Inside the Greatest Moment in Denver Broncos History

He would not have had enough capital to trade to get John Elway.

And that led to the.

Probably what I consider the greatest moment in Bronco history is when Irsay was irked by another owner in the AFC West.

Oh, you want John Elway?

I'll give you John Elway.

You're going to see him twice a week.

He's coming.

He's going to Denver and hangs up on him.

And that is, to me, the greatest moment in Bronco history.

Welcome, everybody.

This is Darren Hayes ofpixie and dispatch.com your portal to positive football history.

And tonight I'm going to get a chance to sit down with an expert who has studied the Denver Broncos.

His name is Scott Perry.

He is an author, he is a historian, he's a speaker to communities about football history.

Scott, welcome to the Pig Pen.

Darren, thanks for having me.

I appreciate your well established podcast and it's a pleasure and honor to be on it.

Well, it is an honor to have you, Scott.

I know that you and I were alive and, you know, I was a teenager, you know, well, in high school, watching this.

So I was really into it.

I think you're probably about the same age as I am.

Yeah.

Okay.

Yeah.

So that's about time.

Me too.

So everybody was scared, including my parents especially.

But we had some great memories of football.

You know, we've talked a lot about, you know, we had a competitive league in the store bring to the NFL and they were taking some of the NFL players and it seemed like, you know, maybe things were on the ropes a little bit for the NFL, but we had a great year for the NFL.

Gotcha.

Great.

Well, hey, my book is every season's from 70 till the present.

I updated every year.

But it's ironic that you mentioned this as my first topic and I don't have any players in my book, but I have one that I'm as a Bronco fan, Dan Reeves is my favorite personality.

But that's a, that's a young photo of Dan Reeves there.

That's Dan Reeves.

Ey picture.

That's his second year.

And my favorite thing in sports is my Denver Bronco helmet.

And this is signed by Craig Morton.

Tom Landry.

I'm not a Cowboy fan, but Tom Landry made Dan Reeves a great player and a great coach.

Dan gets hired.

He's a very, very young head coach.

And this is the 82 yearbook.

And it's his.

His quarterback is Craig Morton still.

So Craig's done.

And now the Broncos.

So those are the years of the.

The years of the Orange Crush, right?

We're going to talk a little bit.

Orange Crusher.

A little bit.

I got something I want to show you, but I remember getting ready for school that.

That morning, I think it was in May of 83.

Well, let's go back to 82 real quick.

There was a strike.

Okay.

And I wear my Atwater jersey.

I want you to see.

Is 27 visible there for you?

Oh, yeah, we see the 27.

Yes.

So when I give it, I give a lot of talks to communities about football history.

And I say, how did we get 2 7?

There's.

There's a right horse and a wrong horse.

What's the wrong horse in the NFL, Darren?

Having a losing record?

No, no, there's two horses.

There's a good horse and then a not so good horse.

Who's the other NFL team?

That's a horse.

Oh, the.

The Colts.

And the Colts went.081 and that gave them the first pick of the draft.

The best player in 82 is.

Is John Elway.

Well, had the Broncos not gone two wins and seven losses to get the fourth round draft, the fourth pick in the draft, he would not have had enough capital to trade to get John Elway.

And that led to the.

Probably what I consider the greatest moment in Bronco history is when Irsay was irked by another owner in the AFC West.

Oh, you want John Elway?

I'll give you John Elway.

You're going to see him twice a week.

He's coming.

He's going to Denver and hangs up on him.

And that is, to me, the greatest moment in Bronco history.

Because my book would not be here.

My book is my effort to see the Broncos become the New York Yankees.

Of professional football.

And Elway was the key to that.

Had he.

Had he not been there, who knows what I.

We would not be talking because I would not have created this book.

So it's just an amazing way that that happened.

We can get into all these four sports.

We have the worst baseball team, but we had the best month back in November for winning percentage of our three teams.

I digress.

Can I talk a little bit about Orange Crush now?

Yeah, absolutely.

Okay.

So, Darren, I mentioned they had a.

A best by number book.

And the number 53 is, of course, Randy Grattershire's number.

It was his last year.

Okay.

Open up the book, and it says Elite 53s, Don Drysdale's the number one.

But it says Randy Grattershire, the meanest, toughest tackler west of the Mississippi.

So that is the complete Denver.

If you're in Denver and watching this, you know that we had a bias.

I drove to Canton, Ohio, to watch Randy get inducted into the hall of Fame.

Had he been in Chicago or New York, he would have been in.

