They speak in code and they speak in Spanish. They speak on Tuesdays and they speak on fairways. They speak of 2002 and they speak of 1972.

One of them is going to Canton, the other is going to Kmart. One is going down in history, the other just took history. One co-authored the playbook, the other reads it in bed. One is a coach's son, the other a quarterback's son. One is Pac-10, the other is Big Ten. One has thrown 7,000 NFL passes, the other has thrown three (one complete, one incomplete and one picked off). One is running the shotgun, the other is riding shotgun. One has to carry the Denver Broncos, the other just carries on.

They met after last spring's NFL draft while lifting weights, and John Elway told Brian Griese, "Congratulations on your national championship," and Brian Griese told John Elway, "Congratulations on your Super Bowl." They are two ships passing in the sauna room -- Elway with a season or two left; Griese with maybe 12 or 13 left -- and the rookie had better listen up. Ryan Leaf is out of control, and Peyton Manning is out of his element, but Brian Griese has a clipboard and a baseball cap and headphones and a windbreaker -- and a mentor.

"Sometimes I call him 'Old Fogue,'" Griese says, presumably kidding.

There are two ways to do this: You can start your rookie quarterback and watch him unravel (see Leaf) or you can sit your rookie behind a Hall of Famer and watch him watch (see Griese). The Broncos have the luxury of the latter, and, so far, it is a win-win (well, actually, an eight-win) situation.

Of course, going in, Griese didn't know what to make of Elway. He was a Cleveland Browns fan as a kid, and Elway was usually the only thing between Cleveland and the Super Bowl, and so Elway was never Griese's favorite quarterback.

Griese's father was. Bob Griese won Super Bowls with the Miami Dolphins in 1973 and in '74, before Brian was born. Brian was a month shy of his 13th birthday when his mother, Judith, died of breast cancer, and it was just the two of them after that. Their way to cope was to keep it loose. When Bob's eyeglasses were sent to the Hall of Fame -- he was one of the few quarterbacks to wear spectacles on the field -- Brian told him, "Dad, that's as close as you'll ever get to Canton." Then, when Bob was inducted into the Hall in 1990, he said from the podium, "In your face, Brian."

This is the Griese family sense of humor, and this is how Brian Griese would treat John Elway. But could Elway take it? From a distance, Griese admired Elway, admired that he could be routed in three Super Bowls and never point one finger. He admired that the state of Colorado worshiped Elway and trusted him. There were actual Bronco fans who would flock to buy cars from John Elway Nissan and John Elway Ford -- even though Elway did not literally run the dealerships -- and these same fans would be shocked when their cars were sometimes repossessed.

"Why are you taking my car?" one particular man asked.

"Because you haven't made your payments," the repo man said.

"Well," said the man, "I thought John was such a good guy, he'd cut me some slack."

So this is the environment Brian Griese waltzed into. On his right was the locker of backup quarterback Bubby Brister (a loudmouth), and on his far right was the locker of Elway (a legend), and, in these last four months, Griese has proceeded to fit in. Brister and Elway call Griese "Teen Wolf," and Griese calls Brister "Boobs." Griese is still concocting a nickname for the legend Elway.

"Well," says Griese, "the reason they call me Teen Wolf is because they think I'm hairy. And the reason I call Bubby Boobs is, we were out playing golf, all three of us, and John introduced Bubby to one of his friends, and the guy said, 'Oh, nice to meet you, Booby Blister.' I was like, 'Oh my God, Booby Blister!' So I called him Boobs. But John's got 18 different nicknames, only 10 of which I think I understand where they come from.

"So I just call him John. Or, like I said, I call him Old Fogue."

Actually, their relationship blossomed when Elway began dishing it back to Griese at training camp. Griese was bragging one day about his co-national championship at Michigan (the title was shared with Nebraska), and was ridiculing Stanford's program, too, when Elway said, "Well, you may play football at Michigan, but we go to class at Stanford." That was all it took. Elway offered to drive Griese back from camp, and then invited him over to his mansion.

"Not a bad shack," Griese says.

At the time, Griese needed to find a place of his own, not to mention a car of his own, and his buddies from Michigan told him to ask Elway for a loaner from John Elway Nissan.

"I mean," says Griese, "everybody at home was like, 'Well, Elway owns some dealerships, why don't you get a car from him? He'll give you a car.' I was like, 'I don't even know this guy and you want me to ask him for a car? What the hell have I done for the guy?' Sheesh. I went out and got my own car. Wasn't going to ask him."

He also found his apartment without Elway's help and even managed to decorate it without help from Elway's wife, Janet.

"Well, I went out and bought some of those fake trees from Kmart and put them in the corners of the apartment," Griese says. "And I bought some of that artwork. You know, that expensive artwork at Kmart. You know, the Rembrandts they have. I put 'em over my couch. And I bought all those smelly candles and stuff, so when the girl comes over, it's not ... you know."

But at the practice facility, wherever Elway went, Griese went. The Monday quarterback meetings were beneficial because Griese would hear Elway's thought process firsthand. They would talk about Bronco code and Bronco terminology, and they would plan their Tuesday off-days, when he, Elway and Brister often would go play golf.

