An In-Depth Conversation with Author Jared Kraus on John Elway

You're just in time to take a trip and a journey back in time to look at one of the mile highs city's greatest quarterbacks of all time.

We're gonna take a look at John Elway and a very interesting book by Jared Krause, who's our guest tonight.

Jared's up in just a moment to tell us all about it.

This is the Pigskin Daily History Dispatch, a podcast that covers the anniversaries of American football events throughout history.

Your host, Darrin Hayes is podcasting from America's north shore to bring you the memories of the gridiron day at a time.

Hello, my football friends.

This is Darren Hayes of pigskindispatch.com welcome once again to the Pig Pen, your portal to positive football history.

And welcome to an edition where we get to talk about another legend of the game.

We have an author that's recently released a book on one of the great quarterbacks in NFL history, John Elway.

The author's name is Jared Krause.

And Jared, welcome to the Pig Pen.

Thanks for having me, Darren.

It's great to be here.

Jared.

Before we get into your book and Mr. Elway, why don't you tell us a little bit about yourselves.

You know, give us the 50 cent tour of Jared Kraus football fandom.

Okay.

Wow.

Grew up in Wyoming, and the Broncos were it.

And you think about.

So I'm 53 this fall, and they were.

All we had is, you know, before the Avalanche, before the Nuggets or the Nuggets were there, but before the Rockies, we had the Broncos.

The Broncos draft Chris Hinton, and then he gets traded for the guy, and all of a sudden there's a star.

And so even out in Wyoming, our papers that first camp recovering that, you know, John Elway got his haircut and John Elway had green beans at lunch, and.

And there was kind of Elwood on as far north as Riverton, Wyoming.

And so I can only imagine how it was here in Colorado.

And then a couple years later, my father.

My dad got a job out here, and so we moved.

And I was a fan, and, you know, all these years later, still a fan.

So I have to say that feel very, very fortunate to have had a player like that spend his whole career with.

With one team.

And it was magic those last two years.

I mean, as Bronco fans, we felt like, you know, if we could just win the big one, if we could just.

Just one.

You Know, if we could just.

It would change everything about our lives.

And then, then they finally did it and it was just like, you know what?

We're not losers anymore collection.

There was this, I think, sigh of, wow, we're champions.

You know, and then, of course, Denver went back and won then the second year, Super Bowl 33, and just sort of solidified that, you know, for those of us that had been Bronco fans, those, you know, all those years and the horrendous losses they had had in the previous Super Bowls and nationally, you know, Elway was a loser because he couldn't win the big one, even though, you know, when his career was over, he'd won more games than anybody in the history of the league at the quarterback position, finally, to cap off his career with those back to back super bowl victories and then certainly the MVP in Super Bowl 33.

It was kind of a fitting end and made us all, I mean, this whole, whole region got to be champions for a while.

So, yeah, that was like a great story.

And I mean, I'm old enough to remember Elway, you know, playing at Stanford and, you know, having a great career in the, the Stanford band game and, you know, all that.

He was, he was a part of such great football history that people still remember to this day with an exciting ending like that.

But I also remember, you know, his very first game, and I believe it was against the Steelers.

And me being a Steelers fan, he's going up against that and all the hoopla that was going into that game.

And, you know, he, he had a decent game, I don't think.

I think the Steelers ended up winning, but they had their, you know, that was still.

Their super bowl team was somewhat intact, playing.

Correct.

He had a horrible game and the Broncos wound up winning.

Oh, did they.

Oh, opposite that.

Okay.

Yeah.

Steve, the first came in Elway.

Elway got in and there's a great quote he said he gets in for his first snap because he had won the starting position in camp, but, you know, it was camp.

And so he gets across the line and Jack Lambert is standing across the line of scrimmage from me.

So he doesn't have his teeth and he's snarling, he's spitting.

He said, Elway said, they look across and he's scared to death.

And he said, just get me out of here, I'll give you the money back.

I got a degree from Stanford.

I'll go be an accountant someplace.

Somebody get me out of here.

And then he fumbled and fumbled.

I don't know if it was the first snap, but certainly one of the early ones.

And then got sacked and threw an interception, I think, to Donnie Shell and was yanked.

And then Denver actually wound up winning.

They brought in Steve Deburgh off the bench, and I think they beat Pittsburgh 14 to 10.