Or Pittsburgh, he would have been in the hall of fame decades ago.

83 Was his last season.

So I, I just digress from the John Elway story.

Elway played one year with hall of Famer Randy Gratasharp.

That's amazing, isn't it?

Yeah.

Great player.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So.

So now it's.

And this is going to be Dan Reeves third season.

But now he has a crazy sports fan base.

He has a crazy media who's later known for going up to Elway's house on Halloween and finding out what he gave out for how that was a big controversy in Denver back in whatever year it was.

During his career.

How many times did you dress up and go ring Elway's doorbell to get trickortreat basketball?

I never found it.

I'm just kidding.

You go ahead.

I'm sorry.

Well, he had to deal.

Reeves had to deal with the media and the fan base.

And he had to deal with how much does he play him now.

A year earlier, they traded for Joe Montana's backup in Joe's first championship, number 17, Steve Debird.

And they both split time.

He put him in and out both times.

Elway was pulled from the opening game in Pittsburgh, which the Broncos won, which is a big deal for me.

The Broncos won in Pittsburgh, but they split time and they managed to win nine.

Nine games.

So Dan did a good job of juggling the best quarterback out of college in a long time and maybe forever.

So.

So that's, that's how it started.

And do you have any questions about the season?

No.

But it was kind of an interesting story how the Broncos got away.

Maybe you want to touch on that a little bit because like you said, they weren't the number one team.

Didn't have the number one pick in the draft.

And Elway was by far.

He was that brass ring that everybody wanted that year.

So as a Long Islander, you know, my dad grew up a Yankees fan.

I'm a Mets fan.

And I want the Broncos to be, you know, Yankees have 27 championships.

My Bronco should have got their fourth last year.

The Patriots are the Ghost AFC champions.

I'm sorry that, you know, I'm sure there's Patriots fans and I'm not anti Patriots, but anyway, I digress.

The Broncos are going to be the number one team in my book, which ranks every team from 70 to today in winning percentage.

But I bring that up because John was pitching also.

And in the fall of 82, he was pitching in Oneida, New York, for the New York Yankees.

And he and his dad called up the Colts and said, do not draft my son.

Not a fan of the ownership or the coaching staff.

Don't draft them.

And John, when I talk, I talk about what you think about in all of the, in all of America, the greatest country turning to 50, what is the greatest position?

President and then quarterback of one of the 32 teams making not much more than 64 openings.

Right.

So here's.

John loves football, but he's got that backup of pick pitching.

There's a lot of pitchers in Major League Baseball, not a lot of quarterbacks, but he was okay to listen to his dad and play for the Yankees.

So April 83 rolls around and the Colts still take John Elway and he.

But he's still adamant.

So the Broncos have a new owner.

Name escapes me for some reason, but he took the, the initiative to contact Ursay and he Was able to trade to get John Elway and make that 83 season a really incredible season where John ended up going to the playoffs with, with the 9 and 7 season.

This picture is of the Broncos tackling a Seahawk and they finished third to the Seahawks.

They had to go to Seattle Seahawks, first ever playoff game in the.

In the kingdom or in their history.

Having just been around since 76 and this Seahawks beat us 31 to 7,.

Folks.

Maybe just for our younger audiences, you may not know it, but Seattle started off in the afc.

They were in the AFC west playing with the Broncos and the Raiders and you know, that whole division.

And it was later on, probably like a decade and a half later, two decades later, when they switched over to the NFC.

And I actually did go to Seattle to watch the Broncos play the first interconference game against the Seahawks.

It was a fun experience to be there.

We crushed them, so that was good.

But.

But yeah, so let's.

I needed.

Can I interject a little bit about how the LA rookie season relates to the.

Sure, absolutely.

Yeah.

So first of all, I'm a snuck case fan and I've watched the Bronx me start off at the end of the 83 season.

Elway goes to Seattle and he loses 31 7.

And the stipulation here is the fact that Steve the Berg did play occasionally to relieve them and they eat their way into the playoffs.

They played 16 games, they won nine.

Denver was the third place team.

Got the last wild card team on the road to Seattle lose 31 7.

Bonix is our first final.

We get a quarterback that we drafted.

We had Paxton lynch and I forget the Drew Lock, okay?

We tried our butts off to get him and cheer him on into success, but we didn't happen.

So now it's Bo's rookie year.

Not 16 games, but 17 games.

He also loses seven, but he wins the extra one.

So Bogo's 10 and seven, they finish third, they go on the road to play a wild card game and they lose by the exact same score in Buffalo.

