- 11 hours ago
The Drive
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00:00Welcome to ESPN Classics Battle Lines. I'm Rich Eisen.
00:06Wind lashed and snow strafed, Cleveland Stadium was as cold and foreboding as a mausoleum on January 11th, 1987.
00:14While the dog pound howled in full throat for the AFC Championship game,
00:19prodigies John Elway and Bernie Kosar blew on their hands and swapped spirals.
00:24With Elway manufacturing magic, the Denver Broncos were about to unfurl one of sports' fantastic finishes,
00:31forever known as The Drive.
00:35I see.
00:40The Broncos had never won a playoff game on the road,
00:44and very few people thought they were going to start that day in Cleveland.
00:47One of the great things about being on a team that's quarterbacked by John Elway
00:52is you know you've always got a chance.
00:53His team's down seven.
00:55He's on the one and a half yard line at Cleveland with about 80,000 people cheering against him.
01:0298 yards is just too much.
01:04At the end of a championship game in Cleveland, it's just too much.
01:08Starting from the enclosed end where all of this noise is rising to a fever pitch,
01:16and they're heading for the dog pound.
01:18They have no shot.
01:19Everybody looked at that and said,
01:22there's no way anybody's driving the Broncos 98 yards against this team in this stadium on this day.
01:29What they did.
01:31Every person has certain defining moments.
01:34This is a defining moment for John Elway's entire life.
01:37Elway just started attacking with play.
01:39He seemed to have more confidence.
01:41He threw the ball harder.
01:42His receivers just caught everything at that point.
01:45The drive, it was just like standing there and watching an earthquake.
01:49There was nothing you could do.
01:50I can't begin to describe to you, play by play, him coming from the one yard line,
01:54his own one yard line, in the mud, and going up in a hurry up offense,
01:59and beating the clock.
02:00It was just like somebody that was shooting you in the shoulder,
02:04and then in the right forearm, and then in the left foot.
02:07It was just like a slow death.
02:09It's something that if you wrote it off, nobody would.
02:11For this game, and everyone had a perception of the opposing quarterback.
02:15The feeling going into the AFC Championship game was that Bernie Kosar was probably the more likely
02:19of the two guys to emerge as a championship quarterback.
02:22He had done it at Miami.
02:24Bernie was the super smart guy who had graduated in three years
02:29and went to play for his dear old hometown team.
02:32John sort of wore the black hat going into that game as far as the national media was concerned.
02:36While he was at Stanford, they'd not gone to a bowl game,
02:38so there were still some press that would say,
02:40well, you know, he's got great talent, but he hasn't won anything big.
02:44Some people were very conflicted about what Elway represented to this city.
02:49Either the ultimate superstar for some, or the ultimate fraud to other people.
02:56A lot of times that's how you're judged, that's how you're playing those big games,
02:59and this was definitely the biggest game that I'd ever played in in my life.
03:02To all the people in the field that day, there was more pressure on John than anyone else.
03:06For a city that was long the object of derision and ridicule,
03:10the Browns seemed the only way to remove the mistake by the leg.
03:14Cleveland has always been a town that has fought an inferiority complex.
03:18Most people that are Cleveland Browns fans grow up in Cleveland, live in Cleveland,
03:22root for Cleveland Browns, and they pass away in Cleveland.
03:25The Browns represented the hope of a community.
03:27It gave Cleveland national acclaim.
03:29The city of Cleveland needed something to rally everybody together, and it happened.
03:34There was a place called Dog Pound in Cleveland Stadium.
03:37It kind of captured the junkyard dog, green-cornered type of team that this was,
03:42and I think the city took to that image a great deal.
03:46Very few football teams wanted to come to Cleveland to play in the Dog Pound
03:50because of how they were going to be mistreated on their way to the stadium,
03:54in the stadium, and leaving the stadium.
03:56Bringing a really upset bag of dog bones, it's like, yeah, this is where the guys lunch, right?
04:00And Bombardy with dog bones.
04:02And I'm talking about those chewables, those big, huge dog bones.
04:07As you walked in the end zone, you would literally crap all the way through the end zone.
04:14You get by one, you know, they call it the funny bone, but it's not too funny when it hits you.
04:18The cry was, don't take your helmet on.
04:20Don't take your helmet on.
04:21Herb was, you know, coming off the helmet.
04:24I walked over to one of the referees, and I said, what are we going to do about this?
04:27Our whole goal was to try to get their own passionate standards.
04:33Browns fans were hyperventilating in anticipation of the AFC championship.
