SUPER BOWL XXIV: DENVER BRONCOS vs. SAN FRANCISCO 49ERS : 20 Years Ago, He Beat Odds : Super Bowl IV: Len Dawson not only played for underdog Chiefs, he faced gambling investigation.

So John Elway thinks his world is closing in on him, with the Denver media piling on his socializing habits, his Halloween candy-giving habits and his Super Bowl-losing habits as he readies for another Roman numeral in New Orleans.

Elway says he’s suffocating.

Elway ought to talk to Len Dawson.

Twenty years ago, Dawson was the quarterback for the 1969-70 Kansas City Chiefs, the Denver Broncos of their era. At that point, the Chiefs had been to one Super Bowl, lost it big, and were advised not to try it again. They were the first wild-card team to reach a Super Bowl, upset winners over the Oakland Raiders in the American Football League’s final championship game, and they went off as 12 1/2-point underdogs to the Purple People Eating Minnesota Vikings in Super Bowl IV.

But for Dawson, that was the least of it. Five days before Armageddon, Dawson was rousted from his sleep by pounding on his hotel door. Nightmares of Carl Eller and Alan Page gave way to a far more frightening reality once Dawson, blurry-eyed, swung the door open.

The press.

“Do you have a statement to make?” one reporter asked Dawson.

“On what?” Dawson wanted to know.

On what had just been broadcast on the Huntley-Brinkley Report: That a sports-gambling investigation had turned up a Detroit suspect holding $400,000 and a slip of paper with Dawson’s name on it.

Some wake-up call.

Dawson, currently a sports broadcaster in Kansas City, Mo., well remembers his first reaction. Ever the quarterback, he called an audible, phoning Coach Hank Stram and assembling a quick strategy session that included Chief owner Lamar Hunt. What to do? What to tell the reporters?

“I told them, ‘Fellas, I’ve just been sleeping. Why not tell the truth?’ ” Dawson said. “I know the guy. He called me twice. Once when I hurt my knee and again when my father passed away.”

Dawson described the man as a casual acquaintance and nothing more, a claim that would later be substantiated. But for Dawson, the next four days were the worst of his life.

On the fifth, he led the Chiefs to a shocking 23-7 victory over Minnesota, completing 12 of 17 passes and winning the game’s most valuable player award.

But to reach such a height, Dawson first had to pass through the depths.

“It was hell,” he says.

The Chiefs spent the rest of Super Bowl week plotting two game plans--one for the Vikings and one for the national media, who hounded Dawson to the point of exhaustion.

“My name was just one of a lot of names that were supposed to be subpoenaed,” Dawson said. “And anybody can be subpoenaed; it has nothing to do with being innocent or guilty.

“But I happened to be the quarterback in the Super Bowl in New Orleans and the writers went crazy.”

Misdirection plays were devised.

“There was a lot of intrigue,” Dawson says. “I changed rooms with (safety) Johnny Robinson--and he got no sleep. We were going out the back door, talking with NFL security. It looked like a B movie, I guess.”

Nothing much worked. By week’s end, Robinson said his road roommate had “aged five years. . . . You looked into his face and you knew it wasn’t the face of Len Dawson.”

All of this was dumped into the ample lap of Stram, the coach who had been embarrassed by Green Bay in the inaugural Super Bowl and had been pining for vindication ever since. Stram was proudly plugging his multi-back, multi-formation schemes as “the offense of the ‘70s,” but on Super Sunday, would his quarterback be too weary to run it?

A turning point, Stram says, occurred at the Chiefs’ first workout after the Huntley-Brinkley newscast.

“After the press conference, I met with the squad and explained all the details and what was going on,” Stram says. “Then I asked if there were any questions.

“E. J. Holub, who was one of our holler guys, stood up and said, ‘Yeah, I’ve got three.

“ ‘When do we eat?

“ ‘Where do we get tickets?

“ ‘And what time do we have to get up for practice?’ ”

The Chiefs broke up in laughter.

“I could tell then that we weren’t going let this interfere with our preparation,” Stram says.

Dawson remembers another conversation during that week of practice, a conversation that made him a believer.

Says Dawson: “Johnny Robinson came up to me and said, ‘All right, I’ve heard the coaches, I’ve read the papers, I’ve listened to all the BS. You tell me--what’s really going on? Can you move the ball? Can you put points on the board?’

