IT'S MY CALL

Going out on top would feel great. So would three straight titles.

John Elway can go now. He can bag the George Blanda impersonation. He turns 39 in June, and he can have a desk job if he wants it, or a tee time, or breakfast in bed. He has done in the late '90s what he could not do in the late '80s—win a Super Bowl or two—and now he can actually be like Mike. He can win a championship … and slip out the back door. He has played golf with Jordan, catch with Sharpe, monopoly with Huizenga—what a career. Steinbrenner once wanted to sign him, and so did Irsay. But he ended up in Denver, and then, just when he'd finally tried on his Super Bowl ring, his wife ended up in the OR.

Welcome to the up-and-down journey of John Albert Elway. He has no reason to come back next season—and also every reason to come back. On the one hand, he has more wins than any quarterback in NFL history, and he can get out now while he can still limp. He had back, rib and hamstring problems this season, missing four starts for the first time since 1992, and maybe it was a hint from his body. He went 4 for 14 in the first half of the AFC title game, and his wife was seen weeping. And it's not like he has to stay for the money, either. He is still due $3.9 million from the Broncos, no matter what he decides, and he recently sold his auto dealerships (Elway Toyota, Elway Nissan and so on) to Wayne Huizenga for $82.5 million.

But why should he leave? He had a career-high 93.0 quarterback rating this season, and he has a running game and a defense for the first time in his career. He can become the first quarterback to win three straight Super Bowls and put himself smack in the middle of the debate over who's the best ever—if he's greedy that way—and he can also watch himself on PlayStation.

It's his decision, but his wife, Janet, will get a vote. She spent almost all of the 1998 Broncos-Packers Super Bowl in a Qualcomm Stadium restroom with an irritable stomach. Then, in August, she had major colon surgery at the Mayo Clinic. She had to re-enter a Denver hospital later that month because of a postsurgery infection; it was reported that she was in danger of losing her life. So guess who watched the kids? Guess who realized that life is fleeting? Guess who realized that football, ultimately, does not make the world go 'round? No. 7, that's who. I sat down with No. 7 before the Pro Bowl in Honolulu, and listened to what he had to say about his life and future. -T.F.

You know, Janet's not totally healthy yet. And that's a concern right now, the biggest concern I have. They said it'd take 12 months for her to heal completely, and it's only been six months, but it just seems it's taking a little bit longer than we thought. She's getting better all the time, but it's not where it needs to be. So, I guess what I'm saying is, at some point, she's really starting to look forward to us living the normal life, away from football, getting out of the spotlight a little bit. Our life is very public sometimes. I mean, when she became ill, there was a lot of speculation: that she had cancer, that she had Crohn's disease. And our four kids heard it all. I had to sit them down and get them straightened out, because they were worried about cancer. I said, "It's not cancer." They don't know all the other stuff that was out there, but they know what cancer is. I said, "Mommy's going to be fine. It'll just take a while, and you'll have to be good kids for daddy while mommy's getting better." That's what I told them. And, thank God, she has gotten better. Janet and I met my freshman year at Stanford. She was a champion swimmer, and I was just some football and baseball player. And it's been us ever since. If I had lost her? Me, a single parent? I can't imagine that. I wouldn't be able to live there.

Football takes a toll on my wife. Everybody asks me about her crying at halftime of the AFC Championship game against the Jets, when we were losing 3-0. I don't know. She's just real emotional in those situations. Once we get to those playoff games, she has a real tough time being able to relax, because she knows how hard we work and how bad we want to win. So it's actually easier for me to deal with, because I can get in the game and forget about it, while she has to sit there and watch. Is that a factor in my retirement decision? Yeah. I mean, I told her when she got down to Miami, "You've got to relax and enjoy this." I said, "This is what we worked for, and don't make yourself miserable." So I guess she enjoyed the Falcons game a lot more than she enjoyed the Jets game.

But do I want to put my family through another season? And do I feel in my heart that I want to play again? And can I stay healthy? Honestly, everyone wants to talk about three-peat, but I still want to talk about two-peat. I sat at the players' party the night of the Super Bowl and watched a tape of the game with some buddies from Stanford and a high school teammate. It's 3 a.m., and we're watching the game, and they're laughing at the quarterback draw I had for a touchdown. I mean, I was supposed to take a three-step drop, and my buddies say I took only a half- step drop, that I was a chicken. But hey, I saw the opening and went for it.

