Two in a Row Could Bring Elway Back for a Final Encore Next Season

Speculation has begun that Bronco quarterback John Elway may postpone his retirement plans should Denver win a second successive Super Bowl title. No one has won three in a row, and he reportedly said he found the prospect of being the first to do that “tempting.” He added, “I don’t want to leave too early and I don’t want to leave too late, either.”

Bronco Coach Mike Shanahan, however, sounded doubtful about the prospect Elway would come back for one more season.

“I’m hoping he would,” Shanahan said. “But my gut feeling is this will be his last football game.”

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There was an unidentified flying object hovering over the Bronco practice Monday: a helicopter from a local TV station was trying to get an unusual angle on the Broncos’ maneuvers but NFL officials took care of it by making a few phone calls and extracting a promise not to do it again.

“We were going to shoot it down, but it didn’t hover, so we let it go,” Shanahan joked.

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Denver guard Mark Schlereth may hold the NFL record for most surgeries undergone by one player: 22.

The first was on his left knee, in 1983, and the next is scheduled for a few weeks after the Super Bowl and will remove bone chips from his left elbow. He underwent two procedures in the last few months--one on his left elbow during training camp and a minor procedure on his knee during the Broncos’ open date. The cost for all these operations?

“I would imagine hundreds of thousands of dollars,” he said. “I don’t know. I get the bill and hand it to [club officials] and say, ‘Here.’ ”

His medical bills might not be much more than the dinner bill he and the rest of the Bronco offensive linemen planned for Monday night.

They were going to spend the $5,500 in fines they assessed themselves for talking to the media during the season.

They’re a tight-knit group.

“If I needed help at 3 o’clock in the morning, I wouldn’t hesitate to give one of those guys a call and I think they feel the same,” he said.

The only non-offensive line player invited to their dinner was fullback Howard Griffith. “We take a couple of special cases every now and again,” Schlereth said. “He’s kind of like a little, short offensive lineman. He runs into people. He wants to be an honorary offensive lineman and we put him through the hoops, so we let him.”

Denver vs. Atlanta

Sunday, 3:15 p.m.

at Miami

TV: Channel 11