04:37And where you went, every hotel, every restaurant, there was a Cleveland Browns fan telling you that we're going to the Super Bowl.
04:47Going into that, we turned, there were Bronco haters.
04:49They had fire hydrants painted with our uniforms on them and our numbers, and they had dogs going potty on the fire hydrants.
04:59The statue had Cleveland Browns helmets on them.
05:01I had never seen a whole city react to football the way the city of Cleveland was reacting for that game.
05:08Newscast, every sportscast opened with the Browns.
05:12A lot of movement.
05:12TV, radio, newspaper, it was the lead story.
05:17It was the only story.
05:18There were a number of radio stations the day before the game.
05:21At least what hotel that the Broncos were going to be staying at.
05:25We got off the bus as we got to the hotel.
05:28There's a large crowd.
05:30People were barking at us.
05:33Ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho.
05:34It was two nights we stayed there.
05:35It seemed like there was 10,000 Cleveland fans outside our hotel chanting and trying to keep us from going to sleep.
05:41They stayed up most of that night, driving their cars around our hotel, blowing their horns.
05:48The fans really started this psychological warfare a couple of days before the game actually was played.
05:54We definitely knew when we drove in there that we were in a hostile area, even more so when we got to the stadium.
06:01The arena, gray and cold, made even more so by the winds that howled it off Lake Erie.
06:07Going to Cleveland Municipal Stadium, it was like stepping back into the past.
06:11It was cold, it was in the high 20s, low 30s, below freezing.
06:17Players would spit and it would freeze on the helmet.
06:20There were footprints from the last game and it was still frozen there.
06:25I remember on
06:25It was retros.
06:28Cleveland Municipal
06:29had run for 54 years.
06:33That old stadium gave
06:34frozen dirt painting.
06:41Green, how can they possibly play a football game on this?
06:47The game was played at a conservative pace, with each side reluctant to risk the possibility of a turnover.
06:53It was a fairly unremarkable game for three and a half quarters.
06:56It didn't seem to be a game that would offer the prospect of a dramatic finish.
07:02The mindset was about running the football, dominating at the line of scrimmage, setting tone physically, and not making mistakes.
07:10We knew that it was probably going to be a one touchdown or one field goal win for somebody.
07:16Dan Reeves, he really hated to take chances out there in the field and unfortunately it kind of held John Elway back.
07:22We weren't moving the ball that well against Cleveland throughout the day, but we knew when Dan took the shackles off of John, anything could happen.
07:30John Elway felt like they spent 58 minutes in a game playing one way, not to lose.
07:36And then with two minutes left, Dan Reeves would go to John Elway and say, go win the game.
07:41We played to keep it close that whole game, and then once we got in that situation where we were down by seven points, we could no longer do that.
07:48With the score nodded at 13, those seven points came with less than six minutes remaining in the fourth quarter, on a third down play from the Denver 48-yard line.
07:57It's one of those plays where during the course of a ball game, there's a time where you're going to take a chance, and this was that time.
08:04We got to the line of scrimmage and saw they were going to blitz, saw that I had Brian, I could get Brian matched up on stage.
08:11I saw Dennis Smith over me, I saw Bernie Pilger look at me, I knew he was coming to me.
08:15We were situated at the top of the stadium, and we could feel it shaking beneath our feet.
08:31I was literally shaking, having caught the pass that's going to propel us to the Super Bowl.
08:37You looked over at the Browns bench, and they were all high-fiving each other, they thought it was over with.
08:41Press bots at that point cleared out, everybody went down for their interviews.
08:44Left the press box, knowing that we were going to go to the Super Bowl.
08:49Cleveland had momentum, and that's the kind of momentum that you want going into the final stages of the game.
08:55They get a big break, they're at home in front of 80,000 crazed Browns fans.
09:00We were in trouble, and we knew it.
09:03Broncos are down 20 to 13, time's running out.
09:07The only way they're going to do this is if they get a great kickoff return.
09:11This case scenario, we're going to have the ball on the 20-yard line, 25, 30-yard line.
09:14All day, mostly, his kickoffs were all kind of squib kicks.
09:18It was one of my flutter kicks that I kicked to make guys kind of stumble around and not be sure of themselves.
09:24The ball is slipping around, and Ken Bell and Gene Langer chasing it like a pig that had just come out of mud.
09:31Referees were untiring, and it was literally between the two and the one-yard line.
09:36And it's really the only time in my life that at that moment, I thought, we just lost.
09:41We lost our opportunity to go to Super Bowl.
09:44My wife turned the TV off, and she couldn't even watch.
