The Avs are one of the more colorless outfits in the league, behind their top line at least (do we actually miss Patrick Roy?), so let’s take the opportunity to bitch about a Denver icon. There is no idol we can’t throw stones at repeatedly.
There was a time when John Elway was one of the cooler athletes around. John Elway is what Rex Grossman would have been if he had feet and was tall. Elway was blessed with a bazooka as a right arm, told Jim Irsay to go fuck himself, and ended up as a Bronco for a city and organization that desperately needed any marker whatsoever. Then Elway started chucking the ball anywhere and everywhere at high speeds when he wasn’t charging out of the pocket simply to get a nice breeze going through is admittedly amazingly flowing locks. It was utter chaos, but it worked because just about no one else was doing it and in 80s football it was super easy to confuse players who were already massively concussed and coked out, as well as defensive coordinators who were no less than 78-years-old and ate their own snot.
Elway got to three Super Bowls with rodeo clowns as receivers and a defense bereft of anyone with legs, and nearly sank the entire city of Cleveland into Lake Erie himself, which pretty much everyone agrees would have been a great arrangement for everyone involved. Of course, the Broncos got smashed up to an unrecognizable goop by the Giants, Niners, and Redskins. And then we had to deal with the the whole debate about whether someone like Elway could win a Super Bowl, essentially playing Tecmo Bowl on an NFL field.
And then he did, but he did it by just turning around and handing it off and never throwing the ball more than seven feet (thankfully, he did save us from a second Favre Super Bowl). He became what he was supposed to stand against. He became what we abhorred, and meanwhile all the grumbling old football men shook their heads in approval about how Elway “had finally learned.” He went from youthful exuberance and fun and surprise and illogical success to a buttoned-down corporate stooge. Elway is a baby boomer’s wet dream.
Of course, he was buying every goddamn car dealership from Nebraska to Salt Lake City to carry out the metaphor into real life, and has more money than The Pentaverate. Which he leveraged that into the Broncos presidency, where he’s essentially made baffling football decision after another (this is the team that drafted Tebow and played him, remember), but no one cares because they won a Super Bowl after signing one of the three best QBs of all time and somehow lucking into Von Miller and DeMarcus Ware, and most importantly having Cam Newton turn into urine. Since then they haven’t played a playoff game and just traded for Joe Flacco. Dude’s a moron, but he’ll be in his position forever because he’s ungodly rich and no Denver resident would speak ill of him for fear of being put in the stocks.
Meanwhile, he’s been backing whatever corpse they prop up in front of him that’s Republican and spouting more bullshit beyond that. Again, it doesn’t matter. Elway could shoot a teenage girl in front of Union Station in Denver and piss on her corpse and he’d still get applause.
Fuck John Elway.
Game #62 Preview Suite
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