You are "The team historian" in my book.  This is an excellent series, and the pictures you include (and the videos) are great.  I'm very grateful for the work you are putting into our team's history.

I can't wait for some of my favorites to pop up.  "The drive" and the "the fumble" are classics, but I remember games where we won by blocking a FG or some of the great moments like the famous Atwater hits too.  

The Orange Crush Defense was just a little before I became a hard core Denver fan, but you are right that it was a great time.  Those fans who are older than me talked about how the line had to protect our QB because his knees were so fragile.  I'll bet that was the genesis of having an elite o-line (well before we went to the zone block).

Keep up the fantastic work!

I apologize for not responding sooner. Work keeps getting in the way of all the really important things in life.

I think to understand just how important that team was, you have to understand the context. The Broncos meant more than football. I know that sounds like a fanatic talking but it's still true.

To be honest, I don't really remember the very first few years of the Broncos, but I can tell you they always finished at the bottom of "the other league". There were several good college teams that probably could have given them a good game or even beaten them.  Few in the East or on the West Coast really respected the Broncos or for that matter anything or anybody in the huge area of the country between the Mississippi River, Dallas and the California coast. Most people outside Now, cattle are an important part of our economy but we were and are so much more.

The '77 Broncos would change that. As someone pointed out in an earlier thread, that team wasn't the starting point for the current winning tradition Bronco's enjoy, but it was the point at which Denver, representing a huge and ignored part of the country, finally turned the corner. They forced the rest of the country to notice us and respect us. Probably more importantly, they helped us begin to respect ourselves, think of ourselves as more that a bunch of hicks.

It was like when you first fall in love with that special someone. It burned hot and fierce and we all; coaches, players and fans wallowed in it together. We smiled until our cheeks hurt. You could go to Old Mile High Stadium and look up and see nothing but Orange. And all that Orange was like one creature churning and filled with so much energy it was scary. You felt like it could whip out and crush. And then there was the noise. The fellow Bronco maniac next to you could be talking but you could only see their lips move. And then there was the stomping, Rocky Mountain Thunder. The stadium would shake and you could swear it was going to collapse and you didn't care.  And you could say with pride, "That's us making all that noise!"

I still get tingly all over remembering.

Elway get his 40000th career passing yard (1995) and when they played the Bears in 1996 at Mile High.  It was awesome.  The whole place shook and the crowd was into the game.

I also attended the final Monday night game in 2000 when they beat the faders.  It showed what Broncomaina was all about.

Sadly, while the new stadium is nice, it doesn't have the same spirit of the original.  It's too cushy and the fans aren't into it as much.  Breaking up the fans in the south stands when they moved to the new place didn't help.

When the Phipps brought in Red Miller he started the winning attitude in Denver. It all started with the Orange Crush! He told the team they could win and when Craig Morton was brought in, he solidified a position that has had more turnover and starters than any other position in Broncos history. A lot of people grew up with Elway. But the first good #7, Morton, took Denver to a place that was only a dream. The Superbowl. Before Morton, denver went thru qbs, like Tensi, Brisco (first black starting qb in AFL/NFL history) Charley Johnson, Frank Tripucka. That 1977 team holds a special place in my Bronco heart. First it beat the defending Chumps in Oakland 30-7, and then traded punches (literally) with Mean Joe Greene in the playoffs. They had a never say die attitude. Its just show how good that defense was that the Broncos had 8 turnovers in the Super Bowl and only lost by 17. My favorite quote of that whole season is Tommy Jackson yelling in the locker room after they beat Oakland 20-17 in the AFC title game: " Do they believe now? Do they believe now?"

...was really something special. In an earlier threadf we had been talking about when the turn around began. Thinking back it might have actually been ol' "half-a-loaf" that really started things when he demanded the owners commit real bucks to the Broncos. He's the one that insisted on expanding Old Mile High and state of the art training facilities. He's the one who draft Little. Then in '73 John Ralston replaced him and brought in all that talent. I'm not sure the players really respected his rah-rah, power-of-postive-thinking attitude. It was more like a college approach to football. The players basically forced him out.

But then in came Red Miller, and O-line coach. He brought organization and professionalism. That and the put up or shut up challenge to the whole team worked wonders.

So the team started off 4 and 0 and then traveled to Oakland to face the raiders. They had won 17 in a row and were Super Bowl Champs from the year before. They were pretty cocky but the Broncos laid some seriuos wood on them. I can't remember how many turnovers they caused that day but John Madden and Kenny Stabler left the field saying, "who were those guys?"

...the original thunder bowl. It was louder than any other venue in the NFL.

I'm sure it's out of print, but if you can find it, there's a book called "Orange Madness" all about Bronco fever. I read it when I was a kid, probably 25 or so years ago.

It's full of great anecdotes like someone painting their entire house orange. Or, a guy and his girlfriend walk into a bar during a Broncos game and put some coin in the jukebox. Somebody tells him to turn it off and after he refuses, the guy stabs him.