John Elway and Ernie Accorsi are inextricably linked in NFL history because of what happened 21 years ago - the draft pick so stubbornly fought, the trade so capriciously made, the repercussions that lasted for so many years.
Elway was the Stanford quarterback who wanted no part of the Baltimore Colts in 1983. Accorsi was the Colts' general manager who took him anyway with the first overall pick in the college draft.
When Colts owner Bob Irsay surreptitiously traded Elway to the Denver Broncos a week after the draft, it set in motion a series of events that would ultimately haunt two cities - Baltimore and Cleveland.
History repeated itself last week when Mississippi quarterback Eli Manning stared down the San Diego Chargers with an Elway-esque threat and achieved a draft-day trade to the New York Giants.
Beneficiary? This time it was Accorsi, now the general manager of the Giants, who has come full circle in his pursuit of franchise quarterbacks.
Not that Accorsi was trying to balance any scales.
"I'm trying to get a quarterback to win the Super Bowl for the Giants," he said. "This isn't about me. Do you think 11 million people in New York care if I square my destiny?"
When destiny knocked 21 years ago, Accorsi stood up to Elway's threat to play baseball and drafted him, only to be undermined by Irsay's rash trade (the Colts got rookie guard Chris Hinton, backup quarterback Mark Herrmann, a future first-round pick that became guard Ron Solt and the visitor's share of an exhibition game in Denver).
Reverberations were immediate and long lasting. The Colts left Baltimore after the 1983 season, the Broncos beat the Cleveland Browns in the AFC championship game three times in four years in the decade, and quarterback Dan Marino wound up with the Miami Dolphins.
Had Accorsi been able to engineer a trade for Elway, he said this week, he would have taken Marino long before the Dolphins got him with the 27th pick.
Had Elway played here, Accorsi said, Baltimore still might have the Colts.
"I can't predict something like that," Accorsi said. "I just think what would've happened is, we would have sold a lot of season tickets; there'd have been a lot of excitement around a guy like that.
"As it turned out, if we'd drafted Marino, it might have happened, too. The excitement and aura that comes with somebody like that, you don't know. Maybe we'd have been able to build a [new] stadium."