I guess what I'm saying is, I'm still thinking about this season. I'm not ready to make the call yet about next year. As a family, we'll talk about it. I think it'll be something I'll just think about for a long time, and ask certain questions and see what they think. But the bottom line is, I have to listen to my heart. My heart has to tell me whether I can go through another year physically—or not.

I'll talk to my parents, too. My mom, she's great. Football has always been hard on her. She was probably ready for me to retire last year, after finally winning a Super Bowl. She gets as nervous as anybody when I play. And she worked so hard when I was young to keep this body nice and in good shape, and then I go out and beat it up week in, week out. But I think she's probably ready for me to walk away, to where she can go enjoy the game and not have to get uptight all the time.

My dad, I think he was probably ready for me to retire last year too. He's never really given me his opinion. What he would do is ask me certain questions that help me answer the question by myself. But that's how he's been ever since I can remember. Last year he said, "If you're not sure what you want to do, pull yourself out and act like you're retired for a month. See how it feels." And so I did, and eventually that's what let me see that I didn't like being retired and wasn't ready to retire.

But all of them wanted me to quit. My twin sister, Jana, and my sister Lee Ann, too. It's funny. My whole side of the family was kind of ready for me to walk away after what happened last year. They'd been through the three previous Super Bowl losses, and knew how much they hurt me. And especially after you lose three, you're the biggest loser that's ever walked the face of the earth. And so to finally win one like we did last year, I think the girls were saying, "Okay, great, we've proved our point, let's walk away." But when they look at how this year went, winning another one … well, this year's been great too. They'll go with whatever I decide, but I think they wouldn't have any problem if I rode off on a Bronco into the sunset.

My kids, that's another story. I haven't really had a chance to talk to my 8-year-old son, Jack, about it, but I think there's no question all the kids still want me to play. Jack loved coming up to training camp with me last year, just me and him. He loves it up there. And it's good for us too. We get a chance to bond a little bit and spend some time together. He really loves it. He's going to miss training camp a heck of a lot more than I am.

The others? My oldest daughter, Jessica, who's 13, said, "I want Dad to do what Dad wants to do." My 11-year-old daughter, Jordan, and my 7-year-old, Juliana, both want me to play. Juliana likes to go to the games, and now she's old enough to kind of understand what's going on.

The Broncos are kind of the same. The Super Bowl had just ended, and we're in the locker room as a team, and Mike Shanahan's already throwing it out there: "One more year! One more year!" Right there, right after the game. He started talking about putting the pressure on me to play one more year, and then he got the chant going at the parade. The pressure's definitely on, but I went through it last year, so I'm used to it.

So everyone asks me now—teammates too. And I guess that's because of what happened last year, when we won our first Super Bowl. Shannon Sharpe and Ed McCaffrey asked me in the shower right after that game if I was coming back, and I said yeah. But I told Shannon if he told anybody, I'd never throw him another ball. This year, Shannon came looking for me in the shower again. But I wasn't there. He said, "You were supposed to wait for me!" I said, "Well, I was waiting in there, but the water was too cold and I couldn't wait that long." So I didn't tell him this year.

I've told people different things this entire season. Sometimes I've said yes, I'm coming back, and sometimes no. You go through different emotions at different times. You get November and December and it's cold in Denver, and the last thing you want to do is practice, so, sure, your thought process is a heck of a lot different. You're saying, "Well, there's no way I'll do this again." Then all of a sudden, you get in the playoffs and times get exciting again, and you get to go down to Miami and practice where it's warm, and your body starts feeling better, and you come over to Hawaii for the Pro Bowl, and your body's feeling even better still.

Now, if I could have a week off before every game, like I did before the Super Bowl, it'd be automatic. I'd be back. Your body heals. So all we've got to do is, instead of playing 16 weeks, let's play 32 weeks. If we play every other week, I'm in good shape. But did you know I've been sacked 516 times? No one else has ever been sacked more than 500 times. That's something you think about, too. You say, "Man, I don't know how many I can take of those!" There've been a bunch. Zach Thomas got me recently, and it wasn't even a sack. He hit me a few weeks ago in Denver, in the playoff game. He got me on a blindside shot. That's as hard as I've been hit in a long time. I've had 12 surgeries over the years, but for the most part, I'm pretty healthy. I think the stuff I've done in the off-season has been a big help to me and kept me healthy.

