John Elway must have been having some flashbacks to the 1980s Sunday night.
Elway is vice president of the Broncos now and watched his team get throttled 43-8 by the Seahawks in Super Bowl XLVIII. That is not a new experience for Elway.
He lost his first three Super Bowls as the Broncos quarterback before winning two late in his career. He was part of the most lopsided Super Bowl in history when the 49ers destroyed his Broncos 55-10 in 1990. That came two years after a 42-10 loss to the Redskins and three years after a 39-20 loss to the Giants.
Elway exorcised his Super Bowl demons with wins after the 1997 and ’98 seasons, but he was seeking his first Super Bowl as an executive last night. Maybe it will take him four tries in this role, too.
“We just didn’t play like we’re capable of,” Elway said. “I was disappointed. Hopefully we’ll learn from this. It started tough. We just couldn’t seem to get it going.”
Elway became executive vice president of football operations for the Broncos in January 2011. Denver has gone to the playoffs in each of his three seasons with the team. He made a bold move in March 2012 by pursuing quarterback Peyton Manning to replace Tim Tebow, who had become one of the most popular players in the sport during the 2011 season when he led the Broncos to a playoff win.
Manning was chased by several teams, but Elway was able to convince him to come to the Broncos, partially because Manning related to Elway, another legendary NFL quarterback. The signing has looked great in the regular season, but the Broncos have fallen short in the postseason in both seasons. They lost in the divisional round to the Ravens last year.
Now, they have to live with getting blown out in the Super Bowl.
“It was a great year,” Elway said. “It’s always disappointing, but there’s only one team happy at end of the year. You got to give them credit, they played well. We’ll move on.”
Elway was as puzzled as anyone with the Broncos’ performance.
“I don’t have the answers, but we couldn’t get it in the end zone,” he said. “We couldn’t get it going. We had some opportunities to get back into the game and couldn’t seem to get it going.’’
Elway was asked if this reminds him of his first three Super Bowls.
“No, those are separate,” he said.
They felt awfully similar to Sunday night.