John Elway and Barry Sanders ease into Hall of Fame

The stirring comeback and spectacular escape were unnecessary this time around. John Elway and Barry Sanders were elected into the Pro Football Hall of Fame without a sweat.

As expected, two of the NFL's most dominating and exciting players made it in Saturday on their first attempt.

Elway, the king of the comeback, and Sanders, the master of escape, cemented their status among the all-time greats, and were joined by Bob Brown and Carl Eller.

"Until you said no way, or I was in the locker room taking my uniform off, I was going to try to find a way to win it," said Elway, the winningest quarterback in NFL history with 148 victories.

"I want to tell every guy I played with, `Thanks,'" he said.

Elway played in five Super Bowls, losing the first three then winning two in a row as his 16-year career wound down.

Sanders was the first player to rush for 1,000 yards in his first 10 seasons, leading the league four times. In 1997, he was co-MVP with Brett Favre after rushing for 2,053 yards, only the third player to exceed 2,000 yards in a season. He ran for 100 yards or more in 14 consecutive games.

Sanders retired at 31, in his prime, calling it "the right time."

"When I think about the Hall of Fame, it seems like that's something that happens to someone else," Sanders said. "You think Dick Butkus, Walter Payton, names of that light. To be here, I truly feel, in some ways a little out of place."

Speaking about himself and Elway, he said: "They saw something that was unique in us, something they might not see on any old Sunday."

What was unique was that Elway and Sanders made the extraordinary look easy.

"When the game was on the line, he was like Michael Jordan," said Dan Reeves, who coached Elway in Denver's three Super Bowl losses. "He wanted the football. In those situations, I don't know if I know anyone that did a better job."

That's not how life in the NFL began for Elway.

Though he was the top pick in the 1983 draft, he was benched at halftime in his first NFL game -- and really didn't mind.

"I said, `Auntie Em, take me home,'" Elway recalled. "I don't want to be here any longer, staring at Jack Lambert drooling spit."

Elway led the Broncos on 47 fourth-quarter winning or tying drives, including the famous 98-yard march that helped Denver win the 1986 AFC championship in Cleveland. He was the 1987 league MVP and will be the only Bronco in the Hall of Fame when he is inducted this summer.

Even if he'd lost those final two Super Bowls, in 1998 and 1999, Elway would have been a slam-dunk Hall of Famer. And it's hard to believe he would have been satisfied if he hadn't won at least one.

"Of course, I lied. I said it would be complete," Elway said. "Then we won one."

Sanders, who never played in a Super Bowl, simply walked away from the game five years ago -- even he was just 1,457 yards short of matching Payton's then-NFL rushing mark of 16,726 yards.

"The guy would have held every record in the NFL if he hadn't retired," Elway said. "It's truly an honor to go in with a guy like Barry."

Said linebacker Dwayne Rudd: "Barry Sanders is the only guy who can go east and west at the same speed at the same time."

"God only put one pair of feet like that on a human being," said Fritz Shurmur, former defensive coordinator of the Packers.