Mountains of Scrutiny

There is no escape here, so the newspapers had reports of Janet Elway’s first pregnancy about the time a young John Elway learned. A few days later, Elway was throwing footballs for the Broncos and the Kansas City Chiefs were catching them.

The Denver faithful were booing Elway, as they did so often during those early years, and after a fifth interception, a fan stood and let Janet Elway’s husband really have it.

“You can get your . . . wife pregnant, but you can’t . . . do anything else, ya bum.”

Janet Elway popped the guy. Slapped him right in the face before a number of Elway’s college buddies jumped in to save the heckler’s life.

“I remember the first time the radio talk shows went after me,” says Janet, mother of four little Elways now and wife of a 36-year-old Denver icon. “I was so hurt and upset, and John’s just rolling his eyes: ‘Every day of my life,’ he says.

“ ‘But you’re the quarterback,’ I said, ‘and I’m not.’ ”

*

As suffocating as the media attention is here, one event never made the headlines: Six years ago the unhappy Elways believed they were on their way to Washington in a trade.

“The Duke of Denver,” as he is called around here, felt as if he had been handcuffed professionally by Coach Dan Reeves since arriving as the game’s next superstar in 1983, and now in a shocking move, Reeves was working on a hush-hush deal to get rid of him.

Reeves insists today it was all Washington Coach Joe Gibbs’ idea, but for Janet Elway, who was willing recently to offer a rare glimpse of life behind the scenes of a superstar in the making, it was one more emotional hit for a family that supposedly has had everything going its way.

“We heard about it and we were told it’s a real deal and maybe it was going to happen,” she says. “Our agent looked into it, and sure enough it was something being considered, and you know what, we wanted to go.

“I wanted the fresh start to get away from all the negative things. The Redskins had a great team, our kids were young enough, but then as it turned out [Bronco owner] Pat Bowlen never pulled the trigger.”

*

These are the best of times now, a 4-1 start for the Denver Broncos and recognition for Janet Elway’s husband as one of the game’s greatest players, but this trek to stardom has been 14 troubling years in the making. What has it been like to be John Elway, the man who determines Denver’s psyche each week during football season? To be both loved and hated? To be John Elway for a day?

“I’m signing autographs when I go to buy gas,” he says. “I know that. Instead of letting it bother me, I know it’s going to happen. What I try to do is frequent the same gas station until the guy gets tired of asking for my autograph and then I don’t have to do it anymore. Or, I have someone else get gas for me.”

What has it been like for Janet Elway, an Olympic-caliber swimmer in her own right, to live with the most scrutinized athlete in Denver? To raise four children in such an atmosphere? Some days, she says, her husband has been hit harder than any tackle on the field, and yet, he has always gotten up.

“There have been times when it scared me how low he could get,” Janet says. “He wouldn’t talk about it for weeks on end, but you could feel it, see it, and then one night he would break, and it would almost be like a dam bursting with all these emotions spilling out. He was holding so much in, but once he talked to his dad or to me and he would get it out, then he would pick himself up and go on.

“I don’t know how he did it. A lot of things happened with Dan [Reeves], and not that they weren’t difficult for Dan too, but it was a bad situation for the both of them. I can’t tell you how many times John decided to quit on Friday only to get up and go in to work Saturday.”

*

It is difficult to comprehend today after more than 45,000 passing yards and more games played as a Bronco (195) than any other player in team history, but those early years on the job were a test of survival for the Elway family.

“John was such a standout at Stanford and then to come here and just regress,” Janet says. “Nothing was going his way, and it was just awful. There was all this talk about him being the first pick in the draft, so where was all this greatness?”

Before he had thrown a pass in a regular-season game, he was the Sports Illustrated cover boy, and as the headline said, “Looking like a million.” Met by expectations that might overwhelm some, he embraced the challenge only to be embarrassed by Reeves’ inability to patiently develop immature talent.

He was pulled from his first start, and then his second, and before season’s end Elway was so confused he was seen lining up behind his guard, mistaking him for the center.

“I was a bust at 23,” Elway says with his characteristic self-deprecating sense of humor. “Well, I was on my way to being a bust, and it was everything in my life not to be a bust because I started so slowly.”

