Elway inspires the kind of legends Ben Hogan did in golf, Satchel Paige did in baseball, or the myths that followed Lincoln into history.

They’ll tell you of his high school days in Granada Hills when he would stand on the 50-yard line and a teammate in the end zone would throw a ball up in the air and Elway would hit it dead center, like shooting a duck from midfield. They told him to hit his receiver in the numbers once and Elway asked, “Which one?”

At Stanford, they liked to say Elway was protected by 10 guys who learned to play football having catches with their butlers or came to practice with their governesses, but he threw 77 touchdown passes--25 more than Jim Plunkett--and most of them, to hear Stanfordites tell it, went through two time zones.

He could write his name with a football, make it sing “Dixie” or open a bottle with one at 20 paces. He completed more passes than the Fifth Fleet on leave.

Defensive ends, to a man, hated to play him. “He stands there and laughs at you,” Lyle Alzado once growled. “It’s like a Tom and Jerry cartoon.”

Other linemen thought he was more like the league’s Bugs Bunny. He kept them bumping into one another.

It isn’t laughter, exactly, Elway thinks. It’s just a preoccupied look he gets trying to read a defense.

Elway watchers say he just starts to smile as he gets this little mental picture of a completion over an all-out blitz and he gets this look on his face of a guy who just won a lottery.

And, then, of course, there’s The Drive. This is one of the historic events of football history. It goes direct to the Hall of Fame, whatever else John Elway does in his career.

Trailing by seven with the ball on your own 1 1/2-yard line with only minutes to play in the biggest game of your career and engineering a textbook drive in the face of a hostile crowd is the stuff they write songs about. Elway put on the kind of downfield march and the kind of plays coaches only draw on blackboards but seldom see played out on the field in front of them.

It was the nearest thing to a one-man show since John Wayne cleaned up the Burma Road or Errol Flynn won the West. It was movie stuff--Elway picking apart a loose Cleveland defense like a master locksmith opening a vault.

It’s no wonder the public gets the impression this week that little John with his slingshot is the thin orange line going out by his lonesome to take on the big bad fe-fi-fo-fums from the badlands of New Jersey.

It’s no wonder when, someone asked who the rest of the Broncos were this week, someone else answered, “Oh, let’s see. Dopey, Grumpy, Doc, Sleepy, Sneezy--and Sammy Winder.”

Reading the papers, you would get the idea Elway has the lifetime contract but the rest of the Broncos get paid by the hour. If their bus hits an abutment, the headline is going to read “John Elway, 44 Friends, Hurt in Crash.”

The rest of the team might as well take the field in masks. Or under assumed names. John Elway and the Mighty Elway Art Players.

Do they resent it? Any institution is the lengthened shadow of one man, but is this ridiculous?

Winder, the running back who is the nearest thing to a second banana the Broncos have, is one who thinks not. Sammy doesn’t mind playing the star’s best friend.

Says Sammy: “John is like a lightning rod, he takes the media blitz off us. Personally, it’d be OK with me if I never got in front of a camera or a microphone. I like not being in the spotlight.”

If so, he has come to the right place. The Denver Broncos this week is the perfect hideout for a guy on the lam or a guy craving anonymity. The only trouble is, he may have trouble cashing a check.

If he ain’t John Elway, the public will have a hard time believing he’s a Denver Bronco. Everybody knows the Denver Broncos consist of John Elway and some barefoot kicker. And that’s enough.