And that was his game.

He struggled coming out of college.

And.

Yeah, I don't know, that was 10, seven.

That was a different game.

I've got actually a ticket stub right here.

I can check it.

1410.

Yeah.

Okay.

I knew it was first game of the year.

I guess I had everything else wrong on my memory banks there, but, you know, yeah, I had that memory of him, of course, you know, many times in between, you know, being, like you said, you know, so many times going, taking Denver into the super bowl, and he was almost like, you know, compared to, you know, like Fran Tarkington and the Vikings or, you know, years later, the Buffalo Bills was four in a row.

They just couldn't get over that hump and get to the big dance.

But you couldn't dance with the girl you wanted to.

You know, one of those kind of things.

But the thing I really gained a lot of respect for Elway was, I think it was 97, 98 seasons.

Steelers and the Broncos met in the AFC championship game, and Bobby Brister and Merrill Hodge were having the games of their lives and had Denver on the ropes.

And Denver was favored in the game, if I remember correctly.

But Elway pulls that Elway magic near the end of the game, and, you know, you know, he's 30 something, he's an old man diving over the pile to get a first.

A key first down to take Denver, get him in for the winning score.

But just so much respect for.

For that guy to be able to do that at that age and still have that magic.

It was kind of cool to watch.

You know, again, as a fan of John's, the first throughout his whole career, he did a lot and.

And, you know, again, on a national stage.

What people seem to remember were the Super Bowls, because if you think back, all the games weren't available all the time and stuff, so you kind of got whatever was local.

So if you're out in Pittsburgh, you're not seeing Elway necessarily play every week.

And, you know, there were plenty of games where he stunk it up the first three quarters.

But then when the heat was on, you know, the fourth quarter and you're down by a touchdown, and, you know, it's sort of like hearing the.

The jaws Music, you know, and the.

You're wondering this, this impending doom is headed for you.

And, and 48 times he brought him from behind in the fourth quarter to win.

And that, that AFC championship was one.

One of those games where again he didn't have to play very well, just played well enough to score more points than the opponent.

And, and there were a lot of games like that, that, that he did.

Yeah, of course, some of the ones I, I've got.

I mean I didn't enjoy away winning that game, let me tell you, but I could appreciate what he's doing.

But game, couple games that I did enjoy because I, I live in Erie, Pennsylvania.

So I'm 100 miles from Cleveland, 100 miles from Pittsburgh, 100 miles from Buffalo.

Buffalo right in the middle of the triangle.

So we get the.

Our fan base is very mixed here, but you know, Cleveland was our rivalry, Steelers rivalry.

And the, the 70s and the 80s before the old Browns against the old Browns out rivalries of Ravens, the new Browns.

But the, the LA games and those AFC championship games, you know, the catch and the drive, you know, those, those were, were just more that.

That magic that he could produce.

Like you just said earlier, didn't really have a great earlier part of that game, but that fourth quarter when the lights were on, you know, he was really shiny.

Very true.

And probably those first two years that the team in 86 and 87, Cleveland was probably the best team in the AFC.

It's just on that day they weren't better than Denver or they didn't score.

It could have been the best team in the NFL at least one of those years.

They're pretty talented.

They were, they, they were very, a very, very good team.

And I think the third year Denver beat him in, Denver kind of blew him out in that AFC championship game before they went to play the 49ers.

And boy, what a great team that was.

Not the Broncos, but San Francisco.

But yeah, John, you know, he seemed to know when it was time to go.

And I think part of his frustration with being in Denver the first few years under Dan Reeves was that they were such conservative offense and you know, and he had come, come out of Granada Hills High School, played for Jack Neumayer there, who was one of the original innovators or inventors, if you will, the west coast offense.

And you know, he's recruited to Stanford.

You know, who was head coach at Stanford at the time, Bill Walsh, who took the things that, you know, they had been doing.

I think he was doing a little bit of that in Cincinnati with Greg Cook before he was in Stanford.

But then, you know, he recruits John Elway who comes out of this pass happy offense and, and then takes that to the 49ers and successful with it.

Elway comes in, he's, you know, behind.

Who was he?

I want to say Steve Dills, but who set a, you know, passing records in the PAC 10 and always, you know, comes behind him in that system and does the same thing.

And like you said, you know, the final game of his career that prevented him from going to the bowl game, he.

