Jason Cole - Elway

The Pythagorean theorem and two and a half Chucks.

The equation for measuring the hypotenuse of a right triangle has something in common with the use of a five-foot Hawaiian man as a rudimentary measuring stick.

John Elway was a hell of an inspiration for my buddies and me.

The only notable time Ive used the Pythagorean theorem is still vivid in my mind, an electric moment when you see something so ridiculous that it sticks for eternity. Using Chuck Narikiyo to measure a height was joyously comical. Both are touchstones of my youth. Lets start with theorem. On the afternoon of November 22, 1980, I was sitting in the corner of one of the end zones among my fellow Stanford University freshmen at Memorial Stadium on the campus of the University of California at Berkeley. Stanford was in the process of losing to archrival Cal in a steady, cold drizzle, making for a pitifully miserable day.

Then it happened: Elway did what only a transcendent athlete can do.

And he did it on an incomplete pass. It was the most breathtaking, astounding, and monumental incomplete pass Ive ever seen, one that defied what humans are supposed to be capable of. On a broken play from the opposite end of the field, Elway ran to his right. He eventually made it within about a yard of the sideline as he looked for an open receiver. Eventually, a receiver got behind the Cal defense on the left sideline. Elway uncoiled his pigeon-toed body, uncorking a throw from approximately his own twenty-yard line.

The receiver ran downfield on the soggy turf, but the ball cut through the moist air as if it were a javelin. The pass sailed over the receivers head and landed out of bounds at the ten-yard line. Elway had just thrown a ball on an angle across the fifty-three-yard-wide field and sailed it seventy yards in vertical distance down the gridiron. For those who understand even rudimentary geometry, thats way more than seventy yards, which by itself would have been amazing in a live-game situation.

From my angle in the corner of the end zone, I could see the right triangle laid out by Elways play. I had the theorem still fresh in my head from high school geometry. One side of the triangle was roughly fifty-three yards (the width of the field). The other was seventy yards (the vertical length of the field). If I wanted to figure out Elways throw (the hypotenuse of this triangle, as it were), all I had to do was add fifty-three squared with seventy squared and then figure out the square root of the resulting sum.

Or, as Pythagoras laid it out himself more than 2,500 years ago, A-squared plus B-squared equals C-squared (yeah, its pretty easy to remember). It came out to eighty-eight. Elway had just launched a throw eighty-eight yards. I may not have been a great athlete, but I could throw a football. Maybe sixty-five yards. With a good crow hop. On a perfect day. With no one around me to disturb the process, and maybe with a little tail wind. What I just witnessed from Elway stunned me, even if it drew only a few oohs and aahs from the crowd. Incomplete passes dont wow the masses. But eighty-eight yards? On a wet field? In the rain? With no running start?

I was watching someone who could change the game with his talent. Between his arm and his scrambling ability, Elway redefined the Xs and Os of the game. There are only a handful of athletes at any time who can do that in a given sport. Back then, Magic Johnson and Larry Bird were doing it in the National Basketball Association and Michael Jordan was a few years away. Wayne Gretzky was changing hockey, Martina Navratilova was altering womens tennis, and Lawrence Taylor was redefining what was possible on defense in the National Football League.

Athletes like that change the parameters of sports. With Elway, what you would never imagine in drawing up a play was now completely in the realm of thought. Playbooks could be expanded. The absurd was possible. Conversely, what defensive coaches and players might normally scoff at was now something they had to fear when Elway was under center. Not that they took it on faith. They had to experience it for themselves. Over the rest of Elways college career and sixteen years in the NFL, defenders facing him for the first time would regularly stop running at a certain point when the receiver ran deep, figuring there was no way he could throw it that far. Hed then make even the best of them look foolish, as Ronnie Lott will explain later.

In the history of the NFL, there have been quarterbacks who have outperformed Elway from a statistical standpoint. Whether it was Dan Marino, Brett Favre, or Peyton Manning, many have compiled great stats, usually aided by better systems and better surrounding talent. Some quarterbacks have won more than Elway, most famously Tom Brady and Joe Montana. And other passers have even had some of Elways physical ability. Jeff George, JaMarcus Russell, and Drew Henson are among a host with cannon arms. Michael Vick and Steve Young were great scramblers. Cam Newton has the size (relative to his opponents). Bob Griese, Drew Brees, and Troy Aikman were among many who had the intelligence and will.

No one has ever possessed the collection of skills to the degree of Elway.

And now, no other quarterback has ever chased greatness for as long as Elway. Where others have rested on their laurels, he has remained resolute in his chase. These days, Elway is perched high above the fields he once roamed, surveying the game as Denvers president of football operations and general manager.