On crucial drive, Elway took his body for a spin
By Henry Schulman
Super Bowl XXXII was a fantastic game that arrived when the NFL needed one. For more than a decade, the sport’s greatest spectacle had become a one-sided boxing match, with the NFC raising its arms over the battered form of the AFC.
Many of the games were routs. Fans had come to expect bad Super Bowls and started rooting for the commercials.
That changed on Jan. 25, 1998, at San Diego’s Qualcomm Stadium. The Denver Broncos beat the heavily favored, defending-champion Green Bay Packers 31-24 to end a 13-year NFC winning streak that included four of the 49ers’ five championships and three by the Dallas Cowboys.
The upset by a 12-point underdog, settled on a Terrell Davis touchdown with 1:45 left, frustrated Brett Favre in his bid for two titles in a row and gave the AFC its first win since the Raiders captured Super Bowl XVIII.
That would have been a great story by itself, but Super Bowl XXXII is not remembered most for any of that.
Rather, it was the game in which 37-year-old quarterback John Elway, the Stanford great whose football days were numbered, finally won a Super Bowl in his fourth try.
The Broncos had lost three in a span of four years, a run of futility that began after Elway led Denver on his signature achievement, a 98-yard touchdown drive that helped beat the Browns in the 1986 AFC Championship Game.
“Those were the ultimate losses and this is the ultimate win,” Elway said after his Super Bowl triumph. “This one erases those other three, no question.”
Favre was the NFL’s coMVP in 1997, but Elway — finally — got to hoist the Lombardi Trophy at the end of his 14th NFL season.
Although Davis rushed for 157 yards to capture Super Bowl XXXII MVP, Elway provided the most memorable play. It starred his aging legs.
The game was tied 17-17 midway through the third quarter when a drive that began at the Denver 8-yard line threatened to stall at the Green Bay 12. Improvising on a 3rdand-6 pass play busted by the Packers’ defensive set, Elway ran through a right-side seam desperate for a first down.
He got it with 2 yards to spare, not by sliding at the end of the play but leaping. He took ferocious hits from defensive backs LeRoy Butler and Mike Prior that spun Elway like a helicopter blade before he hit the ground on his back. Elway popped up immediately, first down in hand.
“You could just see it in his eyes how badly he wanted it,” teammate and former Stanford wide receiver Ed McCaffrey said.
Two plays later, Davis ran it in from the 1 and gave Denver a touchdown lead. The “Helicopter Play” and TD did not secure Denver’s victory, but it helped seal Elway’s legacy.
Much of the talk that season centered on Elway’s possible retirement after Super Bowl XXXII, especially if the Broncos won. They did, but Elway stuck around for one more season.
The decision could not have worked out better for Elway and the Broncos. They returned to Super Bowl XXXIII in Miami and beat the Falcons 34-19 to repeat as champions.
The MVP of Elway’s final NFL game?
Did anyone really have to ask?
“Those were the ultimate losses and this is the ultimate win. This one erases those other three, no question.” John Elway, recounting three Super Bowl losses after his first Super Bowl win