Elway & Kosar

Bernie Kosar is in the news, and it's not good. I saw Bernie on an ESPN documentary called "Broke" a few months ago discussing his bankruptcy. You could say post-football life has not been good to him.

Meanwhile, the last time I saw John Elway was this past Sunday, standing on the sideline at Sports Authority Field at Mile High, watching the Denver Broncos close out a 52-20 thrashing of the Philadelphia Eagles. He's in his third year as an executive with the Broncos, having helped rebuild them into a Super Bowl contender.

When I was a boy, I had a book about John Elway and Bernie Kosar - I believe I acquired it from a school book fair. It gave details of their lives and athletic careers - one half was devoted to Elway, the other to Kosar. I'm pretty sure I still have it somewhere at my parents' house. Although it would be unfair to consider them equal in athletic skill, the two were at the very least contemporaries, rivals forever linked by two football games in the late 1980s.

On January 11, 1987, Bernie Kosar had his Cleveland Browns five minutes away from the Super Bowl. The Browns were leading the Denver Broncos 20-13, and the Broncos were backed up against their own goal line, surrounded by an exultant Cleveland crowd. But then, John Elway executed what became known simply as "The Drive", directing his team 98 yards for the tying touchdown. The Broncos went on to win the game in overtime, 23-20, and advanced to Super Bowl XXI in Pasadena, California.

The Broncos lost that Super Bowl, but both the Browns and Broncos were back the next year, and this time the AFC Championship was being decided in Denver. This time the Broncos were leading by a touchdown late in the fourth quarter, but the Browns were in position to tie the score. Browns running back Earnest Byner took a handoff from Kosar, but lost the ball inside the Broncos' five-yard line. His fumble was recovered by the Broncos, who held on for a 38-33 victory and earned a second consecutive Super Bowl trip. The play went down in history as "The Fumble".

The Browns and the Broncos met once again in the AFC championship, two years later. This time the Broncos won easily and headed to the Super Bowl for the third time in four seasons.

Although the Broncos did not win any of those three Super Bowls, Elway played another nine seasons in Denver and finally won two Super Bowls following the 1997 and 1998 seasons. He was the MVP of Super Bowl XXXIII and retired a few months later. He was inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 2004 and was hired as the executive vice president of football operations for the Broncos following the 2010 season, and persuaded Peyton Manning to sign with the Broncos in 2012. The Broncos have a 17-4 record with Elway and Manning on the payroll, and have won 15 consecutive regular season games.

Kosar was released by the Browns midway through the 1993 season. He went to Dallas, and earned a Super Bowl ring as a backup quarterback. He then finished his career with three seasons as a backup on the Miami Dolphins. Cleveland temporarily lost football when Art Modell moved his team to Baltimore following the 1995 season and renamed them the Ravens. Although the Browns returned to the NFL a few years later, they still have yet to play in a Super Bowl. And they haven't even advanced as far as the AFC championship game since the loss to the Broncos in January of 1990.

I've done all this setup to ask one question:

What if "The Drive" had never happened?

What if Elway's 3rd-and-18 pass to Mark Jackson had fallen incomplete? What if Elway's famous touchdown pass to Mark Jackson had been batted down at the line of scrimmage, bringing up a 4th-and-1? What if the Cleveland defense had managed a goal-line stand to stave off the Broncos threat? Would we instead be talking about "The Stand"?

The Browns may not have fared any better than the Broncos against the New York Giants in the Super Bowl that year, but what kind of momentum would the franchise have gained from the victory? Would they, like the Broncos, have repeated as AFC Champions the following year? Would Kosar have finished his career in Cleveland, like Elway did? Would he have won a Super Bowl at some point? Would Art Modell still have needed to leave town in order to get a stadium built? Would Kosar still be experiencing the same post-career problems?

And what about the Broncos? It's hard to imagine, given the remarkable ability of John Elway, that he wouldn't have found success anyways. But could have been him, instead of Kosar, who was forced out of town in the early 1990s? Would the Broncos have Peyton Manning as their quarterback today?

It's impossible to know the answers, of course.

But I believe the events of January 11, 1987 most certainly had an impact in determining the trajectory of these two franchises. However, the degree of the effect remains up for debate.

I will submit that up to that date, Cleveland and Denver were both good-but-not-great NFL franchises. But once we experienced "The Drive" it put the Broncos on a course to become one of the truly dominant franchises in modern NFL history. The Browns have regressed over the last two decades, their recent history littered with failure and busted draft picks. So you decide.

As for the two men, that's even harder to determine. They had different upbringings, different skills sets, and their success was somewhat tied to the quality of the team around them and the ability and willingness of team ownership to invest money in winning. Kosar had the game won for Cleveland, and then had to stand by and watch his defense allow the opponent to march 98 yards for a touchdown. For Elway, "The Drive"  became the foundation of his legendary professional career.

What about us? Can one singular event change the course of our lives? Sure it can, either through our own good or bad choices or through the intersection of our lives with the lives of others (right place at the right time, or wrong place at the wrong time). Sometimes we realize these divergent paths, and other times it may not even occur to us. What we never know is what was really behind Door #2.