09:48I remember just thinking, this is it. I can't believe we're going to lose.
09:51I really thought that we were going to be able to win this one, and I must be feeling.
09:55That kind of tells you that the only people that thought we were going to win it was the people in that huddle on the sideline.
09:59We all said that John had the weirdest look in his eyes.
10:02He'd come to the sideline and Dr. Dan, and he's like, he's looking right through him.
10:07They get very wide, and they get very direct and intense.
10:10And when he would get those eyes, you'd know something was going to happen.
10:13Once he had a look in his eye, and he believed in himself that we can do it,
10:16then it started to just trickle between the players, and we saw that there was a chance.
10:20The end zone was barely in sight, but the dog pound was clearly audible.
10:24With the stadium vibrating, in the Denver huddle, a lineman broke the tension.
10:30Keith Bishop, our offensive guard, said something that was totally off the wall.
10:35Hey, we've got these f***ers right where we want them.
10:37And everybody's looking around like this.
10:39I could tell by their reaction, the way they laughed, the calmness.
10:44I could tell that it really meant something.
10:46They told me over the years that relaxed them.
10:49You are in the shadows of your own goalpost.
10:53In the AF, it's going to be the grandest moment in your career,
10:56and the grandest moment in your life.
11:03Eight yards, John Elway had a major ally, the clock.
11:08People don't realize the drive is 530-plus.
11:12So it wasn't a two-minute drill.
11:14It was a long drive.
11:15I thought that our defensive coordinator called a defensive play that was going to end the game on this first snap.
11:23He called a blitz.
11:25If Elway drops back seven yards, he should get sacked.
11:28First play was a three-step drop.
11:29So no matter what blitz they have, the ball's going to be gone quick enough to where the blitz shouldn't be able to get there.
11:35He doesn't get sacked.
11:36They had a couple of plays first down by about a yard.
11:39When he got that first first down, I started thinking, why can't they hold him at the one-and-a-half yard line?
11:44Once they get a lead, even if it's a three-point lead, seven-point lead, they get very conservative.
11:50They knew we had speed.
11:51John Elway was a great quarterback, and they knew that in a split second, he could throw the ball deep.
11:55We tried rushing three linemen and putting all our guys back in coverage,
11:59which is ridiculous because at that point, John has all the time in the world.
12:03A little quandary for their coaching staff and for them was, is it prevent?
12:08Are we playing regular?
12:09What are we going to do here?
12:10And John had them in that bind mentally from the time he started that drive.
12:17The drive hit a speed bump when the Browns sacked Elway,
12:21leaving the Broncos with third and 18 at the Cleveland 48.
12:25We didn't have to get it all in one deal.
12:27Make sure you take what the defense would give you because we're going to go for it on fourth down.
12:31I did not go in with the mindset of, okay, I'm just looking for 10 yards.
12:34Then it's John Elway. Get half of it. I want it all.
12:38The crowd was as loud as they'd been all day, and we're in a silent count.
12:42I moved my foot a little bit too quick.
12:44John put his wide receiver in motion, and as the receiver was coming across the formation,
12:49the center snapped the ball early.
12:51Watson doesn't know the ball's being snapped, and it's all kind of played out in slow motion.
12:56I felt it.
12:57Graze.
12:58Me.
12:58Mark Jackson.
12:59Here was a guy in training camp who couldn't hold a pass,
13:03and he's catching a third and 18 pass.
13:06He's a factor.
13:07You ask Marty, in one play that he would like to have over in that drive, I'm sure that was it.
13:12We couldn't believe that they were moving the ball like they were,
13:14because they had not done it all day long.
13:16It was just like, get him, get him, get him.
13:19Okay, get him, get him, get him.
13:20He was in tune with his receivers, and they would break off their patterns and break deep,
13:25and John Elwood would break out of the pocket and hit him deep.
13:27When we started turning it loose, it was almost things they hadn't seen the whole game,
13:30and so it was almost a new look for the defense.
13:32They were the ones who were always, instead of punching, they were counter-punching.
13:36They were always trying to figure out, boy, what do we do next?
13:39They became tentative.
13:40They didn't want to make a mistake.
13:42They'd rather give a few yards without giving up the big play.
13:46You could see that the defense kind of had doubt in their mind.
13:50They wore it all over their face.
13:51Our sideline was going lower and lower and lower,
13:54and those guys were up on their feet, jumping.
13:57It was just something you couldn't stop.
14:01When Elway took off on a nine-yard scramble,
14:03he landed on the Cleveland Five, a yard shy of a first down.
