SUPER BOWL XXIV : SAN FRANCISCO 49ERS 55 DENVER BRONCOS 10 : Elway Hacks His Way Through It

All his right arm was good for Sunday was to cover his mouth when coughing. John Elway, least valuable player of Super Bowl XXIV, slipped the offending limb into the sleeve of a leather bomber-pilot’s jacket, took his wife by the hand, then did the very thing he had so much difficulty doing during the (cough) football game that mercifully ended more than an hour before. He marched the length of the field.

From the losers’ locker room on the Poydras Street side of the Louisiana Superdome, the Elways re-entered the center ring of the cavernous arena and crossed the entire playing field, making for the Girod Street exit, side-stepping technicians and dangling cable. Stadium stragglers, never ones to pass up a chance to ask an athlete for an autograph, rushed forward for the signature of a flu-wracked, guilt-ridden, bronchial Bronco, whose team had just been horsewhipped, 55-10.

“Sorry, John,” one said.

Elway sighed, smiled, signed.

“Hey, John! John!” a young girl called down from the mezzanine.

Elway looked up, squinted into a bright light, waved to her.

And away he went into the tunnel, into the darkness, into the future, homeward bound to his addresses in Aurora, Colo., and Palm Springs, hardly headed for Disneyland. Off he went to his dwellings, to dwell on all that went haywire. Home to wonder why he was tricked again rather than treated, to wonder whether the city and population of Denver would ever again allow him to feel a mile high.

“All I can do is the best I can,” said Elway, who looked the worst of any of the five quarterbacks who played football Sunday--two San Francisco 49ers, two Denver Broncos and Budway Joe, the animated beer bottle. “I’m just trying to figure out how we can win one of these things.”

Call him with suggestions. There is no toll-free number, not yet, but when there is, you can bet it won’t have Roman numerals in it. In three Super Bowls, Elway-quarterbacked teams have scored 40 points. The other guys have scored 136. And at the bottom of this mine lies a big, big man, Big John.

“They didn’t make the mistakes we did,” Elway said of the victorious 49ers. Hey, who did? Elway’s game had more holes than Pete Fountain’s clarinet. He was 10 for 26, got sacked four times, had two passes intercepted, fumbled twice. The touchdown he scored was strictly peanuts. In fact, John Elway was strictly peanuts; he was Charlie Brown, faked out by Lucy again.

Did he accept his fate gracefully? Yes, he did. Hacking incessantly but insisting he felt fine, Elway talked about how awesome the 49ers looked, about what a “well-oiled machine” they are, about how the Broncos lost to a better football team and had to be satisfied that at least they hadn’t lost due to a lack of effort.

“It’s disappointing,” Elway said, smiling a smile that was all teeth and no mirth. “Why do we always come in here and play so poorly?

“I feel sorry not only for myself and for the organization, but for the fans in Denver and throughout the United States who have been behind us, who have expected more from us. We’ve got to keep plugging away, try to get them one. I’d still rather lose the Super Bowl than not be in the Super Bowl at all, but when are we going to win one of these things?”

More to the point: Is John Elway the reason Denver’s here or the reason Denver loses?

Cough.

For the 49ers in New Orleans, it was big and it was easy. The only way they could have won by more is if Jack Pardee had been their coach, in which case the score would have been 95-10 before he pulled his starters. Elway’s only touchdown wouldn’t have counted if an official hadn’t overruled an end zone interception by San Francisco’s Bill Romanowski, charging him instead with pass interference. Elway has a total of two touchdown passes in three Super Bowls.

He tried not to visibly react, bad play after bad play. After an interception by Chet Brooks, with the damage already 34-3, Denver defensive back Steve Atwater trudged back onto the field and did what any decent teammate does; he patted his quarterback on the rump. Sympathy was running high by then. The Broncos knew or suspected what Elway was feeling.

By the end, even the 49ers themselves were commiserating. Niner linebacker Matt Millen helped the quarterback up, put a comforting hand on his shoulder and said: “Hang in there.”

“I’m trying,” Elway said.

“You’re going to take a lot of heat, but it isn’t justified,” Millen said.

Some of the heat was coming from the stands. Certain fans had seen enough. From a section full of orange shirts, a section presumably occupied by Denver faithful, a chant arose during the second half, a chant that took in vain the name of a former punk musician, intended for the ears of Elway.

“Johnny Rotten! Johnny Rotten!” it went, cruelly.

“You know,” San Francisco’s overstuffed teddy bear Bubba Paris said, “it got to a point in the game where, being a Christian and being a person that loves people, I actually felt sorry for Denver.”

The tricky part for John Elway was not feeling sorry for himself. Here was a football player who has played in three Super Bowls, who knows somewhere in his insides that ‘tis better to have played and lost than never to have played at all. Yet, all anyone could say to him--all he could say to himself--was how horrible it was that he, like Fran Tarkenton of the Minnesota Vikings, has quarterbacked three Super Bowl losers.

“At least Fran was in a couple of those Super Bowls,” Elway said. “I’ve never even been in one. We’ve been manhandled every time.”

He coughed and said maybe next time, things would be different. The cough was understandable. Sometimes, words get stuck in a guy’s throat.