He led the Cardinal down, they scored the touchdown and, and they're certainly going to beat Cal.

And then with six seconds on the clock, they had to kick off and six laterals later, you know, Cal's in the end zone and the trumpet players spiked and the game's over and no bowl game for Stanford.

So.

But yeah, John seemed to know when, when he had to turn it on and certainly had the ability to pull it out in the fourth quarter and make plays.

And that was kind of the thing about Elway is I think that he got a lot out of his guys during that time.

I think that, you know, he made them play maybe, maybe above their potential in those times when it was, you know, you're down by a touchdown and you got to get things done and Mark Jackson comes up big and Steve Sewell comes up big and, you know, guys that didn't have a, a huge pedigree in the NFL, if you will, they made plays for him.

When Clarence K. Orson Mobley, kind of guys that came up big for him in those moments and certainly extended drives and got him in field goal Ranger or got the touchdown late and they were, they were able to win 148 times in the NFL more than anybody.

Yeah, you're definitely right there.

And Jared, I apologize, I let it slip through that we didn't give the title of your book and listeners can do it.

So why don't you.

Let's take this opportunity here during our discussion, give the title of your book and where folks can get a copy of it.

Okay.

The book's called Tackling John the Definitive Collector's Guide.

It's a book about and for collectors, people that are football card collectors.

I've got every card that was made during his playing career.

Posters from Sports Illustrated for Kids, Wheaties boxes, SI covers, pretty much anything and everything that a collector would be into from the career of John Owen just a playing career.

I stopped when he retired.

But 2,500 cards or more are pictured.

I've got ticket stubs in there from significant games both at Stanford as his high school All Star Game, clear through the NFL from the drive, as you mentioned, the Fumble, the AFC championships, the Super Bowls both won and lost.

And it's very comprehensive guidelines and I think people that are Elway fans, Bronco fans and football fans in general will get a get something out of this book.

There's never been anything done on any player in any sport like this before.

Thousands of images all full color.

And you can get it on Amazon.

It dropped about a month ago and we've had some had some success with it so far.

Wow, that is incredible.

So now were most of the images from your personal collection or you have like a collective of other collectors?

I had help and the only way to have done it was to have some help.

Certainly cards and images from my collection, but a team basically a little help from my friends if you're a Beatles fan.

Several people stepped up and loaned me their collections, let me scan them and it was a collective effort and some Jerry Parsons who's out in California that has an incredible Elway collection that has some very, very scarce cards that he was able to loan me images of.

They were either scanning and emailing or had a number.

Several people just loaned me their collections to scan.

And and so again it was very thorough, you know.

And through 98, which is where I stopped after Alloy retired, there weren't a whole lot of numbered cards.

We98 was kind of the first year for that where you, you know, oh, this is two of 25 or something.

So there weren't a whole lot of one of one type things which now is seems to dominate the the card market and industry people trying to get these, you know, manufactured scarcity if you will.

And so it I was able to get everything and I'm very confident that everything that was available during John's playing career is pictured in my book.

And I was very happy.

Like I said, some of these guys had some just incredible collections that they were able to loan me images from.

And so I put it all together but I certainly didn't do it all by myself.

So.

But so okay, so when folks buy a copy of the book and get it.

Just a couple questions.

First of all, what is you find is your personal most interesting piece of John Elway collectible that you have pictured in the book?

Oh yeah.

This will probably sound really crazy because it's not a valuable card.

In the 80s the NFL had paired with like Champions milk products.

They made the dairy pack cards International Paper Co. And there were, he was on panels of milk cartons and through various types of milk like this 2% it might be use blue ink.

If it was whole milk, they might use red ink.

There's buttermilk, they might have gone yellow.

And, and some of those are incredibly hard to find.

They aren't valuable.

And so I've got one that came from a school lunch size, a half pint school lunch size chocolate milk.

I've seen one ever.

And it's one of those things where it might actually be a true one of one.

But this is not manufactured scarcity and it's one of those things where it's probably worth four or five bucks.

But if somebody said I'll give you $10,000 to find me one, I couldn't do it.

Okay, so I'll give you $100,000.

I can't do it.

And so some of the fun things for me have been these types of cards where I've only seen one and it's not valuable but for all the money in the world I couldn't find.