So what are the odds that I've seen the Broncos play in Buffalo in Seattle only.

And Elway's rookie year ends in Seattle losing 317 to the Seahawks.

Bo Nix loses 317 to the Bills to end his rookie year.

So it's just a really interesting scenario.

It's really good for us Bronco fans to see a.

I'll tell you what, if Bo Nix has any kind of a career, even close to half of what Elway accomplished in his career, I think you'll have some happy Broncos fans, and he will probably have his number hanging up in rafters there someday.

Yep.

Yeah.

Oh, there's no doubt.

We're counting on that.

I mean, after last year.

Yeah.

All right.

Well, great.

All right.

So what are some of the other things?

I know you have your book out, you mentioned earlier, and.

Right.

The merger year.

So why don't you tell us a little bit about your book and how the idea came about?

Well, it's.

I moved back and forth from Denver, Long island, to Denver, back to Long island, back to Denver.

Then upstate New York, an hour away, the city where the Bills train in Rochester.

So I would real quick.

I was not a fan, but I discovered a TV show called Inside the NFL.

And that completely light switched my life, and I became a fanatic fan thanks to Ed and Steve Sable.

So that's a big deal.

So I had to pick the Bills of the Broncos real quick.

It was my dad.

I moved to Boston.

I'm watching Nolan Ryan pitch at Fenway.

The game ends.

We walk behind the green monsters.

I hear, pick out a hat.

And there's a wall, a huge wall of hats.

And there's a divine light on the top row.

It's a Bronco trucker hat.

And that was the deciding factory pick.

Also, my dad says, I'm moving back to Denver again.

Do you want to come back?

So I said, oh, my goodness.

I moved back.

I'm a junior high kid.

Five years later, I graduate.

Denver's got zero playoff wins.

So I sat down to prove to myself I made the right decision.

I added up every game from 70 to the end of the 85 season.

And I knew if I went to Mile High Stadium, I had a 75% chance of watching the Broncos win.

And after I did this compilation, 75% of the football teams had a worse winning percentage in the regular season since the merger.

So that was a big boost in it.

And I know you can show some pages, Darren, and it's just kind of my compilation.

It's the standings using the helmets.

Because I became a purist right away, hated to see cities lose their teams.

So I only use the helmet worn that year.

It's my junior high craziness that I said I'm not, I'm going to change the color of the face mask the next year, let alone the helmet.

So that's how it looks all back then it was 15 seasons.

We're coming up on the 57th season next year of, of the NFL since the merger happened.

Okay, wow.

So you, you change, you have a revision to the book every single year.

Is that what.

Every year I put an update in there?

So when you put the word since in your book title, it's like making donuts.

You gotta.

How to keep it updated because I can't let it get stale.

It's just, just my goal to watch the Broncos progress.

All right, so, so folks, you know, we have links in the show notes how you can get a copy of Scott's book and you get the latest edition here, you know, before the season starts because, you know, a few months after that it's going to change again.

So possibly the leaders could be changing.

But yeah.

So.

I know you had a few other things you want to talk about besides the Broncos.

Well, you know, I'm, you know, as a Bronco fan, also getting drafted by the Broncos that year was Gary Kubiak.

And I got this.

My dad worked at a computer store and I had, I was a columnist for my school paper.

I got to spend half a day with him.

That's a big deal to be able to say I did that.

Well, I bring that up because now his son is the Raiders coach and I'm a kind of, I'm kind of a Kirk cousin fan.

So I, I might have to for one season take my foot off the throat of the Raider nation and, and be happy with success.

I don't want to get into that.

It's just a ball of wax.

And the Redskins had a two game advantage.

They won 14 games.

So that I digress to the Broncos talking about 83, but 83 had a lot of good, you know, good things.

I'm looking at the, I'm looking at the.

That's the beauty of my reference book.

You want to see what's going on?

You see what happened that year.

And the Cowboys beat the Rams, and the wild.

The Rams beat the Cowboys.

Oh, it is a very rare Lions appearance.

So I know we have a common friend in Arnie with the sports network.

It was.

It was heartbreaking for me because I became a fan of the bad teams.

I love the bad teams.

I became a fan, and I was heartbroken when the Lions were beaten by the Niners, who had recently won a championship.

So, yeah, I think Gary Danielson, I think, was quarterbacking that team back.

That is correct.

Yeah.

So we.

We know him from his commentary on NFL games.

Actually, I don't even think he does it anymore.

Maybe he still does.

I haven't seen him for a while, but.

Yeah, amazing.

Amazing.

