Broncos Again Play Clay Pigeons in the NFL’s Biggest Skeet Shoot

What can I tell you?

Embarrassing, huh?

Look. There are certain things that shouldn’t happen. You shouldn’t be able to club baby seals on an ice floe in the St. Lawrence River. You shouldn’t pick wings off butterflies. You shouldn’t park a baby carriage on a slippery hill leading down to a river.

And, you shouldn’t be allowed to play the Denver Broncos in the Super Bowl.

Where is the Humane Society when you need it? Where are those organizations against cruelty to dumb animals?

The Denver Broncos went to their fate like guys going to the electric chair. They didn’t put up much of a fight. Cagney did it better. You should struggle a little.

It wasn’t a game, it was an execution. It was the biggest mismatch since the Christians and the lions.

Come back, Bud Grant, wherever you are. Minnesota Vikings, you can come out now. The Super Bowl record for futility has been taken away from you. Denver has been in four Super Bowls now and they get progressively worse. They lost the first one by 17 points, the second by 19, the third by 32 and Sunday by 45. They have allowed 163 points in four games. They are now the William Jennings Bryans, the Harold Stassens, Tom Deweys of football. The Denver Broncos lost a Super Bowl Sunday. And the Pope is Catholic and the earth is round and John Elway has buck teeth.

I won’t say they are a municipal embarrassment around Denver these days, but if you happen to mention “Denver Broncos” on a sidewalk in the Rocky Mountains, you can expect the listener to say “Who?” The only orange in town for a while will be in fruit bins.

Chicago has its Cubs, Hardy had Laurel--and Denver has the Broncos. The community is trying to distance itself from this community embarrassment, but it should just treat the Broncos likebackward children. They keep blundering into the Super Bowl. They apparently like the spotlight, the hoopla and just don’t seem to comprehend they’re making fools of themselves. It’s kind of pathetic.

They should have a clause in their agreement with the league that they don’t have to play any game under 5,000 feet.

And they shouldn’t play the San Francisco 49ers anywhere.

Come to think of it, they haven’t played the 49ers yet. You couldn’t call what they did Sunday playing football. Chaplin was never funnier.

There wasn’t much difference between the two teams. The 49ers were bigger, faster, smarter, tougher, and they looked better in their uniforms. Apart from that, it was a contest. The outcome was as foregone as a tidal wave. You would have been all right if you had the Broncos and 46 points but don’t let that lull you. The 49ers took their head executioner off the field with about 11 minutes left and the score already 55-10.

All right, so Joe Montana can walk on water. Bullets probably bounce off him. He may be the most effective throwing machine in the annals of football. His public humiliation of John Elway and the Denver Broncos was thorough, deadly, impersonal and total. Whoever in history may dispute Joe Montana’s eminence as the top of the profession, John Elway ain’t one of them. They used to say in Hollywood, “Never make a movie with a dog or Spencer Tracy.” Well, you should never get in a Super Bowl with Joe Montana. He’s now put away Dan Marino, Boomer Esiason, Ken Andersen and John Elway. The question is no longer whether he’s better than his contemporaries, it’s whether he’s better than his ancestors.

He had help. Some commentator noted that giving Joe Montana Jerry Rice and Roger Craig was like giving a lion horns.

He scored at will Sunday. If you liked this game you would love pictures of the German army going through Belgium or puppies sailing down a flood on a barn roof. Only people who stop to look at freeway accidents still had their sets on by the fourth quarter.

You expect to get beat by Joe Montana, Roger Craig and Jerry Rice when you play the 49ers, but when guys you never heard of start beating up on you, it’s time to throw in the towel.

The chances are you never heard of a guy named Michael Walter. This guy with two first names is a right inside linebacker on the 49ers. This designates a position in which you take the strong side rush of the opposition. It’s not a glamour position. You’re in the boiler room of football. Your nose bleeds a lot and your ears ring.

You expect Jerry Rice, John Taylor, Roger Craig and even Tom Rathman to catch passes. You don’t expect Michael Walter.

Walter became a receiver in the third quarter of the Super Bowl Sunday. It was his first catch of the season. On the face of it, it doesn’t look as significant as the graceful receptions of Rice and Taylor and company, but the situation was this: San Francisco was ahead 27-3 as the third quarter opened and the Broncos unaccountably stopped the 49ers on their first series of downs. The Broncos had the ball on their own 24 and were ready to start their comeback drive. On first down, Elway went back to pass.

He threw a beautiful spiral. It had trajectory, fluidity and velocity. Michael Walter was open. He was open because he had seen this same pattern earlier in the game and he broke with the primary receiver. He faked the move again this time but drifted into the path he knew the football was going to take.

It was one of the few passes all day John Elway had right on target. It hit Walter right in the chest. It wasn’t so much an interception as a reception. If he’d had the speed of, say, a Rice or a Taylor, he would have scored, too.

What he did was, he put a tombstone on the game for Denver. On the very next play, Joe Montana threw for a touchdown. Denver went quietly after that.

Walter is symptomatic of the kind of ho-hum perfection the 49ers bring to the game of football. You would not ordinarily expect a guy who was a defensive end at the University of Oregon to become a deft, Bill Walsh-type of pro linebacker. You would not expect a guy who was cut loose by the Dallas Cowboys to become a Super Bowl receiver.

Michael Walter’s picture will never make the cover of Sports Illustrated or the inside pages of the Sporting News. His name never appears in Herb Caen’s column. But he leads the 49ers annually in tackles (103 this season, 97 last, and 94 the year before that.)

He made five tackles Sunday--and caught one pass. He’s not Joe Montana but he gets Joe the ball.

The 49ers aren’t a team, they’re a scourge. A dynasty.

If all they had to play was the Denver Broncos, they’d be an empire.

Beating Denver is like being a fighter who goes on tour beating his chauffeur. Around a race track, when a horse overcomes this kind of company, they say “He beat nuthin’.” Denver shouldn’t count. You should have an asterisk after the victory. Denver in a Super Bowl is not a participant, just the scenery.