And, and the, the IP Co half pint chocolate milk card is, is certainly one of, one of my favorite cards in the book.

You know, I'm having this image in my mind of some kid in the early 90s, you know, finishes chocolate milk, folding the thing back up and then you know, stepping on it, roll stomping on it.

So it blows up and blowing John always face up and just, you know, there goes the four or five bucks or your ten thousand dollar venture trying to find this thing these kids are destroying.

Well, I can, I can assure you all the, all the Cleveland kids did that.

Yeah, I'll bet.

Yeah, that's, that's interesting.

Well, I never, never knew about that.

But so, so.

Well, so you try to get all the different colors of John Elway's face based on the, the style of milk and the size of the container.

That's.

Yeah, that's the kind of stuff I collect.

As sad as that might sound to the listener.

No, that's cool.

But yeah, you know, I was this, the project I guess started off I was a collector and I'm trying to get everything.

And through the early 90s I was doing a pretty good job.

I worked in several baseball card stores.

So I had Access to some of the things.

And then I just stopped.

You know, it was 94.

I remember specifically the Edge FX had come out and there was a gold John Elway card and I had to have it in my collection, but it was $40.

I'm, I'm working at the time for $5 an hour.

So I can't work a full day for a brand new.

It's $40.

So this dates me, you know, $40.

And, and so I traded everything off and then it was, it was about 04.

So it was about the year that Elway had gone into the hall of Fame.

I wondered, you know, if you had unlimited resources, you know, could you put this book together.

And so I started tracking things and getting cards from my friends and trying to see, you know, is it, would it be possible?

I guess it became the challenges.

Could you get an image of every card?

And for those of us that are card collectors, we have albums and binders of stuff and it's not something you want to sit on your coffee table because somebody's going to grab it and rifle through it and bend your cards and you don't want that.

So it became okay, so could I make a book?

I mean before I had the software to do any of this stuff and I had the idea that I, that I wanted to see if I could make this book and it, it took about 20 years to get everything together and interestingly enough, most of the cards I was able to get in the first couple of years, the last thing I needed was a ticket.

Stanford was hosting San Jose State.

The reason that ticket step is interesting is Jack Elway was the head coach at San Jose State.

It was John's worst game as a collegian.

They lost 28 to 6.

John had a sprained ankle, he was sacked seven times, threw five second half interceptions and it was his worst game and that ticket was impossible to find.

That was the last thing that I needed.

And that held up the printing and production of this book for a long, long time.

And, and finally I was able to get one off ebay and that was, you know, it's completed the set if you will.

And so I was able then to move forward and, and had printed a few, just self printed a few copies and had shown them around and had gotten some, some positive feedback.

So I went ahead and had it published earlier this spring and, and so far so good.

I'm getting more feedback.

It's, you know, available nationally and then so people are, are Checking it out and I'm very pleased with, with how it's gone so far.

So well, that, that's, that's great, you know.

So I guess a follow up question to the last question.

Okay, so you got some, some images, like you said, from your friends and some from other collectors.

What was one of the most surprising or I guess the better question, did any of those images that somebody supplied to you surprise you, something you'd never seen before?

I suppose some of the card images, simply because they were limited, limited in number.

Again, as we hit 98, we started getting the numbered cards, 250, and the silver one would be 1 of 50, and then the gold one would be 1 of 10.

So some of those were, were difficult to come by.

And like I said, I was very fortunate to have people that had extensive collections that were certainly willing to loan me scans, if you will, or provide me scans in order to make the book.

I'll tell you this too, Darren.

This part of probably might be my favorite part of the book is at the back.

John has cameo appearances on several cards of other players.

45 of them, I think, where it's Derek Thomas tackling him or Greg Townsends.

I think he's on four of Greg Townsend's cards over the years.

Neil Smith, several, Howie Long, several Charles Haley, Dan, Sally and Mula, you know, and all these guys have got Elway wrapped up and are about to take him to the ground.

A couple of them.

He's on the ground and you can just barely make out who it is.

Neil Smith is standing over him doing that.

Remember he used to get a sack and he would swing like he's swinging a bat.

And tribute to George Brett.

Well, 93 Pinnacle.

Neil Smith is swinging the bat and Elway's laying on the ground.

Those are some of my favorite cards because they aren't listed on.

