Denver Broncos quarterback John Elway walked away from the NFL in 1999 as a two-time Super Bowl champion. Seven years later, he still casts a long shadow on the franchise, particularly the quarterbacks who have had the unenviable job of replacing one of the greatest signal callers the game has seen.
That heavy task has fallen on the shoulders of Jake Plummer for the last four seasons. Plummer spent his first three seasons with the Arizona Cardinals. Like Elway, Plummer is a risk-taker.
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“When you are in a game, you want to try and make every possession count,” Plummer said in a conference call with reporters Wednesday. “You never know what way the game is going to go.”
He will be the man the Ravens (4-0) watch intently when they travel to Denver (2-1) for a monday night showdown. Plummer holds the Broncos? season records for yards (4,089) and touchdowns (27). This season, though, he has a 60.6 quarterback rating with 567 yards, two touchdowns and four interceptions.
Elway led the Broncos to six AFC championship appearances, threw for more than 50,000 yards and ran for another 3,000 during his 16-year career. Denver head coach Mike Shanahan, the coach of those two Super Bowl-winning teams with Elway, wants to get back.
“If you?ve been to the Super Bowl, you want to get back, just like Baltimore wants to get back,” Shanahan said. “You know what it?s like to be there and you want to get back, and we?re no different.”
Shanahan said as tough as Elway?s successors think they have it now, Elway?s hardships were worse. Shanahan would know. He served as the franchise?s offensive coordinator and quarterbacks coach during the 1980s and ?90s.
Before his late-career surge, Elway lost three Super Bowls in the late 1980s and early ?90s and initially did not appear likely to play in another. He retired after his final championship in Super Bowl XXXIII after the 1998 season.
Shanahan has been chasing the Super Bowl since Elway left the team. The Broncos were close last season, falling to Pittsburgh in the AFC title game.
“People don?t realize that John had it tougher than any of these guys that have been playing behind him,” Shanahan said. “John was second-guessed more than anybody. I was with John through most of the years with the Broncos. I can tell you it was tougher on him than these other quarterbacks.”
The heir apparent to Plummer is already at the Broncos? facility. The team selected Jay Cutler with the 11th overall selection in the 2006 NFL draft, likely numbering Plummer?s days in Denver.
Some fans and experts were already calling for Cutler two weeks into the season, when the Broncos were 1-1. Those critics hushed a bit when Plummer guided his team to a 17-7 over the New England Patriots in Week 3 with a 15-for-30, 256-yard performance.
“It was a big game for us,” Plummer said. We knew we had to go into the bye week with a win.”