Good memories there.

Yeah.

So just good, fun stuff.

It was a great season.

And except for the Raiders winning a championship, but for Bronco fans, that's a long time.

That's.

That's a great gap.

And being a fan of the Broncos and not having to endure a Raider championship.

Yeah.

No.

Okay, now let's talk about that for a little bit, because this is, you know, gets personal to you.

I mean, I know.

I mean, I'm.

I'm living Western Pennsylvania.

I'm a lifelong Steelers fan.

I've lived here all my life.

So I, you know, I grew up in the good times and had, you know, some good times and bad times in between.

Very few bad times.

I'm.

I'm spoiled.

But when you're one of your arch rivals, a divisional rival wins a championship, wins the super bowl, takes home, holds up that Lombardi, you know, part of you wants to cringe a little bit.

I know in my case, like when the Ravens are holding up their trophies, but sometimes, you know, you look at and say, you know what?

You know, hats off to you, because that means we played in the strongest division of football.

We have the champion out of our division, and we had to play against them twice a year.

What are your thoughts on that?

Well.

Well, I'm happy to.

You know, first of all, Pittsburgh, they're at a star of my book.

I don't, you know, I don't want to get into the Pittsburgh part of it, but they are the star of my book.

They never have a bad year.

But here's the opposite of that.

The Raiders gave their coach to the Buccaneers, and since then, they've had two winning seasons.

So I'm, as an expert historian of every team.

You count the Bengals, the Bucks, and The Cardinals as just bad franchises with long stretches of losing.

But now the Raiders qualify for the same.

The same classification.

And all those years, you know, it's just an amazing situation.

You know, when they were your least favorite team, you're okay with it.

It's just.

It's just mind blowing to growing up, everything was the Raiders and then the Broncos and something changed.

Al Davis left or he passed away and they haven't been able to get anywhere near the commitment to excellence.

It almost, you know, we have similar instance in the AFC Central now the AFC north with the Browns.

But in the 70s and when I grew up, the Browns were really good.

The 80s, you know, tremendous early 90s.

And they sort of fell off and you know, of course they lost their franchise and.

Which turned into the Ravens.

But it's not really a rivalry.

More.

I live 100 miles from Buffalo, 100 miles from Cleveland, 100 miles from Pittsburgh, so I'm right in the middle of the triangle.

And we have a mixed fan here near Pennsylvania.

But, you know, the Browns are really not considered all that much of a rival anymore.

And actually there's, you know, sorry to say people, there's kind of a joke to the, you know, the teams around here because Buffalo's been strong years recent.

Pittsburgh, you know, usually gets the better of the Cleveland rivalry.

It's been the Ravens has been the main focus and probably the Bengals right behind them and Browns.

That's heartbreaking to talk about the Ravens over the Browns.

It's just not right.

That should never have happened.

But.

So there's many iterations of the book, but if you don't mind, like to read a little bit of the My Brown blurb about what I said at this point.

Yeah, go ahead.

Absolutely.

It says the Browns team starts every season with a smaller and smaller subset of fans that remembers when it earned the dynasty label.

Eight championships, counting All American Football Conference wins from 46 to 49.

Just over.500 with no playoff wins during the 70s.

Five divisions won three AFC title games in the 80s.

90S play out pretty uneventful, aside from the fact the franchise suspended operation, moved to a different city and began a new identity.

Fans awaited three long seasons for Resurrection as an expansion club in 99.

They won 35% of games in the last full decade of play.

It's sad, you know, when they.

When they cease to exist.

Now they are tied with the Buccaneers for the least winning percentage at 40 at 4:12.

Yeah.

And that winless season a few years ago didn't.

Didn't help that matter very much, did it?

No, no.

So.

So it's kind of, you know, last year we, we, you know, we always sort of focus on a theme for the whole year.

And I believe, if I'm not mistaken, I think there were seven years in a row, if you count the AAFC years, where the Browns were in the championship game of their respective league that they were in at the time.

I mean, that's amazing.

That's been.

The Patriots didn't even do that, you know.

Well, the Browns won like 35 to 10.

You know, it's just, it's such a contrast to the current Browns organization.

That's just a great history and a lousy recent history.

Yeah, absolutely.

Now, Scott, I want to make sure you have the opportunity to.

We know you wrote the book in your history.

We talked about it up at the top in some prior conversations.

You have an interest into having some speaking engagements out there.

So why don't you use this to throw your pitch to maybe a prospective person that would love to have you talk at an event?

Well, I love the fact that I'm on Zoom.