You can't just go, this is a John Elway card I had to go through, you know, and like I said, I worked in several stores, so I'm sorting thousands of cars and every once in a while I'd find Mo Lewis and oh, he's tackling Elway on the back, you know, and those kind of be a favorite.

And I certainly wanted to include them in this book too because they are kind of fun.

And I have a picture leading off that part of the book of Elways on the ground.

And Brian Bosworth is standing over the top of him.

And if you remember how that went Bosworth's first year, just kind of funny.

Actually.

Boz never Got a sack against Elway, but knocked him out of bounds and spit on him.

And it did the Brian Bosworth things and, and he was certainly an eye at that time, but he, he was not an Elway fan.

And, and I, I kind of wanted to add him to the book because in addition to Elway, I just like the boss too.

I can't, I don't think I can say that out loud, but.

Both of them had those big personalities and you know, playing on rival teams at the time, that kind of makes some enemies of each other.

Right.

And playing ones off.

And, you know, Ryan was the boss, was a mark.

I don't want to spend too much time on the boss, but he was a marketing major, I think, at Oklahoma.

So he had said, you know, a whole bunch of stuff about Elway leading up to that game.

And so people were all frothing at the mouth and get this guy, you know, and, and so he had a T shirt, he owned a T shirt company and he made a bunch of no baso T shirts and he sold thousands of them to Bronco fans.

And he said, you know, these guys are waving their T shirts and wearing them and, and saying, you know, no bozos and you know, what's a Bosworth?

And in Denver, nothing.

And it's like that was his company that made this shirt so money off.

Of people sort of belittling them.

That's kind of cool.

Brilliant idea.

Smart guy.

Yeah.

But I, I, because of that, I did want to include him in the book.

And, and so that's.

He was sacked 516 times, which was the most that I think far from, I have that, that record now.

But when he retired, it was the most in the history of the league.

And so, you know, he appeared on 40 some other players cards getting sacked or, you know, something bad having happened to him.

So one of my favorite parts of the books certainly was finding those and I wanted to include them all.

So, yeah, sometimes it's that the, the treasure seeking adventure that really makes it a lot of fun in the collectibles thing and going through boxes of cars, that had to be quite a chore that to, to find images of Elway that weren't listed anywhere.

So.

But now they are.

Now they are in your book, right?

Now they're in the book, Yep.

Every.

Everything that I could possibly come up with.

And it is a comprehensive book, 356 pages, thousands of images, like I said, cards, Sports Illustrated cover cereal boxes, premiums from Reebok and Apex Sports that were handed out, football pinups that were magazine pull out, Sports Illustrated posters that were inserted in Wheaties boxes, ticket stubs, his Heisman Trophy.

There was a brochure that Stanford had put out prospective Heisman ballot voters that had Elway on it.

Things that were issued by Stanford, team issued photos and things, slides that were issued by the NFL for TV stations.

Anything that had always a part of or picture of, it's in here, it's in here.

So.

Wow.

Definitely pretty cool.

You know, Elway was always sort of, you know, he was always in the news.

Anything like you said, you know, around Colorado, he was eating green beans, they're reporting it.

But he sort of was like that in the national media too, you know, from coming up out of college, you know, top pick.

The controversy with the, you know, the draft and, you know, who he would play for.

He wouldn't and sort of stand up.

Why don't you tell us a little bit about that scenario of him in draft day and those weeks after.

Well, I don't know how much has been written about it.

I, I don't think it had anything really to do with the Colts or the city of Baltimore at the time.

I really think that the beef was between Frank Kush, who was the head coach at, at Baltimore at the time, he had come from Arizona State, and Jack Elway, John's dad.

I think that's where the friction was.

And Jack was like, John is not going to play for him.

You know, Frank Kush had punched a player and just wasn't a good situation.

And obviously a year later Baltimore packs up and they moved to Indianapolis.

And I think that that was what the real beef was, that Jack didn't want John playing for Frank.

And so they, you know, made that, made that a point and don't draft me, you know, you're wasting a pick.

And certainly, you know, John had baseball in his pocket and he could, he could go play baseball.

And, and so I don't think that in this area, I mean, again, I was 12, so sixth grade, so it was, was in the news, but I really probably wasn't paying as much attention to it until after they had traded for Elway.

And I've certainly gone back and read about it, but it was a huge deal for this area because Colorado didn't have a star in any.

