Broncos All-Time Top 5 QBs: The Hall of the Mountain King
John Elway becomes a legend. The Big Hummer defies time. Brian Griese tumbles down a driveway.
BEHOLD! ‘TIS I: ANGRY STORM GOD ELWAY, INFORMING THEE THAT I HAVE CAST MY DIVINE COUNTENANCE UPON THESE RANKINGS AND FOUND THEM PLEASING.
(I considered writing this whole feature in all caps and Walt Simonson Odin-speak. Then I remembered this is my primary source of income.)
1. John Elway
Once upon a time, as long removed from today as the Great Depression was to then, there was a quarterback so talented as an overall athlete that two different major league baseball teams tried to draft him as an outfielder. His senior college season coincided with a strike that wiped out half the NFL season. On any given weekend in the autumn of 1982, he was the best quarterback on television. In a time of tumult and chaos, he looked like a potential savior: for a franchise, or perhaps even a league.
A cantankerous old drunkard drafted him and tried to force him to join what was left of his crumbling bayside empire. The upstart refused. He threatened to play baseball instead. The flamboyant king of the realm’s most storied sports franchise publicly wooed him. The young quarterback was threatening the very institution of professional football before he ever took a snap! Eventually, a peace was brokered, and the hotshot journeyed to the mountain kingdom, a place of great barrenness and sorrow.
At first, the quarterback was so shaky that he sometimes lined up behind the guard instead of the center. (“Wrong guy! Wrong guy!” his teammates shouted.) But he grew up quickly, suddenly. Tales circulated of the “Elway Cross,” the stigmata delivered by the young crusader, whose passes delivered such a blow to their receivers that the stitching on the football branded their chests.
His team reached the playoffs in his second season, the Big Game in the fourth. The youngster became a seasoned veteran. His college rivals became his pro rivals: the cocky Miami kid, now in Buffalo; the party boy from Pittsburgh, now in Miami. They dueled in the regular season and the playoffs. They were brash. A little arrogant. They smashed records. They reset expectations.
Oh, but the ultimate prize eluded our hero. His team was trounced by Giants in his first trip to the Big Game. A well-oiled machine from the Capital City embarrassed him in the second. The glittering Champion of His Era donned his golden armor and absolutely humiliated him in the third. The quarterback developed a reputation, one his detractors seized upon: he could not win the Big Game.
Of course he could not win the Big Game. Not by himself! He had no Hogs or Smurfs to do his bidding, no sorcerers of the west coast drawing up his battle plans. His defenses were strong, but he often appeared to be charging into the breach by himself. Still, the mountain kingdom, which had never tasted victory, always teetered on the brink of rebellion against their not-quite savior. Now it was being tantalized annually. Better to be jesters in silly striped socks than endure such a fate.
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