SUPER BOWL XXII : COMMENTARY : For the Broncos, No Silver Lining in This One : For Their Fans, Only Solutions Are Orange Sackcloth and Hurtin’ Music

A parade? They ought to hold a wake for the Denver Broncos today.

Please, let the good people of Colorado suffer in silence over the abject failure of their National Football League team. Save the fanfare for something triumphant and upbeat--like a tax increase.

I’m not going to try and patronize Bronco fans today with rhetoric about silver linings. The best advice I have is don your orange sackcloth, pour an ice tea glass full of your favorite beverage and put one of those hurtin’ George Jones songs on the stereo.

Let’s face it: Jan. 31, 1988 was a Black Sunday in the Rocky Mountains.

With 125 million around the world watching, the Washington Redskins ground the Denver Broncos into the shimmering green turf of San Diego Jack Murphy Stadium like grapes beneath the feet of pachyderms. No other team in NFL history ever took such a beating for a period in postseason play, let alone the Super Bowl, because the Redskins scored a record 35 points in the second quarter, hereafter known as The Quarter.

“We just couldn’t stop them,” said Dan Reeves, in one of the great understatements of the century.

To which a dejected John Elway added: “We never answered the bell in that second quarter.”

For total destruction, Super Bowl XXII was in a class by itself. Bronco fans who thought they had suffered humiliation in the second half of Super Bowl XXI, when the Giants scored 29 points to win, 39-20, The Quarter was a new experience in pain.

That fragile Bronco defense that has now been hammered for 81 points in two straight Super Bowls didn’t even last until intermission. In perhaps the single-most disgraceful period of professional sports in Denver history, the Redskins scored five touchdowns on five straight possessions and turned a 10-0 Bronco lead into a pimple.

In just 18 plays and fewer than six cumulative minutes over the second period, starting with Tony Boddie’s dropped shovel pass on the third play, the Redskins dominated like no team has ever dominated a Super Bowl: 366 total yards of offense. The Redskins rushed and passed for a record 602 yards during the game.

With little or no pass rush on Doug Williams in the second period, the Washington quarterback shredded the Bronco secondary like Fawn Hall going after Ollie North’s documents. Not surprisingly, Williams was voted the game’s MVP after completing 18 of 29 passes for 340 yards and 4 touchdowns.

When the night was over, the Redskin offense had more new records than MCA, Columbia and Motown combined. Together with the 28 points yielded in the second half of the American Football Conference Championship against the Cleveland Browns, the Bronco defense was drilled for 63 points over those four postseason periods. Is there a trend here or what? Not that the Bronco offense will win any awards for proficiency. Except for a spiffy 56-yard touchdown pass from John Elway to Ricky Nattiel on their very first play, the Bronco offense was toothless. Elway completed 14 passes for 257 yards and the Three Amigos disappeared South of The Border with just six catches--four by Mark Jackson, two by Nattiel and nada by Vance Johnson.

Elway, the so-called one-man team, missed on seven straight passes in the first half.

Said owner Pat Bowlen: “Anytime you get beat, 42-10--and it could have been worse--people start to say ‘you didn’t belong here.’ We’re here and you say ‘maybe if you played again tomorrow, it would be different.’ I’d like to think that it’s a bad dream, but it was too vivid to be a bad dream.”

Now the Broncos must not only live down the 42-10 defeat in a game they were favored to win by 3 1/2 points, but they will become known forever more as the Minnesota Vikings of the AFC. Even though the Vikings lost four times, the Broncos were beaten in consecutive Super Bowls by 81-30. And including their 27-10 loss to Dallas in Super Bowl XII, they have been crushed, 108-40.

Hey, I’m sorry the news can’t be better, Broncophiles. Maybe your luck will change today. Maybe a blizzard will hit Denver, and the Bronco plane won’t be able to land at Stapleton.