"I won't divulge who wins, but you can deduce," Griese says, winking.

"He's not bad," Elway says. "He says he beats me all the time, but I've got to give him shots. When he beats me head up, then I'll say he's better than I am."

After the golf outings, they go to dinner, which is obviously hazardous to Elway's health.

"We'd try to go somewhere where we could be as inconspicuous as possible and go sit at a table in the back corner," Griese says. "But they come right up to him. Everybody thinks John's their best friend. As Bubby puts it, that's part of our job -- to protect John from all the autograph seekers, and stuff like that. I'll tell you one thing, I'm learning what this might be like if I ever start here. But believe me, when John's gone, there's not ever going to be another John Elway."

Elway and Griese talk at these dinners and Griese tries not to ask too many questions, but certain subjects invariably come up -- like the year 2002.

"By then, John will probably own the Bronco facility," Griese says. "He'll be writing my paychecks."

Or another subject comes up -- like 1972. It's the year Bob Griese's Dolphins went undefeated, and the Broncos by all appearances have a shot to replicate it this season. "My dad's getting nervous," Griese says.

"Well, I am," Bob Griese says. "I told Brian, 'I'm pulling for you as soon as you lose one.' Us former Dolphins, we deal with this every year. Until everybody in the league goes down once, we don't rest easy. So I tell Brian every week, 'Brian, you're going down.' Maybe I should have him tell Elway."

Or another subject comes up -- foreign language.

"Well, see, I've been trying to teach John a little bit of Spanish," Griese says. "I figure, you know, I'm this rookie quarterback, what do I have to offer to this relationship? You know? What do I have that Elway doesn't have?

"Well, I grew up in Miami, so I know Spanish. So I've been teaching him a little Spanish, bit by bit. How do I do it? I got him to watch my favorite movie, which is Scarface. And I've gotten him saying lines from the movie. See, I've got the whole movie memorized and during the day at practice, things will go on that relate to the movie, and I'll say something. And John's been listening to me for a while now, and so now, he'll say some of the things I say.

"And I'm waiting for that one time during the game when he comes off the field and says something from Scarface. Like there's a scene in the movie where Scarface saws off a guy's arm and then says, 'Now the leg, eh?' Or Scarface calls people 'Cock-uh-roach.' So I told John any time a big defensive lineman is sitting on him, he should say, 'Get off me, cock-uh-roach!'"

"But he hasn't picked it up. I've got to give him a pop quiz or something. I've got my work cut out for me. But that's about the only thing I bring to the relationship."

Elway is trying, though. "I'm working on it," he says. "I mean, Brian's a great kid, and he's fun to be around, and he'll be a great quarterback in this league for a long time. He does a good job of studying, and he's intelligent, and he has the talent to play. I'm just not as good as Brian at doing Scarface. He's from Miami. He should be good."

On the other hand, Elway may have finally broken through. When the Broncos were about to pad their lead on the Jaguars in a game they won Oct. 25, Griese looked over at Elway, who had run over to the sideline, and the two simultaneously said, "Now the leg, eh?"

It's a start.

Of course, there is one subject that never comes up much between them -- how to play quarterback in the NFL.

"With John, I don't go and ask John a lot of questions," Griese says. "Because he's got other things to worry about. That doesn't mean I won't learn from him in every way I can. But it's just I don't want to bother him with all those things. I want to go out and learn on my own."

So the rookie reads his playbook during lunch, in bed and in the rest room. In games, he notices how Elway looks off the free safety twice, maybe three times, before throwing. Leaf and Manning don't have the benefit of seeing things like this.

"I've seen some of their highlights on TV, or lowlights," Griese says of the other rookies. "I wouldn't trade my situation for any of theirs.

"I mean, what I've learned most from John is how to handle myself off the field. I watch how he acts with the media and the fans; how he deals. Being a quarterback in the NFL, you have to be able to manage yourself. I mean, a perfect example is Ryan Leaf. He hasn't learned how to manage himself.

"Of course, just watching John play quarterback is a kick. Listen, I was shopping for a grill the other day in Kmart, and they had the TVs on and they were tuned to ESPN2, or something. They were showing The NFL's Greatest Moments -- John Elway's comebacks. I mean, I hadn't seen all of them like this, back-to-back-to-back. And I found myself sitting there in the middle of the store watching this. And everybody in the store was walking by and stuff, and I just sat there for an hour and watched the whole thing. I was like, 'God.' Because I see him every day and he's just another guy to me. And then I watch this, and I'm, 'Wow, this guy has done some amazing things.'

"And here I am every day, poking fun at him, telling him that no one's gonna want the Stanford warmup suits he brings in all the time, and that he's terrible at predicting college games, and then here I am watching this at Kmart, and I said to myself, 'God, I go to work and make fun of this guy a lot of times. Where do I get off making fun of this guy?' It made me think.

"But then I said to myself, 'Ah, I'll still make fun of him when I see him tomorrow. I'll still make fun of that cock-uh-roach.'"

This article appears in the November 16, 1998 issue of ESPN The Magazine.