A Vintage Year for John Elway : Bronco Quarterback’s Sterling Play Combined With His New Openness and City’s Embrace Make for Perhaps His Best Season as a Pro

Everyone, at least those who have walked past a television set during the last week of January, knows what John Elway hasn’t won.

You can see it on his barren fingers; friends say he refuses to wear his three Super Bowl loser rings.

You can hear it in his voice; he refuses to acknowledge that his Hall of Fame career has been satisfying.

But during his 11 seasons with the Denver Broncos, a funny thing has happened to the NFL’s version of Bobby Bowden.

As he has constantly, and vainly, attempted to reach that championship level inhabited by the Joe Montanas and Troy Aikmans, look at all the things Elway has won.

-- He has won a livestock contest.

His “7-Rod” Cattle Company, recently formed in Wyoming with all of 15 head, was awarded best of show in a division at the 1992 Colorado State Fair.

If you don’t believe it, he has the green ribbon hanging in an office.

-- He has won wrestling matches with offensive linemen.

Every summer Elway packs up his fishing gear and best friends -- usually linemen and other players you have never heard of -- and jets to some remote area of the world.

Sometimes they actually fish. Other times they act like large children, including wrestling on the floor of a lodge in, say, the middle of a Costa Rican jungle.

If you don’t believe it, he has photos hanging in an office.

Elway is the one wearing the Harley-Davidson cap.

“I guess we get kind of goofy,” said Dave Studdard, a former teammate and close friend. “But that’s what John likes. He’s pretty much become just another ol’ country boy.”

-- He has won the Toyota Touch President’s Award.

This is not an honor given to a football player. It is an honor given to an auto dealership.

There being no available research on this, trust us when we say that Elway is the highest - paid football player who doubles as a car salesman.

Besides pushing Toyotas, he also owns successful Honda, Mazda, Oldsmobile and Hyundai dealerships in Denver.

Yes, he has worked the showroom floor. Once.

“He was talking to a customer, and needed $300 more, when the guy tells John, ‘Hey, you can afford the $300 more than I can,’ ” recalled business partner Rod Buscher.

Nowadays, Elway enjoys hanging out with the mechanics, a group he was perhaps patronizing when he designed this year’s company Christmas party.

It carried a biker theme, complete with Southern rock on the stereo and a fake tattoo booth in the corner.

While others purchased special gear for the occasion, Elway, who owns a Harley, just threw on something out of his closet.

-- He has won the admiration and respect from a city in which he is no longer afraid to be himself.

“I think John now understands what he means to this town,” Buscher said. “And the people in this town have come to appreciate him for who he is.”

This has been his greatest victory. And it has helped make 1993 his greatest year.

“It is like, I have been revived,” Elway said recently.

The year began at the end of last season, when longtime coach Dan Reeves was fired, making Elway the winner in football’s quietest, but most intense, feud.

“It is not a situation where, if I saw him, I would not say hello,” Elway said. “But as far as I’m concerned, him leaving gave me new life.”

The year got even better in late January, when Elway was voted 1992 NFL Edge Man Of The Year. He was cited for, among other things, raising more than $1.2 million for the prevention and treatment of child abuse.

The award may have been clinched when one agency said it received more money from Elway than from the state of Colorado.

Elway’s year will symbolically end Sunday, when he leads the Broncos into the Coliseum for a final-game showdown with the Raiders.

And you thought those charity numbers were big.

A candidate for his second NFL MVP award, Elway is the league’s third-ranked passer. He also ranks in the league’s top three in five other major passing categories.

This fourth-quarter leader who was always considered a statistical weakling is nearing personal bests in touchdowns, passing yardage and completion percentage.

And he has done it, not with receivers named Rice or Irvin, but with guys named Russell and Marshall.

OK, so he throws the ball to a guy named Sharpe. It is not the record-setting Sterling Sharpe, but his brother, Shannon.

