Super Slip-Ups Keep Him Second Banana

He’s one of the best quarterbacks who ever took a snap. There is no question he’s on his way to the Hall of Fame. He leads his team almost annually into the Super Bowl.

He’s a superior athlete. He’s had only one bad game in his whole career. He’s thrown more than 3,000 passes, 120 of them for touchdowns. He is the most dangerous man with the football the game has seen. He could complete a pass hanging by his heels from the roof of the stadium. Giving him a football is like giving John Dillinger a gun. Somebody’s going to be sorry.

Joe Montana? Who said anything about Joe Montana? You’re just like everyone else. You think Joe Montana invented the position.

You talk about great quarterbacks and the name of Joe Montana always crops up here at Super Bowl XXIV. Joe Montana was recruited out of a burning bush. The rest of the team flew here by Delta Airlines. Joe Montana flew here by cape. When Joe goes to a restaurant, he doesn’t order from the wine list. He says, “Just bring me a jug of water.” They not only named a state after him, they named a city after him. St. Joe, Mo. When Joe Montana gets the ball, the teams part like the Red Sea.

And so on.

But we’re not talking about Joe Montana here. We’re talking about the other quarterback.

We may not be talking about the great state of Montana, but we’re talking about a quarterback so good he had not only two teams fighting for him, but two sports. If it weren’t for Joe Montana, he’d be the one being measured for immortality; they’d be wondering if he was as good as Johnny Unitas, Otto Graham and the other legends.

Instead, for the the first time in his career, college or pro, John Elway is second banana. His life has been a parade up to now. In high school, he passed for 5,000 yards and 49 touchdowns. He batted .491 in his senior year in baseball. At Stanford, he broke five NCAA passing records, finished second in the Heisman Trophy balloting. He quit playing baseball in his sophomore year, but the New York Yankees signed him to a contract, and he batted .318 for their farm club in Oneonta. In football, he had two cities fighting for him, Baltimore and Denver. When Baltimore lost, it wasn’t long before the franchise left town, too.

If he has a weakness, it’s that he’s too successful. He keeps putting an inept Denver team in the Super Bowl. It’s a nice trick, but it has its downside.

When Joe Montana, so to speak, sings “Carmen,” he has the Metropolitan Opera chorus and orchestra. Elway’s got the Duluth Symphony and a barber shop quartet.

Joe Montana has had bad games. But not when the whole world’s looking. John Elway had, probably, only one really bad day in his career. That would be in Super Bowl XXII.

Actually, his 14-for-38 day wasn’t as bad as it looked. It was his worst performance since his rookie year--and the second-worst of his career--but it was a game in which his defense gave up 35 points in one quarter and the Washington Redskins’ defense--Dexter Manley, Dave Butz, Charles Mann and Darryl Grant--were able to tee off on him like a pack of rabid wolves on a guy tied to a tree. He was sacked five times, threw three interceptions and usually had to get rid of the ball like a guy dumping holdup loot when he hears the cops coming.

It was the most dramatic disaster since Spencer Tracy played Jekyll and Hyde. Elway was going to be a statue in the park. All of a sudden he almost became a picture in a post office. He was almost the only one in town who really deserved to be in a Super Bowl, but Denver reacted as if he had shot Custer.

He couldn’t do anything right. His teeth were too big. His hair was too long. His eyes were too blue. His feet were too small. He drank too much beer. He didn’t drink enough beer.

He had nerve taking the team to the Super Bowl. What did he think people were made of--stone? They had feelings. Why did he keep getting their hopes up? Why did he keep them standing on tiptoe if he wasn’t going to kiss them?

And now he was going to lead the team again to be a sacrificial lamb on the altar of St. Joe Montana?

Well, this time, he was on his own. Denver had seen this act before. The fans went skiing. Charter flights to Super Bowl XXIV went unfilled. Orange Crush hats were conspicuous by their absence in the French Quarter. Vegas points on the 49ers crept up and up without much argument from the Rocky Mountains. Buffalo Bill would have been profoundly scornful of his fellow frontiersmen. Denver had its paws in the air.

But John Elway is not so easily brought down--as a generation of down linemen and blitzing linebackers have found out. “He’s not down till he’s down,” explained San Francisco’s Keena Turner. “You think you got him, and you’re waiting for the whistle, and here he’s throwing off one leg with his helmet in his eyes.”

He could easily be the greatest quarterback in history not named Montana.

Some quarterbacks have a flaw. They tip their play by the movement of an eye, the shifting of a leg. They can’t go to their left. They can’t go to their right. They can’t go to their primary receiver. They can’t throw long, they can’t throw short. They can’t throw hard or they can’t throw with touch.

Or they can’t go to the Super Bowl.

That’s just John Elway’s trouble. He can go to the Super Bowl.

Napoleon could probably tell him: “Look, kid! I made one mistake. I went to Waterloo. And look what happened. If I were you, I wouldn’t go to the Super Bowl. It’s for sure I wouldn’t keep going.”

For John Elway, the Super Bowl has been Waterloo. He would have been better off losing to Cleveland.

But John Elway is not content to be just The Opponent. Just another foil for Montana to add to his collection.

John proposes to scramble out of this one, too. “If you’re asking me, do I think I’m second fiddle, the answer is no,” he said coldly to a questioner Thursday.

Before they make Joe Montana the greatest quarterback there ever was or will be anywhere in the world, maybe they better wait to see whether he’s the best quarterback in New Orleans today.