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Thirteen years is a very long time for the AFC to hold its breath, longer for Denver quarterback John Elway and longer still for a forgotten time zone where the top of the world is outside the window.
Sitting there are the Denver Broncos, finally and indelibly, implausibly and properly, a team for the ages, most of them extinct.
“You wonder,” Elway said, “if you’ll run out of years.”
Elway held the winner’s trophy to his cheek, rolled its hard and cold skin against his own, a caress no one begrudges, an embrace long due and a generation delayed.
His owner, Pat Bowlen, chirped, “I have only four words: This one’s for John.”
Elway’s eyes moistened and his voice cracked. It was every bit as good as it was supposed to be.
“Being labeled the guy who couldn’t get it done,” Elway said. “That AFC-NFC thing. You take it for a long, long time. All you can do is take it and work for another chance.
“Then after umpteen years, it happens. That makes it so much better. Three times better than I thought it could be. It’s neat.”
More than neat, it was exhilarating, as splendid, as stirring as any Super Bowl ever, all raw edge and anxious wonder, the model for whatever comes after.
It was a game of equal push and honest pull, Denver winning finally not with the offense of the ’90s, the hybrid West Coast scheme favored by both sides, but by the old game of the trophy’s namesake.
Vince Lombardi football won for Denver–crunch and crack and block and tackle, the result uncertain until the final, futile pass of Green Bay quarterback Brett Favre, more than Elway’s equal and a decade younger, but on this day the loser.
It was Denver running back Terrell Davis, relentlessly wearing down the Green Bay defense, giving the Packers a bigger headache than he gave himself.
Davis gained 157 yards and scored a record three touchdowns rushing, becoming the game’s MVP as did another alumnus, Marcus Allen, of Davis’ high school in San Diego in the last Super Bowl won by an AFC team.
“It just takes a Lincoln High running back to do it, I guess,” Davis said.
It was the smaller, uncelebrated Denver offensive line pushing around the huge and, by the fourth quarter, weary Packer defenders. Gilbert Brown looked like a whale in search of a beach and Reggie White couldn’t get off the line or his own tongue.
“We spent two weeks telling them how good they were,” linebacker Bill Romanowski said. “I was so sick of it, I wanted to puke.”
The image may be Romanowski’s, but fact was all Green Bay’s.
“Keep pumping the ball,” Broncos guard Mark Schlereth said. “Keep pumping the ball. That’s what we had to do and that’s what we did. They were on their heels by the end of the game.”
In the three Super Bowls he lost, Elway was required to do everything. In the one he won, he was basically a turnstile, spinning around and plunking the ball into Davis’ belly.
The winning drive, Elway’s 45th fourth-quarter victory in his career, was more vintage Bart Starr than Elway, the only significant contribution of Elway a short pass that Howard Griffith turned into a 23-yard gain.
Otherwise it was Davis and Davis, his first heroics to the 1-yard line nullified by a penalty, so he ran exactly the same play from 10 yards farther away to exactly the same spot. Davis was then allowed to walk into the end zone through a hole about the size of, well, Gilbert Brown.
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The rest of the Broncos finally were good enough to play with and to win for Elway.
“I said all week that if we couldn’t win, I’d be happy for John,” Favre said. “He’s played a long time and I know how he’s feeling right now because it’s a wonderful feeling to win this game. I’m really happy for him. Really.”
It was the biggest upset in a Super Bowl since Super Bowl IV and, if it has not the lasting significance of Super Bowl III, when the AFC won its first, it must be remembered that the NFC had only won two in a row when that happened, not 13.
“I’ve only got two words,” Denver cornerback Darrien Gordon said. “It ain’t no surprise.”
That may be four words, but no one is counting in Denver anymore.