Elway excelled at football and baseball in high school and was drafted by major league baseball's Kansas City Royals in 1979. However, he instead attended Stanford University (B.A., 1983) on a football scholarship, where he set several school and conference passing records. He was the number one draft pick of baseball's New York Yankees in 1981, and he played for a Yankees farm club over the following summer. In 1983 Elway was chosen by the Baltimore Colts (Indianapolis Colts) as the first overall pick in the NFL draft, but he threatened to play baseball professionally if the struggling Colts did not trade him. The Colts complied, and Elway was dealt to the Denver Broncos, where he spent his entire 16-year career.

Elway impressed fans in the NFL with his throwing precision, cool leadership, and rushing ability. In his rookie year he led the Broncos to the franchise's fourth playoff appearance in its 24-year history. While Elway rarely led the league in individual statistical categories, he was noted for his consistent production and his ability to rally his team to victory in the late stages of games. The most famous of his comebacks came in the 1986 American Football Conference (AFC) championship game against the Cleveland Browns when he led the Broncos on a 98-yard drive to score the tying touchdown in the game's final seconds. The Broncos won the game in overtime to advance to the Super Bowl, and Elway's feat became known as “the Drive.”

Elway's Broncos teams were unsuccessful in their first three Super Bowl appearances (1986, 1987, 1989), losing by an average margin of 32 points. In 1998, however, they finally broke through as Elway led another late-game drive to beat the Green Bay Packers in Super Bowl XXXII. The Broncos repeated as Super Bowl champions the following year, Elway's last. He retired with the NFL career records for most victories by a starting quarterback (148; which was broken by Brett Favre (Favre, Brett) in 2007) and most fourth-quarter game-winning or game-tying drives (47). Elway was inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 2004.