Elway Named Super Bowl MVP

By CBSNews.com staff CBSNews.com staff

January 31, 1999 / 10:31 PM EST / CBS Sportsline

For John Elway, the best times have been the recent ones, consecutive Super Bowl victories to perhaps close out a Hall of Fame career.

Elway added another exclamation point Sunday, joining Bart Starr, Bob Griese, Terry Bradshaw, Joe Montana and Troy Aikman as the only quarterbacks to win consecutive Super Bowls. At age 38, he is also the oldest to do it.

That makes the future questionable.

There was speculation a year ago Elway, who earned the MVP for his performance, would retire after winning the Super Bowl, but he instead chose to defend the title. And he did it brilliantly, passing for 336 yards and tying the record for the second longest TD in Super Bowl history, an 80-yard hookup with Rod Smith, as Denver beat Atlanta 34-19.

Elway also scored a TD on a 3-yard keeper, his fourth career rushing touchdown in the Super Bowl, and was 18-for-29 passing for the third highest yardage total in Super Bowl history.

Not bad for an old guy.

That's is why it's hard to come to grips with Elway possibly leaving the NFL. He's simply too good to stop playing football.

Elway blistered the Atlanta 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.

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.

If John Elway doesn't come back, he went out on a perfect note. (AP)

"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. 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-y-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 -- over 50,000 yards and 300 touchowns 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.