I mean, when you're in la, you can walk down the street and Bump into Jack Nicholson or be sitting in a restaurant in New York and have, you know, Christian Slater or whoever, George Clooney sitting across from me at a restaurant in Denver.

You didn't have that.

There were no stars.

And, and the Nuggets were here, obviously, but Fat Lever and Alex English didn't, you know, spin the needle.

So the Broncos and, and, you know, Denver, when they got Elway, they still had a lot of the guys that had been a part of that Orange Crush super bowl team that had been beaten by Dallas in Super bowl was at 12, I think 12.

And, and, you know, several of.

Randy Gradyshaw was in his last year.

And then, you know, congratulations to him making the hall of Fame last year.

That should have happened about, let's see, retired in 83.

It should have happened no later than 89.

He was deserving of being in a long time ago, but, you know, Louis Wright was still around, Tom Jackson was around, and, you know, they still had some great leadership on that team.

And, and when Elway came here.

But, you know, the media is around the quarterback position.

You're the face of the franchise, basically, and Denver didn't have that.

Stevenberg was not it.

And Craig Morton had retired a year or two before, but he was kind of had been cast off first from Dallas and then he was with the Giants and then he came to Denver and they went to the Super Bowl.

But this was the first star.

This was your first guy that, you know, you get to watch basically from the ground up.

And, and the time was great.

I mean, the 80s, what great football going on in the 80s.

And, and certainly the NFL was continuing to grow.

We're just coming out of, you know, Pittsburgh's dominance.

Dallas is still relevant and the Niners are becoming good in the west coast offense and, you know, offenses are opening up and they're throwing the ball over the place.

Fouts and, and Brian Sipe and, you know, so it was a great time to be a fan in those, in those years.

And, and, you know, you think about the 85 bears and the legacy they've had.

And, and the interesting, the interesting thing was because Elway and Marino were.

Came in the same draft nationally, everybody loved Marino because he's chucking the ball all over the place and setting records and, and doing these things.

And so Elway gets compared to him.

And it was like, well, look at.

Elway's not doing any of this, but he's winning games and going to the Super Bowl.

He can't win the big one.

He's a Loser.

Look what great, how great Dan Marino is doing.

Same draft class.

Elway's a loser.

You know, we had, we had years and years and years of that.

And even when they, I don't want to say who they beat in the AFC championship game to go to Super Bowl 32, because they did play it, I think at Three River Stadium.

But, but we won't, we won't bring that up, you know, and Elway's mom was even like, oh, do we have to go back to the super bowl thinking, oh my gosh, we can't, we surely can't make it through another loss.

And I think nationally he kind of got a knock for that because they had had such poor performances in the Super Bowls.

And, and that was his.

You know, I, I like to think of Elway's career like a game, you know, and I talked earlier about how he had the pension for, for stinking up the three first three quarters and then pulling it out at the end.

And that's kind of what his career was.

I mean, it wasn't great to start and he got benched as a rookie and then, you know, a couple years later he, yeah, we had the drive and then he had the MVP season, a seven.

And then, then there's some lean years in there again and then he pulls it out at the end and wins back to back.

And you know, his career kind of mirrored one of those games where he did have, you know, a fourth quarter come from behind victory and was able to pull it out.

And again, for those of us that were in this area or paid attention, we're very fortunate to have a guy for 16 years and win more games than anybody and, you know, certainly cap off the career with the back to back super bowl victories.

Yeah, now that's interesting.

You know, you say, because he's, he's a little long in the tooth when he wins that first Super bowl in 32.

Were you surprised when he decided to come back the following season?

You know, I've read about that, that he had, had talked about it with his family and I don't, you know, I don't want to know anything really about John's personal life and it just try and focus on what happens between the lines.

But I guess that, you know, as four kids and his wife and of the six of them, there was one that voted for him to retire and five that voted for him to play again.

And he was the one that said, I don't want to do this anymore.

So how about you as a fan?

I Put you in the classification of a super fan because you're, you know, you're writing books about them.

You know, think, think back to that, you know, that 98, 99 era.

Were you surprised when John always said, I'm coming back for another year, I just won the Super Bowl, I could go off into the sunset, you know, in that white stallion, but I'm coming back and you know, sort of risk, you know, maybe not having the success that he had and maybe you know, tainting his career a little bit.

