All of a Sudden, They Can’t Talk

The book on John Elway began with the simple fact that he was blessed with a great arm. He could throw long, short and with precisely the right touch.

Woefully, enemy scouts reported they had seen few quarterbacks, right-handed, who could run to their left and throw right with the accuracy of Elway.

On his feet, Elway was a terror. He was nimble and he was swift. The book: Let him do anything but beat you scrambling.

Elway was rated smart. His character: exemplary. His relations with the media: excellent.

How could things go wrong with one of such godly qualities, functioning on a team he led to three Super Bowls in four years?

How would “strained relations,” as the condition is politely known, develop between Elway and his Denver coach, Dan Reeves?

That’s the unlikely scenario unfolding at Denver, where the club has sold out its home games for 21 consecutive years. But the Broncos, with a record of 3-8, are languishing in the division water closet this year.

What has gone wrong in paradise?

When a team starts to lose, it usually happens that the coach and the quarterback are the first two to catch the blame.

At Denver, the coach appears to have caught it from the quarterback who, a short while back, complained of a communications lapse on the part of his leader.

Reeves scratched his head, trying to figure how he communicates differently this year from the years he went to the Super Bowl. He was hard-pressed to give Elway an answer.

Nor did he feel, especially, he need give Elway an answer, inasmuch as Reeves is coaching the team, not Elway.

Nonetheless, Reeves invites John for a private conference. Exactly what comes from this power meeting isn’t known, except that Elway is now permitted to join the coaching staff for talks and film-reviewing on Tuesday, the day before serious practice begins each week for the forthcoming opponent.

In other words, when the Broncos play the Raiders Sunday, Elway will have sat in on strategy-mapping the previous Tuesday, which will help if Denver blocks out Howie Long, Greg Townsend, Scott Davis and Bob Golic.

If Denver doesn’t, you will be reminded of the deathless words of Sid Gillman discussing quality control, over which he was in charge as an assistant at Dallas.

Explained Sid: “Quality control is fine until your quarterback goes down, in which case you can take quality control and throw it in the (toilet).”

Unwittingly, Reeves has made Denver a difficult location at which to coach. Says a Bronco executive:

“The club has done so well that a mere winning season isn’t enough. Nor is a playoff sufficient. The Super Bowl has become the standard, and anything less tends to be disappointing.”

This year, the standard had been raised not only to the team’s playing in the Super Bowl, but winning it.

When the boat rocks in baseball and football, it becomes the custom to ascribe malfunctions to communication.

In 1987, for instance, reports escaped that Tom Lasorda was suffering communication problems with his forces. That was puzzling, because Lasorda communicates so much, on such a wide variety of subjects, ranging from lichee nuts to love at first sight.

A player screams, “If you communicate one more minute, I’m going off a bridge.”

Now all of a sudden, it is said Tom can’t communicate, a judgment vanishing as fast as it rose when Lasorda wins it all in 1988.

Unlike Lasorda, Reeves never has posed as buddy to his players. He sees himself as their coach, not their pal. Remember, Reeves studied under Tom Landry, who kept his affection under his hat.

But whatever his modus operandi, Dan’s work at Denver resists criticism. He built the team into a giant and, creating an organization dovetailing well with the skills of Elway, he made Elway rich.

So rich, in fact, that Elway can indulge the luxury of announcing that his coach isn’t communicating right.

Most places, quarterbacks will tell you that all a coach must do to prove himself a good communicator is tell them, “You’re starting Sunday.”