The Drive

I got to do something last night that I have always wanted to do: watch the 1986 AFC Championship as it was broadcast the day of the game. Of course, I did technically watch it live years ago with my family, who are all huge Denver fans. But there are a lot of things you just don't appreciate watching football at four years old.

This Christmas, one of my presents was a series of bootleg Denver games on DVD. Someone had taped the historic playoff games from the 80s and converted them from VHS to DVD and listed them on a bartering web site similar to eBay. While they were relatively inexpensive, the value of these games to me cannot be measured. There have been replay "broadcasts" of The Drive on ESPN and NFL Network before, but the film is always edited for dramatic effect. I had always wanted to see it how my parents and grandparents experienced it. Uncut. Goofy 80s commercials. Chris Berman with hair.

Last night, I fulfilled a small dream. The game had just about everything you could want -- hard hits, the elements, rabid fans, franchises that were starving for a taste of glory. Elway wasn't Elway the legend he became during my childhood and adolescent years. He was youthful. Erratic. Fantastic and risky. Unbelievable raw talent, but contained for better or worse by a conservative offensive scheme and a sometimes fleeting self-confidence. It was like watching a Formula 1 car driving through a school zone at 2:00 p.m.

Two things struck me most watching the game. First, before watching The Drive, I had watched the divisional playoff game against the Patriots. In that game, Elway was injured after a pass when a defensive lineman rolled into his ankle. If you remember the Bengals-Steelers playoff game a few years ago, the play was eerily similar to the play that ended Carson Palmer's season. But at the last second, Elway had slightly turned his body and avoided disaster. He came out of the play with an ankle sprain, but he was literally inches from tearing his ACL or breaking a bone, in which case the Drive and Elway as we knew him, may not have ever happened. So the first thing I was impressed with watching the Denver-Cleveland game was how much Elway was able to scramble for first downs and use his mobility, given he was coming off an injury which, while not debilitating, was no doubt causing him serious pain.

The second thing that struck me is how little the accomplishment of the 98 and 1/2 yard drive was celebrated by the announcers, until after the game. The announcers were just as silenced as the demoralized city around them when Elway connected on the strike to Mark Jackson. There was, after all, almost 40 seconds in regulation left. And then there was overtime. So the intensity of a game which had been full of momentum swings, did really ever cease long enough to reflect on what was to become one of a handful of defining moments in Elway's hall of fame career. Elway's back side was in his own endzone when he took the first snap of that historic march. What he did still gets referenced over twenty years later whenever Denver plays the Browns or even whenever a quarterback in a big game starts with the ball inside their own 10 yard line. Yet, there was no initial heaping of the praise from the broadcasters about the greatness of what had just happened. Sure they were impressed that Elway had tied the game, but they were well aware that nobody would care if Cleveland ran the kickoff back into field goal range. In fact, Cleveland even won the coin toss in overtime and got the ball first.

When a barefoot Rich Karlis walked out onto the icy mud in OT and booted the game winner in front of the subdued 'dawg pound,' the realization of what Elway's drive had meant finally started to take hold of the storyline. The lesson I learned is that greatness is not always instantly applauded. And a clutch performance might not produce a victory for you at first, but it might be the one thing that buys you time, that sustains an opportunity for victory, that moves the chains, that gains you the necessary yards to advance your drive, and that allows you to deliver in the moments that will define you for the years to come.

Don't forget to reset your clocks today. Every second counts.