You know, I think after the win and people, people forget about this.

But they played an exhibition game in 97 down in Mexico.

They played against the Dolphins and John had had torn attendant in his bicep and his, in his passing arm.

And I thought he might be done then.

I really didn't, you know, what is this injury?

So for the, that he came back and was able to do it, he missed four games.

Then the next year Bobby Brewster played and you know, Shannon Sharp said, we're just handing you the keys of Ferrari, don't wreck it, you know, and, and, but they were so good.

And Elway and Marina were the only two in history that had more than 50,000 yards passing.

So I think that there had to be some of that there too that he's looking going, you know, I could be one of two with 50,000 yards passing and you know, have a great season and maybe be one of three with 300 or more touchdown passes.

Yeah, plus what a great team, still had everybody and, and you know, Terrell was back and healthy and you know, the year after Elway retired, Terrell got hurt and he was never the same.

So as a fan, I was again felt fortunate just because I thought maybe his career was over due to that preseason game in Mexico the year, excuse me, the year before.

And for him to play as well as he did and win and really become a champion, you know, finally.

It's got to be hard for those guys to hang it up and to leave like that, and particularly if you still think you've got some left in the tank.

I mean, Manning walked away after a Super bowl win, but boy, he had such a rough season.

I don't know if he had much left.

And I think John did.

You know, if, if you don't exhaust the fuel, you don't exhaust the tank, then you wonder forever, well, what, what if I had to come back?

You know, what if I would have played?

Well, maybe we run back to back.

And I think you have to know, I think you, when you're an elite athlete, you have to know that you're done.

And, and I'm sure John had good people around him saying you can still play.

And so he had one more.

He probably could have played another year.

He said in his retirement, you know, he can't do it physically anymore.

And, you know, Kurt Warner made a similar statement.

He's.

I could play if all I had to do was play on Saturday.

It's, it's the, you know, five days of practice that I can't do anymore.

And, and I think that, so I think, I think John's, you know, the, the last year, I think he still had some things to prove.

And, and for all the doubters and the, you know, the people that had said things over the years about what a loser you are and you know, you can't win the big one.

And I think that was kind of the exclamation point at the end of the sentence.

Oh, yes, I am.

You know, I, you're right, I'm, I'm a loser.

No, I'm a winner.

Exclamation point.

And you know, it's very difficult.

You're a Steeler fan, so, you know what, what back to back championships are like.

And you know, the Chiefs have been fortunate as of late, but the Patriots, the, the Broncos, the Steelers and the, the Niners, I can't think they're.

I guess the packers won the first two, but it's, it's fairly uncommon to be able to put it together, you know, particularly now.

I mean, with free agency and everything that happens, your team gets picked apart or, or maybe they trade your great player like happened to you did this this afternoon.

So.

Yeah, yeah, very true, very true.

So why don't we take this opportunity again?

Jared, let's give the title of your book where folks can get it and.

All right.

Book's called Tackling John the Definitive Collector's Guide.

It's available on Amazon.

Okay.

Well, Jared, we really appreciate you coming on here today and talking about this legendary player and really preserving his legacy by putting all these collectibles together and images of great John Elway into one book.

That's got to be really special.

And I guess one last question is, have you had any contact to Mr. Elway himself?

And is he, do you know if he's got a chance to look at the book?

I know people have done so via social media on my behalf.

I said that when I first got this finished, I had self printed a few copies.

I sent one, he was still the GM of the Broncos at the time and I had sent one of the self printed copies up in care of him.

The guy gets 40,000 pieces of mail every year.

So whether or not he ever got it, I do not know.

But we're working.

I've got some people that are pretty savvy with social media and they're trying to reach out and you know, I'd certainly love to get John or his family a copy and just to see what they think.

Because let's face it, if it's your dad, you probably tried to collect all his cards and you know, what are you missing?

Well, this book's going to show you exactly what they are and perhaps what you have and what you don't have.

So I would definitely love for John to have one on his bookshelf if we can make that happen.

So if you got any listeners out there, write to Darren and Darren will pass the information to me and we'll see if we can't make that happen.

Most definitely.

Well, Jared, thanks a lot again for preserving the football history and joining us here to talk about it.

And good luck with the book.

Thank you so much for having me and continued success with your podcast.

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