Broncos still a Mile High
This is the 11th in a series of postcards Sports Illustrated's Peter King will e-mail from his annual training-camp tour. But this one's a little different: King writes from Friday night's Broncos-Saints preseason game.
Posted: Sat August 15, 1998
Aug. 14: Denver
TEAMS: Denver Broncos, New Orleans Saints.
SITE: Mile High Stadium, where the stands and the press box shake when the crowd gets excited, where the white horse high atop the scoreboard is silhouetted against the blue southern sky, and where the New Orleans Saints showed tonight why they have miles to go to offensive decency, and thus to .500.
FOOD: Broiled ham with potatoes au gratin, with a romaine salad on the side.
Weak coffee. Let's just say I remember the grub in the Ohio University cafeteria 20 years ago a bit more fondly.
Dear NFL Junkie:
Vintage Elway. At 6:04 p.m. three figures, heads bowed and helmets on, emerged from the door underneath the south stands that leads from the Broncos locker room. In
order: Bubby Brister, John Elway, Doug Nussmeier. He just wanted to be one of the guys. (In fact, somebody very close to Elway tells me if he had quit this year it would have been because he can't stand the unending fame an caged-in feeling he's felt for his 15-year career as one of the most famous men in sports.) The early arrivals gave it up semi-enthusiastically for Elway, who ran the length of the field and then, unemotionally, began playing his first game of catch at Mile High since the Broncos won the Super Bowl.
I'm surprised the fans didn't go nuttier for Elway. You know: women in tears, men hooting, kids screaming. The guy did win a Super Bowl for them, and he did eschew retirement to give them one more year—
WAIT! A BIG PHONE CALL JUST CAME IN TO THE PRESS BOX PHONE NEXT TO ME!
"May I speak to the head of the household please?'' some fellow said.
"Yeah,'' I said. "I'll let you talk to my wife.''
I handed the phone to Brian Allee-Walsh, my trusted correspondent from the New Orleans Times-Picayune.
"Hellooooo?'' Walsh said in his highest-pitched voice.
It degenerated from there.
Okay. Back to football.
It took Elway 3:44 to show the world he should indeed have come back. Seven-yard fastball to Rod Smith. Seventeen-yard fastball to Sterling Sharpe. and a
perfectly lofted 34-yard eephus strike to Smith, to the one-yard line. Terrell Davis took it the final yard.
"That's what we expect,'' coach Mike Shanahan shrugged later. "It's always nice
to go 75, 85 yards.''
I mean, it's crazy that Elway's talking about quitting after this season. He's got a ton left.
Afterward, following an ugly 17-10 win, he said: "We've got a lot of rough edges to
work out. But I'll tell you, it's good to be back out there again.'' That showed.
And hey, this Griese kid looked good in the fourth quarter. Brian Griese 2-3,
63 yards, one TD) led the winning touchdown drive and capped it with a 43-yard TD throw to Justin Armour. The crowd loves Griese. When he entered the game in the fourth quarter, you'd have thought Elway was coming back in. "It's pretty obvious I'm in the perfect situation,'' he said. "This is a great place t be.''
On the Saints side, I caught flak for my colleague Paul Zimmerman picking he
Saints a league-worst 1-15 in the SI NFL preview issue. As I told a bunch of
folks: I wouldn't have picked them 1-15, but that's still a 1-15 offense they're putting on the field. A couple of good signs: Rookie Jared Tomich blew past Bronco David Diaz-Infante for a sack of Bubby Brister, and Lama Smith looks like the hard-charging workhorse running back the franchise needs. Smith had better lug it about 350 times this year, because the starting quarterback, Billy Joe Hobert, will be awful. I'm sure you saw the Keystone Cop-ish ighlight on CNN Sports Tonight of Hobert fumbling on a rollout and the ball bouncing up to him and Hobert shovel-passing the ball right into Denver corner Darrius Johnson's breadbasket. Get used to it.
"I'm kind of hoping that play will blow over pretty quick,'' Hobert said.
Yeah. It ought to be off the blooper tapes sometime, oh, around 2032.
And now it's on to Vancouver for the 49ers-Seahawks American Bowl. Nice duty, eh. —P.K.
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