There were almost daily phone calls to Jack Elway, John’s father, and now his best friend. There was so much pressure, so much scrutiny that when Elway went to get a haircut, he required a police escort to avoid the media and autograph seekers.

“The memories are a nightmare,” Elway says. “I just wanted to go home. They could keep their money; I just didn’t want to be here. It was miserable. I didn’t know what I was doing, and I know I brought a lot on myself, but I began to doubt myself. I was wondering, ‘Oh man, this is a different level, can I make it here?’

“I wouldn’t change anything that’s happened, but if you asked me if you could go back and be 22 again, would you do it? I’m not sure I’d do it, because it wasn’t easy. People don’t realize what a boo makes a young kid feel like. It’s like taking a big dagger to a 23-, 24-year-old kid. People expect you to grow up just like that. In the business world, you get a chance to grow.”

*

Janet Elway, as Janet Buchan, had the American record in the 400 individual medley, she was ranked fourth in the world in her event while dating her future husband, and only a United States boycott kept her from competing in the 1980 Olympics in Moscow.

“Understand now,” she says, “I was no Amy Van Dyken.”

No, but she was an athlete who understood what another gifted athlete must endure in trying to win, but failing miserably.

“John is a very moody guy, and so after a game we make sure we have time for ourselves,” Janet says. “As much as he needs family, he needs time to be by himself, whether it’s going to sit in the corner in a bar or putting the kids to bed and just talking. Lots of times after a game he would be so frustrated, and there would be times when he just had to be with his buddies and hang out.

“At some point a lot of people might have broke going through what he did and taken on problems like alcohol or whatever. But John had this ability to bounce back. Now I don’t want people to hear this and think the Elways are feeling sorry for themselves, and here they have had life on a silver platter, and, oh, poor John Elway. This is not about fame or money, and while all that is wonderful, all John ever wanted to do was compete and win. But in many situations his hands were tied.”

For nine years--almost a decade of prime time in his athletic life--Elway played for a very restrictive Reeves. Reeves, who came from the Dallas Cowboys, believed in the Dallas system, and the system was more important than any individual player.

“His talent was suppressed,” Janet says. “We never got to see John go out there and just play. What was it--nine, 10 years under that system? It’s too bad his younger years are gone now.”

Reeves has taken shots at Elway, and Elway has fired back, although both have tried to move on. Reeves went to three Super Bowls with less-than-super talent, but he had Elway. Elway went to three Super Bowls, and probably because he was playing for one of the game’s great coaches. They were tied together by success, yet they could not have been farther apart.

Elway has talked about his days of handing the ball off on first and second downs and then having to throw on third. He has criticized Reeves in praising new Coach Mike Shanahan, but he has only gone so far. One of the reasons he declines to write a book is because he refuses to tell the truth and hurt Reeves’ feelings.

“The only time Dan would let him go and play like he’s really capable would be when he finally gave up on the running game in the fourth quarter and took the reins off John,” says Janet, who has not missed a game her husband has played. “That’s when we saw the real John Elway, the fire in his eyes; you can read it in his face when he gets that extra step in his walk and that excitement of making things happen.”

The 38 fourth-quarter comebacks during his career provide documentation of just how successful an unfettered Elway might have been.

In the Reeves era, Elway averaged 3,172 yards and almost 17 touchdowns a season; since then he has averaged 3,830 yards a year and more than 22 touchdowns.

“John honestly says he wishes the best for Dan, and that’s all behind him,” Janet says. “And I know John was his own worst enemy for a time carrying the weight of the whole team on his shoulders, but I’m not sure he would still be playing today if that had continued. The change that was made [Reeves’ departure to the New York Giants in January 1993] has given him a few more years.”

From the time Elway and Dan Marino entered the league in 1983, Marino has prospered with the green light to throw behind an offensive line retooled every four years with a bevy of top-round draft picks. Elway, his hands tied, has played behind a workmanlike group of free agents, and when was the last time the Broncos started two quality wide receivers?

“There were times when John felt like quitting, and I would get all riled up and wouldn’t want to hear any of that,” Janet says. “I’m sure he just wanted me to agree, but I believed in him too much to put up with that.

“I know some people might think its sickening how much I love my husband, but it’s not only being his mate, I respect the heck out of what he’s done with his life. He has been such a survivor, and I idolize him.”