14:08At third down and 42 seconds left, the Broncos rose with a bullet.
14:1420 to 13 rounds.
14:17Mark Jackson in motion.
14:19The snap to Elway.
14:20I'm looking back to see if the flats are open,
14:23because I never thought I'd get the ball.
14:24The next thing I know, I look up, and John's, like, firing it.
14:27The look, the throw.
14:29I saw that he was open and threw it so hard
14:30that there was no chance that he was going to have a chance of missing that pass.
14:34I was going to throw this ball, and if it tipped,
14:36it was either going to go through the guy's hand
14:37or it was going to go all the way out of the end zone.
14:39Still to this day, I never threw a ball as hard as I threw that one.
14:42The snap to Elway.
14:44The look, the throw.
14:45Touchdown.
14:48John Elway has just thrown a touchdown to Mark Jackson.
14:52Ninety-eight-and-a-half-yard drive.
14:54We'd come 98 yards, and now all of a sudden,
14:57we don't get this extra point where there's 20 to 19.
15:00All that works for not.
15:01An extra point is pretty much a given,
15:03but an extra point at that end of the stadium at that time of the game,
15:07it's a pretty high-pressure kick.
15:09And in that flash in my head of thinking,
15:12this would be a really bad time to miss an extra point.
15:15ball is down.
15:17Carlos' kick.
15:19Got it.
15:19We're tied.
15:20Denver 20.
15:21Cleveland 20.
15:22He said, this game is over.
15:24He said, no, it's tied.
15:25They're going in an overtime.
15:26I said, this is over.
15:27The Browns can't recover from this.
15:29Trophy was headed that way behind our bench,
15:33to our left, toward the Cleveland Browns locker room.
15:36When John stuck the drive-in,
15:40we see the trophy coming back our way,
15:43behind us on the sidelines.
15:46And I thought, yeah,
15:47I thought the guy doesn't know where to put the trophy.
15:48And the attitude and the chemistry,
15:50the vibes from the sidelines changed completely
15:53from what it was five minutes before.
15:57The Browns won the coin toss,
15:59but looked shell-shocked.
16:01After going three and out,
16:02they seemed to be in full psychological retreat.
16:06Elway promptly drove the resurgent Broncos
16:0860 yards into field goal range.
16:11When John came off the field,
16:12he was glazed over.
16:14And as we passed on the field,
16:15kept yelling, was just like practice,
16:17just like practice, just like practice.
16:18I was just trying to lighten the situation
16:20and get him thinking in the right frame of mind.
16:23When a field goal comes out,
16:24there's always a chance for alternative things.
16:26First of all, you can miss the field goal.
16:27That's easy.
16:28But what if it's blocked?
16:29I went to the sideline.
16:31I remember going over seeing Jim Ryan.
16:32Coward.
16:33Because once we got into the overtime,
16:35and he got us in position for the field goal,
16:38he couldn't watch.
16:43Ball is down.
16:44Carlos' kick is on the way.
16:46Almost immediately,
16:48that ball doesn't have a chance
16:49of making it in.
16:50The officials are supposed to look up
16:52the outside of the goal post.
16:53They see any piece of the football
16:54outside of the goal post
16:56that is supposed to be no good.
16:57And it looked like there was about half of the football
16:59outside of the goal post.
17:01I look up.
17:02I said, he missed it.
17:03He missed it.
17:04And I turned my head.
17:05I thought he hooked it left.
17:06I swear to God.
17:07I'm already thinking that we're back on the field.
17:11Ball is down.
17:12Carlos' kick is on the way.
17:14And it is gone.
17:16The Denver Broncos have come from behind
17:19to win it in overtime.
17:20His hand goes up.
17:25That's when my head dropped.
17:27The game goes.
17:29I'll remember the silence.
17:30It was 80,000 people
17:33who were yelling and screaming
17:34to distract the kicker.
17:35All of a sudden,
17:36it was like church.
17:38You could hear the individual Bronco players
17:40cheer when we won
17:41because there was no other noise in the stadium.
17:43This stadium that we could not hear ourselves thinking
17:46is now so quiet
17:49and it's just this group of 50 guys
17:51jumping up and down
17:52and in the middle of the field.
17:53There were people
17:54literally in shock
17:57with what they'd just seen.
17:59Remembering the tormenting
18:01they had endured from the Browns fans,
18:03the Broncos clearly relished their win.
18:06You get on the buses
18:07on the way to the airport.
18:08Jackson told the driver
18:09and the buses
18:10drove around the hotel
18:12and honked their horns.