“I said, ‘John, the game plan fits. I think we’ll be able to score some points.’ And he says, ‘Good. I’ve been watching films all week long. We might shut them out.’ ”

Kansas City came close. The Chiefs led at halftime, 16-0, gave up a 69-yard scoring drive to open the third quarter and then bottled up Viking quarterback Joe Kapp the rest of the way.

A nation was stunned. A National Football League was stunned.

In retrospect, Stram says, they should have seen it coming.

“We played Minnesota in the preseason and we knew we matched up very good with them,” Stram says. “Their center, Mick Tingelhoff, was a good one, but he weighed only 235 pounds. With our triple-stack defense and Curley Culp, who weighed 275, lining up on the nose of the center, we knew we had a mismatch there.”

Minnesota made it simpler with a limited offense led by the slow-footed, overachieving Kapp and two straight-ahead, inside runners, Dave Osborn and Bill Brown.

“A vanilla offense,” Stram calls it. “They were basically a two-formation team that executed very well. That changed when they got (Fran) Tarkenton, but that was their personality then. . . .

“Joe was a competitor and he made some plays on the run, but we didn’t think he could beat us outside the pocket.”

First impressions mattered greatly in Super Bowl IV. Dawson’s first pass of the game went to halfback Mike Garrett for a first down.

“What am I thinking then?” Dawson says. “I’m thinking, ‘All right!’ ” And that first drive resulted in a 48-yard field goal by Jan Stenerud, a nice little ice breaker.

“When I sent Stenerud in, Minnesota was laughing on the bench,” Stram says. “It was a misty day, the ball was heavy, but Stenerud kicked it like it had eyes. It got the flaps down and it went through.

“They were stunned.”

Stenerud kicked two more and then the Vikings fumbled a kickoff and the Chiefs recovered on the Minnesota 19. Moments later, Kansas City had the ball on the five, third down, and Stram was having a ball.

His sideline narration of Garrett’s ensuing touchdown burst, captured for posterity by NFL Films, remains an audio sports classic, right there with Tom Lasorda’s opinion of Dave Kingman’s performance.

Some excerpts:

“OK, boys, 65 toss power trap, look for 65 toss power trap . . .

“It might pop wide open, boys. It might . . . “ (Garrett scores. Much screaming by Stram follows.)

“Was it there, boy? “Yessir boys. Your coach drove it in there, boys.” Boy, was Stram happy.

“It was a one-time thing,” Stram says, collected again after 20 years. “We didn’t use that play in that many short-yardage situations, but because Alan Page was so fast and reacted so quickly, we thought that if we pulled a tackle, he’d chase the tackle to the outside.

“And that’s exactly what happened. We didn’t even have to block him. That’s why we got a little excited on the sidelines.”

The Chiefs added a fourth-quarter touchdown when flanker Otis Taylor caught a quick out from Dawson, slipped a tackle and high-stepped down the sideline for 46 yards.

It was a big victory for Stram, who moved to 1-1 in Super Bowls, and a huge victory for the AFL, ready to merge with the NFL on even terms, but no one cherished it more than Dawson.

“Afterward, I had to shudder,” Dawson says. “What if I looked lousy and we got blown out? What would’ve been said then?

“At least this turned out to have somewhat of a happy ending. Nothing ever came out of Detroit and I have a Super Bowl ring on my finger.”

So, can Broncos follow where Chiefs once roamed?

Even old champions of the underdog have to wonder.

“What we had, and what Denver maybe doesn’t have, was a dominant defense,” Dawson says. “Our defense was so good, it enabled us to be patient on offense.

“Are the Broncos strong enough to put heat on (Joe) Montana? Defensively, what they’re hearing is, ‘Geez, they’ve got Taylor and Rice and then there’s the tight end roaming around. They’ve got Roger Craig.’ . . . Hell, (Tom) Rathman caught more balls than anyone. Montana throws to them all. Denver’s got to put pressure on the guy doing all this.”

Adds Stram: “Any time you’ve got a quarterback like Elway, you’ve always got a chance. I think Denver’s much better than their last two (Super Bowl) teams. They have much better balance, they’re a bigger team, defensively they’re greatly improved and they have a definite edge in the kicking game over San Francisco.

“They’re closer to having it all than the last two times, but I don’t think you can win it all unless you have it all.

“San Francisco has it all.”

But it can be done. That much Kansas City proved 20 years ago.

So let’s not deflate Denver’s balloon any more than it already is. It sounds as if Elway needs all the air he can get.

* 49ERS: The only question remaining to be answered Sunday is if Joe Montana and Co. are the best National Football League team ever. Bob Oates’ analysis, C6