*

The Golden Boy, who has been sacked more than 400 times in his career and punished with big hits as a scrambling quarterback, felt abused during one stage in his life. He whined about having no privacy, pointing to the reporters who staked out his house on Halloween to find out what candy the Elways were giving, and he was not happy.

“We grew up together, so that’s all I’ve known,” Janet says. “I know when we go places John is going to be noticed. He never wants to be a jerk, so I will be the jerk sometimes and say he’s not signing, but it’s tough.

“A new mall opened in town recently and John was willing to go; he would never have done that in the past, but he’s become so much more comfortable.”

Elway, one of the most approachable star athletes even at the worst of times, says he’s now on Round 3 for signing autographs for everyone who lives in the state of Colorado. But imagine having everyone tugging at you wherever you go, while struggling to be successful on the field with an overbearing boss adding to your frustrations.

“At some point it began to feel like too much for him,” Janet says. “It was like, ‘All I want to do is play football and not have to fill this role of what everybody wants me to be.’ He was kind of like a little kid who didn’t want to do it, and then he turned it all around.”

The transformation from jock to citizen coincided with the maturation of Denver as a big-time city. The baseball Rockies came to town in 1993 and the hockey Avalanche in 1995, and there were moments of freedom from the adoring masses, and Elway began to breathe fresh air.

He had become a father, and his kids earned his undivided attention. He had become a businessman to protect himself in case Reeves drove him from the game, and he now owns seven automobile dealerships. He had become the inspiration for a charity foundation, and his foundation has now raised more than $2 million for abused children.

“I’ve never felt I was anyone special, and when people talk like that, it’s like they are talking about someone else,” Elway says.

Never more than a regular guy raised well who happened to have extraordinary athletic talent, Elway has now carved his niche in Denver history as someone to be respected on and off the field.

“If I would have made a blueprint of the ideal son,” says Jack Elway, “I would have undershot what he’s attained.”

Now time is running out for Denver. Elway, a survivor of those early painful years, has already suggested he will play only two seasons beyond this one, and there are young, spoiled adults who have grown up knowing nothing else but Elway on Sunday for much of their lives.

“It’s going to be very strange when he’s done playing,” says Janet. “The day’s coming when he will have done all he can do, but it will be a bittersweet day. I will be happy for him giving it up, but I will miss seeing what he can do. It really is something to watch.”

*

It began with a closet but is really a room now as Janet tries to control the news articles and memorabilia she has saved for the day when she assembles a scrapbook.

“We haven’t saved the dirty diapers that John received in the mail,” she says. “You know, I don’t want my kids to know about the negative stuff that went on. I don’t want them recalling Dad being upset.”

The kids, however, have already been hit hard by the cruelty of talk radio, and there always seems to be a bully at school who claims the Chiefs are better than the Broncos.

Five-year-old Juliana’s response: “My daddy is John Elway, my daddy is John Elway, my daddy is John Elway.”

And Elway laughs. “I had to pull her over and straighten her out on that,” he says. Jessie, 10, the oldest, will say two things right away: It’s nothing special being John Elway’s daughter, and no, she’s not going to let him quit playing football.

“Jessie has always been that way,” Janet says. “She has her own identity.”

When the quarterback does take his kids out, the family goes to Disney World or out of state to avoid the fanfare. “It’s important to be Dad and not the celebrity,” he says, “and I try to keep them out of that situation.”

Elway says he would like to spoil his kids but reflects on how he was raised and resists. But if you’re an Elway kid, don’t fall off your bike and come crying.

“One thing about our kids, they get no sympathy in this house,” says Janet, who has watched her husband undergo nine surgeries and play in pain much of his career. “Our kids are either going to grow up tremendously mentally tough or crazed.

“It’s funny, our kids think everybody’s dad is on TV and has his own billboard. They don’t even notice all the hoopla anymore. It’s just, ‘There’s Daddy.’ ”

*

The years have whizzed past, and the young couple who supposedly had it going all their way, knew better and were not overwhelmed.

“Looking back now, we were so young,” says Janet. “So much money, so much fame, everyone in Denver was looking at us and expecting so much, our parents were not in town and we were very much alone and not sure how to handle ourselves.

“Golly, there were some hard times, and we were just so young. But, my, how we have been blessed.”