18:14The player opened up all the windows.
18:15We drove around the hotels
18:16going, whoop, whoop, whoop,
18:18barking all the way to the airport.
18:20You know,
18:21it was just one of those great moments
18:23that you usually only get to have as a kid
18:25and we got to have it as an adult.
18:29And they got smoked in the snow.
18:31The winner of all defeats
18:33was Marty Schottenheimer.
18:35The great line was
18:36that Marty had played a prevent defense
18:38and all it prevented was a victory.
18:40It's the one thing Marty is known for
18:43even today, 15 years later in Cleveland,
18:47was playing a prevent defense
18:48against Elway.
18:50Marty's caught a lot of heat for that
18:51that he shouldn't have caught.
18:52We were the ones that were on the field.
18:54We were the ones that were playing the defense.
18:56I don't care what he called.
18:57We still should have executed.
18:58Marty made the right call.
18:59We just made a good play.
19:00I mean, it's one or the other.
19:02And you got to stick with
19:03what has been successful with you
19:04the whole game.
19:05And Marty did that.
19:06The Browns had resolutely stuck
19:08to their game plan,
19:09which was designed to force
19:11John Elway and the Broncos
19:12to be perfect.
19:13At the end,
19:14that's exactly what they were.
19:17You learn from your losses
19:19and you learn from your victories.
19:22We learn a lot from that loss,
19:24especially about John Elway.
19:26That game was kind of
19:27my coming out party
19:27because I think there was
19:28a lot of doubt before that
19:30whether I'd ever be
19:31a good quarterback or not
19:32or a great quarterback or not.
19:33That was the game
19:34that pushed him over the top
19:37as being someone
19:39who was worth
19:40a number one draft choice
19:42and all of the press
19:43and all of the adulation
19:44was validated
19:45in a five-minute period
19:47in one game.
19:48It was the game
19:49that put John Elway
19:50on the map
19:51as the greatest
19:53comeback quarterback
19:54maybe in the history
19:56of the NFL.
19:57The Broncos and Elway
19:58lost that Super Bowl
19:59to the Giants.
20:0111 years later,
20:02after two more Super Bowl losses,
20:04Elway and Dan...
20:06No, no, no, no, no, no.
20:07We're not even doing that.
20:08That was 11 years later.
20:10We're not doing that.
20:13About this year,
20:15this game didn't really mean much
20:18because the real Super Bowl
20:19was the NFC Championship.
20:24It didn't mean much.
20:29Denver finally seized
20:31what had eluded them
20:32for so long.
20:33It was an end
20:34to a journey
20:35that had begun
20:35on a cold day
20:37in Ohio.
20:38They were champions
20:38that year.
20:39Even without
20:40the World Championship trophy,
20:42they were considered champions
20:43certainly here in Denver
20:44for the game
20:45they won that day
20:45in Cleveland.
20:46It made Denver
20:47as a franchise
20:47more legitimate,
20:49gave us more credibility.
20:50They weren't known
20:51anymore as the funny
20:52little team
20:53in those weird
20:53orange uniforms.
20:55They were known
20:55as a team
20:56that had actually
20:57done something
20:57worthy of celebration.
20:59There was a respect
21:01about what we had done
21:02no matter who you
21:04were rooting for.
21:05I thought even
21:05Cleveland's fans
21:06understood that.
21:07The old saying
21:08it's 10 days from now
21:10you don't remember
21:10how you won it
21:11all you know
21:11is you won it.
21:13But you always
21:13can remember
21:14how you lost
21:14the Denver game.
21:15The Broncos
21:16are a hated team
21:17in Cleveland
21:17but they're respected.
21:19They won the
21:20one and a half
21:21yard line
21:22down by seven
21:23on the road
21:24and they took it.
21:26The best team
21:27won that day.
21:28That day.
21:29The best team won.
21:30The Cleveland Browns
21:30were supposed to win
21:31that day
21:32on their home field
21:33and if they couldn't
21:34do it that day
21:35any game they might
21:36play after that
21:37of any significance
21:38Denver was destined
21:39to win.
21:40Three times
21:45in the 1980s
21:46the Cleveland Browns
21:47sat one game away
21:48from the Super Bowl
21:49and three times
21:51the Denver Broncos
21:52denied them.
21:53It all started
21:54on the day
21:55John Elway
21:55secured his reputation
21:57as a defier
21:58of time and circumstance.
22:00The day Elway
22:01engineered
22:02the drive.
22:04For ESPN
22:04Classics Battle Lines
22:06I'm Rich Eisen.
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