I'm not very versed in using it.

I did during COVID use it more.

But if anybody's watching this and they want to have a gathering, local Library gave me 90 minutes.

I needed to take an extra 10 to get everything out.

And if I give a talk for an hour and someone says, what about the Panthers?

I'm like, wait a second.

I've got 20 minutes of material on Panther history.

So I'm happy to get an email.

Sure.

There'll be a graphic on the, on the screen to how to reach me.

And I'd love to.

I usually wear my tie and Professor Perry and I can settle any arguments.

You know, I know enough that if two guys are.

Want to tell me about an error for their team, I, I can be the deciding judge and I'm going to get a gavel.

I appreciate that, Darren.

I'm going to have that for you.

So.

Okay.

Yeah, that's.

That's good.

That's good.

We might use you in that respect here some of these days.

If we have an argument, we'll bring you on to help us settle some disputes.

We do a lot of those kind of things during, especially during the season, Scott, you know, we.

You know, it's.

It's the year after a strike that was a big deal.

It was, you know, we got to see a little bit of Detroit lion history.

They won two games and lost 14.

That's just part of Houston football history as being the third city that's never seen their team play in a Super Bowl.

So it just.

I mean, there's so many great things about all the seasons and the fact that John Elway shows up that year and does great.

Well, I mean, the whole quarterback situation, there's a show in itself.

You know, the 83 quarterback draft is a different show for you, Darren.

It not.

Not just during the 80, 83 season.

There's.

There's a few strong candidates that threw the ball at the NFL that came out that year, wasn't there?

Right, right.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Some interesting stuff here.

So.

Yeah, that's one of the reasons why we, we celebrate it, you know, not only the John Elway years and we're.

We're talking college football, you know, folks, and we have a lot of great things on the quarterback situation that Scott alluded to, as well as some USFL news and everything else.

We had a lot going on that year and sort of a forgotten year that people don't realize the importance of it.

You know, like you say, because of the strike year.

And, you know, football had sort of a negative vibe there being, you know, that whole mid-80s because of the strikes.

Right.

And everything just sort of, sort of, sort of the same thing that baseball suffered when they, when they had that strike year and sort of.

They never recover where the NFL sort of bloomed from it.

Right, right.

Yeah.

Sore subject of talking about strikes and, and Franchise moves.

But there's so much good stuff.

I love it.

That's why I love your.

The fact you put positive in your.

In your.

In your name of your podcast.

It really means a lot to see that.

Yeah, that's.

That's one of the things we try to do.

If you want to, you know, talk about, you know, people doing knucklehead things and, you know, getting suspended, yeah, we have to talk a little bit about that, because that's history.

But we want to bring back the.

The good feelings you have when you're a kid and you're opening up football cards or watching that game or, you know, watching this as the NFL before the games came on, you know, and hearing the Sables talk and just, you know, John Fasenda's voice going over the games from the week before, that was magic.

And that's kind of magic that we try to at least take a glimpse of once again.

That's what, you know, I just love the most iconic thing in sports and for me is NFL helmets.

I just love the mosaic of putting them all together.

I'm like an archaeologist.

I can look at a Sears catalog and what the logos are, and I can tell you what year that catalog came out based on who changed and who hadn't yet changed that helmet.

So it's kind of a neat thing that I like to do.

All right, Scott, well, why don't you.

Before we let you go, let's give the name of your book again and where folks can get a copy of it at.

Sure.

2026 Season.

The beauty of it is you open it up and you look at where your.

Who your team, who your team's playing against, and it helps you move your team up.

You want to go from the bottom up to the top of the losing, over to the winning, then to the top.

It's on Amazon.

There's several different.

Several different versions of it.

There's a 6 by 9, there's an 8 by 11.

And make sure you check out the fact that one is black and white.

The less expensive one.

It's.

It's.

Someone talked me into putting it on there, and I'm not real thrilled with the black and white version of this multicolored NFL book.

And I just.

And I'd love to be contacted if anybody's a big enough fan that can suggest a page they would like to see created.

I'd like to.

It's got to be wins and losses or I have a factoid page that shows you all kinds of fun stuff to be a more knowledgeable fan.

I'm trying to get Denver to be back into the top three NFL city, but I like every NFL fan to just become a more knowledgeable fan as a result of seeing this book.

Well, they have become more knowledgeable and you've made me more knowledgeable about football just with the discussion we had tonight.

Thanks again for joining us and we'll talk to you again soon.

Great.

Thanks for having me.

I appreciate it.

Darren.