Elway blistered the Falcons over and over again, completing passes to a half-dozen different receivers and picking
apart one of the best defenses in the NFL. He beat them short and beat them long, and did it without one of his chief weapons, tight
end Shannon Sharpe, who missed most of the game with a twisted left
knee.
If this was his last game, it was memorable. He walked off the field with less than a minute left, thrusting both bosts skyward
with a huge smile on his face.
"I would love John to come back next season," Denver coach Mike Shanahan said.
When he ran a lap around Mile High Stadium after the Broncos won the AFC Championship two weeks ago, some considered it a farewell to the home fans. Not even Elway is sure, though.
"I thought about it last year," he said before the game. "It would always be nice to go out on top and be able to walk away from
this game winning the Super Bowl. That was one of the thoughts that I entertained last year."
He put it aside, though.
"I think the thrill of winning the game is really hard to walk away from," he said. "I have to cross that bridge."
This year's championship might have been more difficult to achieve than last year's was for Elway. There was the summertime
illness of his wife, Janet, who underwent colon surgery. Then there were nagging injuries that cost him four games at a time when he said, "I don't have that many games left." And finally, there was the week-by-week pressure of Denver's 13-game winning streak, a run at the second perfect season in NFL history.
Still he reached significant plateaus during the season -- reaching 50,000 passing yards and 300 touchown passes and the 47th fourth-quarter comeback of his career. And he capped it all off by beating his longtime coach, Dan Reeves, with whom he had a messy feud and split six years ago.
The health of his wife was an overriding issue in Elway's decision to return this season. "She wanted me to play another
year and I think, deep down, I did, too," he said.
"All football players physically eventually run out of gas. I don't think you ever want to stop playing, and I think that's the
biggest thing. Ever since I've been alive, Saturdays and Sundays in the fall have always been circled around a football game. The
question of the unknown and how I'm going to react is definitely a scary thing, and I'm sure there are a lot of things I'm going to
miss. I don't want to leave too early, and I don't want to leave too late, either."
That hardly sounded like a man who had made up his mind.
Elway said retirement would be a family decision.
"We'll sit down and talk about it," he said. "Sometimes you run out of physical ability before you run out of mental desire. If
you run out of mental desire before you run out of phyical attributes, then it makes it a little easier."
Neither quality was missing Sunday, and that's why the Broncos have another Super Bowl trophy.
