Ed McCaffrey said his favorite John Elway memory came at the end of Super Bowl XXXII, when the Denver Broncos were lined up in the Victory Formation and one last snap still had to be finished safely. He told Rich Eisen on the Rich Eisen Show that he was nervous in that moment because the defense could have tried to swat the ball after the hike.
That is what makes the memory stand out for McCaffrey now: it was not just the end of a game, but the final few seconds of John Elway's first Super Bowl win after years of coming up short. Elway had lost three Super Bowls in the 1980s before winning back-to-back titles in the 1997 NFL season and the 1998 NFL season, and McCaffrey was on the field for that finish as a teammate of his on the Denver Broncos.
McCaffrey's recollection does not lean on statistics or celebration alone. He said he hoped the opposing defense would not get a hand on the ball after the snap, which shows how even a game that was nearly over still carried risk. In football terms, the Victory Formation is supposed to be the safest possible ending: the offense takes the snap and lets the quarterback end the play without trying to advance the ball. But safety still depends on the snap being clean, and a late swat can turn a victory into one more scramble.
When the ball was successfully snapped, McCaffrey said he saw laughter, smiles and tears on Elway's face. That reaction fits the weight of the moment more than a highlight reel does. It was the release of a quarterback who had spent years chasing the same result, and for McCaffrey it became the memory that captured Elway at his most human: relieved, emotional and finally done with the waiting.
Viewed in that light, the story is not just about a title. It is about the final seconds that turned Elway's long search into certainty and gave McCaffrey the image he still reaches for when he thinks about him. That is why the memory matters now, when McCaffrey is revisiting it publicly with Rich Eisen: it preserves the exact moment the Broncos' late-1990s dominance stopped being a run and became history.