When asked if Elway should be the league’s MVP, Bronco Coach Wade Phillips did not hesitate.

“Yeah, I don’t think there is any doubt about that,” Phillips said. “When you look at the situation, he has been head and shoulders above everybody else.”

Put a different way, Elway was handed a new coach, a new system, young and anonymous skill players . . .. . and yet the Broncos are in the playoffs for the sixth time in his 10 years as a full-season starter.

“The only thing that remained constant this year has been the quarterback,” Phillips said. “And the quarterback has responded.”

And how. He is not only a leader on the statistics page but, with the domineering Reeves gone, he has also become a rather loud leader on the field.

“He’ll come off the field and start yelling at my defense, like, ‘You got to hold them!’ ” said Charlie Waters, Bronco defensive coordinator. “He will tease players who he doesn’t think are working hard enough. Somebody is not running after practice, he may yell, ‘Hey, you were sucking wind in the fourth quarter last Sunday, get your butt out here!’ ”

Waters smiled, remembering the days he played in Dallas under the similar leadership of Roger Staubach.

“You know, John never used to be this way,” he said.

Elway never used to be a lot of ways. When he first came to Denver as the No. 1 draft pick in 1983, he cowered under such public scrutiny that one newspaper even reported on one of his haircuts.

The more times he was asked to autograph a body part, the more he was surrounded by fans wishing only to touch him, the more he complained.

“A lot of times, I felt I knew where Michael Jordan was coming from,” Elway said, “But I have learned to handle it better.”

He is not only seen regularly in public, but he even keeps an informal schedule of decidedly informal haunts.

On Monday afternoons during the season, he can been seen walking through the peanut shells on the floor of a country steakhouse, where he and some buddies meet for lunch and non-football talk.

“He walks in there and everybody in the place looks at him like, he belongs,” Studdard said. “If he had a good game, we’ll all high-five and then get down to talk about hunting.”

When he visits one of his dealerships, he always stops by a small diner that serves the best wings in town.

“People look, but they don’t come after him as much anymore because John has become so much a part of the town,” Buscher said.

And he can be seen on television commercials for his car dealerships in which he refreshingly pokes fun at his lack of knowledge under the hood.

In one shot, he is looking at a car with no tire and announces to the mechanics, “Hey, this needs a wheel!”

“I know things are hectic, but I would rather be in the situation I am in, than not,” Elway said. “Things around here have been fun.”

That is not how he felt in the several years under Reeves, whose conservative, disciplinary approach rankled Elway.

Under Reeves, Elway said: “We would just try to hang in there with the other team, and hang, and hang . . . . and I would have to win the game for us in the last two minutes. It became a burden.”

He never said anything to the media, but friends say he didn’t have to--because he finally said something to owner Pat Bowlen.

“Pat would be out with all of us and the former players, we didn’t work for Pat anymore, we all told him what we thought about Dan,” Studdard said. “And I know eventually, John said a few things too.

“Finally, a light went on, and a change was made.”

Reeves, who will probably be voted coach of the year for his work with the so-far-uncomplaining New York Giants, has said that coaching Elway was no picnic, either. He calls Elway immature.

If playing with the enthusiasm of a kid is immature, then the description fits more than ever.

Under Phillips and new offensive coordinator Jim Fassel, who coached Elway at Stanford, the Broncos are running a true passing game again.

“For the last three or four years, a lot of critics said I was overrated, ‘I couldn’t throw the touch pass, I couldn’t . . . ‘ right on down the line,” Elway said. “I thought it was a bad rap because I didn’t have an opportunity to do those things.

“All of a sudden, this year I had a chance to do those things again. And I had to prove to myself that I can still do it.”

Point proven. One point remaining.

“Winning a Super Bowl . . . . has gotten a lot of monkeys off a lot of guys backs,” Elway said, sighing. “But if I walk away tomorrow, I know I’ve done all I can possibly do.”