By Michael Wilbon
Washington Post Columnist
Monday, February 1, 1999; Page D1

MIAMI – The man who will go down in pro football history as perhaps the greatest quarterback of all time finally played like it in the only game that really matters. Yes, John Elway's career already had been validated with last year's Super Bowl victory. But Sunday was Elway's signature game, the portrait a great artist would be proud to hang in a museum.

Last year against the Green Bay Packers Elway was a bystander. He thumbed a ride and Terrell Davis carried him home. Sunday against the Atlanta Falcons, it was Elway early and Elway late, Elway underneath the zone and Elway deep with razor-sharp precision. The Falcons crowded the line of scrimmage to stop Davis, but Denver had Elway. Shannon Sharpe got hurt early, but Denver still had Elway.

He completed 18 of 29 passes; he threw for 336 yards including an 80-yard touchdown bomb to Rod Smith; he ran for a touchdown; and he was appropriately named the game's MVP. At 38 years old, playing perhaps the final game of one of the great careers in NFL history, Elway controlled the game as he did in his late 20s and early 30s.

Jessie Tuggle, Atlanta's veteran linebacker, put the game in perspective when he said, "To me, as I was watching film all week, studying Davis, the receivers, the tight ends, we knew we had to first stop Davis. I'm sorry, I know John's a future Hall of Famer but at this point you have to make John beat you. Terrell rushed for 2,000-plus yards this season so you have to make John beat you. And John responded today."

With about 50 seconds remaining, Elway left the field to a long, appreciative ovation. "That walk I'll remember for the rest of my life," he said.

"I guess the message," Elway continued, "is to keep working hard and hang in there because you never know. I'm a prime example."

Just one year ago, when the Packers were heavily favored to beat the Broncos in San Diego, it seemed Elway was destined for a career with an asterisk; boy, was he great but it's too bad he never won a Super Bowl. Now he's got two championship rings plus a Super Bowl performance to call his own. Just like Namath, Staubach, Bradshaw, Plunkett, Montana, Aikman, Young and Favre. There's nothing missing from Elway's resume now. Nothing. And to think that this team -- the franchise Elway made -- had become Davis's team. To think so many -- myself included -- wondered if Elway had it in his 38-year-old body to carry a team for 60 pressurized, anxiety-filled minutes. Some people weren't sure, when this game began, that Elway was even the best quarterback on the field.

One of the story lines here all week was that Atlanta's Chris Chandler had a better season than Elway did. Statistically speaking, it was a defensible position. But the Super Bowl is a season unto itself, which Elway already knew and which Chandler found out the hard way. His three interceptions killed the Falcons; they eliminated not only chances to score touchdowns, but opportunities to kick field goals when the game was still close.

Chandler was fine between the 20-yard lines, his passes were crisp and accurate as they've been all season. But down close to the goal line, Chandler threw passes he shouldn't have, the kind he hadn't thrown all season. The Super Bowl can do that to you. If it can trip up Elway three times, it can surely foul up a journeyman such as Chandler.

But Elway was through being on the wrong side of history; Sharpe knew it in the middle of the week. The Broncos' offensive players knew beyond a reasonable doubt that the Falcons, just as Tuggle confirmed later, would do everything possible to shut down Davis. "My read on it all week was, 'They're going to stop the run so we're going to have to throw the ball.' I took it as a challenge," Sharpe said.

Sharpe said he told Elway he'd have to throw 30 passes. "I asked him, 'Are you ready to do that?' And the look in his eyes said, 'This is going to be my stage.' I knew he'd come up big."

Sharpe admires Elway without qualification or reservation. He says that while Dan Reeves gave him the chance to be a player, Elway is largely responsible for helping him become an all-pro tight end. Sharpe isn't one to genuflect before just anybody, but it's worth listening to him on the topic of Elway's greatness.

When someone asked Sharpe what he would tell his children about playing with Elway, Sharpe said, "I won't have to say anything. I've taped all the big games I've played with him. They can see for themselves better than I can tell.

"Without a doubt in my mind, he's the top quarterback to play this game. You look at what he did early in his career when he didn't have as much to work with, and you look at what he did late in his career when he had so much to work with."

Elway would have a lot to work with next season, too. And he'd have the incentive of trying to win three straight Super Bowls, something nobody has ever done. "I would like to have done that," Terry Bradshaw told Elway afterward.

"It definitely throws a kink in my thinking," Elway said, before adding, "I'm not going to cross that bridge [the issue of retiring] for a while. I'm going to enjoy this because this is what I came back [one more season] for. This is what I worked nine months for." And as he walked to the dressing room we all wondered, and maybe he did, too, if there's any encore to something this thrilling, this fulfilling.