The Denver Broncos and Cleveland Browns meet on this week’s NFL schedule, and that matchup brings back memories of a contest between these two franchises that will be this week’s Thursday Throwback feature. It was a playoff game, the 1986 AFC Championship game, and was a game that was a major contributor to the legacy of Hall of Fame quarterback John Elway. His Broncos were placed in an almost impossible position as the Browns had scored to take a 20-13 lead, then on the ensuing kickoff, Denver muffed the ball and wound up pinned at their own 2 yard line with about 5 minutes to play. So Elway was faced with the proposition of needing to drive his team 98 yards, almost the entire length of the field, on the road in the most hostile of environments – Cleveland’s Dawg Pound. Elway, who was a master of the two minute drill during his career, methodically drove his club downfield, mixing in short passes to his backs, Sammy Winder and Steve Sewell, a couple of scrambles for positive yardage, and a pair of completions to one of his favorite targets, wide receiver Mark Jackson. It was Jackson who hauled in the pass in the end zone to culminate “The Drive”, a five yard completion from Elway to tie the game with 37 seconds left, sending it into overtime.
The overtime session is mostly forgotten as Elway’s mastery on the game-tying drive immediately went into NFL folklore. In the extra period, Denver’s defense held the Browns on their first possession, and Denver took over for their first try. Elway was brilliant again, taking his club 60 yards to set up a game-winning field goal by Rich Karlis. A key play on the winning drive was a 28 yard completion from Elway to receiver Steve Watson on a third and 12 play. The loss was another chapter in Cleveland’s supposedly cursed professional sports history, and another chapter would be added the following year as the same two clubs would meet again for the right to represent the AFC in the Super Bowl, this time with running back Earnest Byner being the goat by fumbling the ball as he attempted to cross the goal line for a go-ahead score. That game would go down in league history as “The Fumble”. To this day, the Browns’ last NFL championship was accomplished in 1964, and in the modern era, they are one of a small group of teams that has yet to qualify for a Super Bowl.
Denver QB John Elway engineers “The Drive” in 1986