If I play again, I've got to keep working out. That's why I've got to decide by around April, because I'm going to have to lift the weights. I need to know whether I can do it physically and that I'm not jeopardizing anything I want to do the rest of my life. But if I walk away, I'm going to need something to do. I can't just sell cars, and I just can't play golf every day. Yes, I have a two handicap, but I don't want golf to be anything more than a hobby. Now owning a team, that'd be something I'd be real interested in. But you look at the prices—I've got some money, but I'm not sure I've got that kind of money. The Redskins go for $800 million! I'm kind of getting priced out of the equation.

The other option is going in with Pat Bowlen and becoming a part-owner of the Broncos with him. It's definitely something that'd be exciting to me. Because I'm not going to go sit and do nothing. After playing 16 years in this league, you can't just all of a sudden turn it off and not want to be successful and be competitive. So all this is on my mind. And I have to say it'd be great to go out on top. It'd be almost poetic to go out now after having Terry Bradshaw give me the MVP Trophy after the game. Bradshaw used to rip me. He's ripped me through the Super Bowls and he ripped me when I first came in the league for not wanting to play in Baltimore as a rookie. So there was obviously something about me he didn't like. Which is fine. But to be able to end up the career like I have, and have him give me the trophy? Pretty ironic.

I think about how Joe Montana ended up his career. His deal with San Francisco was a tough situation, and then they traded him. And the thing that makes my heart feel the warmest is that they want me back in Denver. Instead of them saying, "Well, it doesn't matter if he comes back or not," they're saying they want me. That means a lot right there. I don't know if they think I'm coming back or not. I played golf with Bowlen and Shanahan at the Pro Bowl in Hawaii, and it never came up. They never said, "If you make this putt, you have to come back."

I've said to people that there are probably more reasons for me to go than to stay. But you never know. I told Mike there's a 90% chance I'm not coming back, and that still hasn't changed. There's going to have to be something that jumps out at me and says, "Ah, you've got to do it one more time." I guess you could say I'm waiting for a sign. The good thing is, I don't have to make a decision right now. And so if I don't have to, there's no sense in me making a decision until later, and that's really what I did last year. I just kind of waited and waited until the heart kind of goes one way or the other. I know it's pressing—for some reason—to other people, but it's not pressing to me. And I'm not going to make it that way.

The bottom line is this: I want to be able, the rest of my life, to turn back and say I walked away at the right time. And feel good looking back. I don't want to get 10 years down the line and say, "Ah, you know, I should've played one more year." Or even a year down the line. Because once you decide to step away, there's no coming back. On the other hand, the one thing I do want is to leave this game intact physically. I want to do things with my kids. I'd like to be their fan. I don't necessarily have to coach them, but I want to be there. They play soccer and basketball. And my son, Little Jack, plays football. He's a quarterback, of course. Yep, quarterback. It makes my heart pump. My heart goes a lot more crazy when I watch them play sports than when I play myself. In Jack's league, they have a little Super Bowl every year. And guess what? His team has lost the last two years. Sound familiar?

Last year we were coming back from his first Super Bowl loss, and I said, "You all right?" He said, "Yeah, I'm doing fine." I said, "Don't worry about it, you've still got two more Super Bowl losses to catch Daddy." I laughed about that. Because, think about where I am now and where I started. I mean, it wasn't a cakewalk the whole time. So I'm pretty proud I was able to persevere and keep competing. Even though it was ugly and I went through some tough times, it's a case study that hard work pays off.

So, if this is the end, I can live with it. I can even sit in Mile High Stadium and watch a Bronco game. Yeah, I can. Because if I make the decision not to play, I know I won't be able to play. I'll know I'll be past that, if I say I'm done. And if I'm sitting in the stands, and Bubby throws an interception and the crowd goes, "We want John, we want John"? Well, maybe I'll stay in shape. I'll try and stay in the best shape I can.

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