John Elway’s most famous Super Bowl play gained eight yards and didn’t score. It came late in the third quarter of Super Bowl XXXII, with the game tied, when the 37-year-old Denver Broncos quarterback ran for a first down instead of sliding to safety. Three Green Bay Packers defenders hit him in mid-air and spun him round, which is why the play is known as the Helicopter.
This is the second of five posts explaining famous Super Bowl plays in the run-up to Super Bowl LXI. The first, on Joe Montana’s winning drive, was about a quarterback keeping calm. Elway’s is about the opposite instinct: taking a hit he could have avoided.
John Elway’s ‘Helicopter Run’ against Green Bay in the Super Bowl 🔥 #nfl…
by u/gridiron_decoded in NFLUK
Super Bowl XXXII Results
Denver beat Green Bay 31-24 for the franchise’s first Super Bowl win.
| Game | Super Bowl XXXII |
| Date | 25 January 1998 |
| Venue | Qualcomm Stadium, San Diego |
| Result | Denver Broncos 31, Green Bay Packers 24 |
| MVP | Terrell Davis, Denver running back |
Sources: Pro Football Reference (game details); CBS Sports (MVP).
Late in the third quarter, with the score tied at 17, Denver had the ball on the Green Bay 12. It was third-and-6: their third attempt, with six yards still needed for a first down, which earns a fresh set of tries. Elway dropped back to pass and found no one open, so he ran.
He got the first down. Two plays later, Terrell Davis scored from a yard out to put Denver 24-17 up. On paper, that’s one successful third down on a drive someone else finished.
Why this Super Bowl mattered to Elway
This was Elway’s fourth Super Bowl, and he had lost the other three. The heaviest defeat was 55-10 to the San Francisco 49ers, still the biggest winning margin in Super Bowl history.
Few expected Denver to win this one. The Packers were the defending champions, with the league’s reigning MVP, Brett Favre, at quarterback. Their conference, the NFC, had won 13 Super Bowls in a row. Denver played in the AFC, the league’s other conference (how the two conferences work).
What a scramble is, and why quarterbacks slide
A scramble is a quarterback running with the ball because the passing play has broken down. The quarterback is the player a team can least afford to lose, so running brings a problem: runners get hit.
The rulebook gives runners a way out, called sliding. Here’s the wording from Rule 7, Section 2, Article 1 of the NFL rulebook:
“When a runner slides or dives feet or head first or simulates sliding or diving, the ball is dead the instant he touches the ground with anything other than his hands or his feet.”
Note 1 to the same article adds:
“Defenders are required to treat a sliding or diving runner as they would a runner who is down by contact.”
In plain English, a runner who slides is giving himself up. The play ends the moment he goes down, and defenders must treat him as already tackled, so they hold off. (Being down by contact means a defender has touched you and you’ve gone to ground. That ends the play.)
The catch is in that first line. Because the play ends where he goes down, a slide keeps only the yards he already has. Protection costs yards.
That’s the 2026 wording, so it isn’t necessarily word for word the rule as it stood in 1998.
The play: why didn’t he slide?
Elway needed to reach the 6-yard line. By the time the Packers closed in, he was around the 7. A slide there ends the play a yard short and leaves Denver on fourth down, their last attempt.
From that close, fourth down is usually where a team kicks a field goal (three points for a kick between the posts; scoring explained here). That would have given Denver the lead, but Elway knew a field goal might not be enough against the NFC’s highest-scoring offence. They needed the touchdown.
So instead of sliding, he went head first at the marker. Three defenders reached him in the air and the collision spun him sideways. He came down with the first down. Denver’s radio commentator, Dave Logan, called it on air the greatest eight-yard run in Super Bowl history.
None of this was in the play call. It was Elway’s decision.
Did the run win the game?
Not on its own. Terrell Davis scored the touchdown two plays later. Davis was also the game’s MVP (most valuable player), with 157 rushing yards and three touchdowns. He managed it after missing most of the second quarter with a migraine.
The run didn’t have a clear impact on the game. But wide receiver Rod Smith said that once their quarterback ran like that, “they realized we weren’t going to be denied.” That’s a player’s view, not a statistic, and Denver were already moving the ball well on that drive before Elway ran.
Reckless, or exactly right?
On one hand you could say that it was a risk he didn’t need. A 37-year-old quarterback dived into three defenders on third down in a tied Super Bowl. Had he been hurt, the same decision would read as a mistake.
The other is that the risk was the point. A slide meant fourth down, a yard short. Going for the marker kept Denver’s touchdown chance alive, and his team saw how much he wanted it. It was also at his age, his last Super Bowl appearance.
I don’t think the two cancel each other out. The yard advantage was real, and but so was the risk.
The ring, and what came after
Denver held on, and Elway finally had his title. Afterwards he said of the three defeats before it: “This one erases those other three, no question.”
A year later he won the Super Bowl again and was named its MVP. It was the last game he played.
Related on the site: the slide rule has stayed as it is, but some plays pushed the NFL to rewrite its rulebook outright. I’ve written about three, each one with the Raiders in it: the Immaculate Reception, the Holy Roller and the Tuck Rule Game.
Next in the series: fourth down at the goal line, and a trick play where the quarterback catches the touchdown. The Philly Special.