Craig Morton - Then Morton Said to Elway. . .: The Best Denver Broncos Stories Ever Told

Preface

This book is primarily about a man who I didnt know at all when I started writing it. Sure, I knew of Craig Morton, but I had no idea about the real person. Thanks to Alexander Graham Bells invention and one glorious afternoon spent at a restaurant overlooking the sparkling Pacific Ocean, I got to know Larry Craig Morton. I am glad for having had the opportunity.

Time and again, over several months of talking to him, I heard about what a great guy so-and-so was and what great times were had together. This was not delusion or spin, I would soon learn. All the people Morton called friends called him one right back.

Of all the things Craig Morton is and has been in life, perfect is not one. Many of his foibles are detailed in the pages ahead.

But they say wisdom comes from humility, so today Morton is a very wise man. His has been a full life and that means success, failure, joy, and pain. He has been a brash idiot and a humble old man. He knows what buying a brand-new Jaguar feels like and the embarrassment of filing for bankruptcy. He knows what it feels like to be handed a Super Bowl championship ring and to fail miserably in footballs biggest game. He knows the miracle of fatherhood and the blackness of divorce.

This is not a pure biography. It is a collection of memories, his primarily, but also those of his many teammates. The word teammate , to Morton, means friend, so mainly its a story about friends.

It is also a snapshot look at one of footballs greatest teams, the Denver Broncos. Entering 2008, the Broncos were the only NFL team with more Super Bowl appearances (six) than Hall of Fame players (four). Only two HOF players, John Elway and Gary Zimmerman, spent more than one year with the team. There is plenty of injustice in that, but it cant dim what has been a marvelous team history. The Broncos helped turn a Dusty Old Cow Town into an internationally renowned city that hosted a pope, a Democratic National Convention, and even one cast of MTVs show The Real World.

Craig Morton had something to do with that. He quarterbacked the Broncos to their first Super Bowl in 1978, a team that will forever be known as the Orange Crush. Today, the No. 7 jersey of the Broncos is retired, instantly recognized as belonging to Elway, Mortons successor.

But there are still many hardcore Broncomaniacs who proudly wear a No. 7 jersey with the name Morton on the back. To those fans, and hopefully many other casual ones, this book is a look inside that original No. 7. Or, as the label on a bottle of Jack Daniels says: Old No. 7 . There is no shortage of irony there, as youll soon see.

Overall, this story is about a gentleman, as Mortons good friend Dan Reeves called him. Not a saint, or a choirboy, but rather a gentle man, who chose a life in a rough profession and lived to tell about it.

Adrian Dater

7. Stories, Opinions, and Other Thoughts

I always looked at him when he was first starting out and said, Hes just going to be one of those guys that Ill always have to deal with in some way.

Craig Morton about Roger Staubach

Practical Jokes Aplenty

One sign of a good team is how many practical jokers there are, and the number of their hijinks.

A team without some fun and laughs at each others expense is likely to be a loser. Too many uptight players in the locker room, or one where the players dont feel close enough to play a joke on one another once in a while, can make for a dull, unexceptional team.

That was not the case with the Broncos in Mortons years in Denver. While not the bunch of pranksters like some of his former Dallas Cowboys teams, Mortons Broncos were teams that liked to have fun on and off the field.

Who was the biggest practical joker of them all?

I would have to say Randy Gradishar. He was always very sly about it. He used to do a lot of things in training camp, like putting snakes in beds and other very unattractive looking bugs. You used to hear a lot of screams in the night. I was never the brunt of his deals, probably because I was the old man on the team. But I made sure that when my door was closed, it was locked. Because, I promise you, I was always looking over my shoulder. Jim Jensen was his cohort. They would plan all kinds of things.

I was never much of a guy to play practical jokes on guys, but there was one guy I liked to goose all the time, and that was our trainer, Steve Antonopulos. He was the goosiest guy in the world. That became my whole purpose in life for a while, figuring out new ways to goose him. Because, he was just so sensitive to any kind of goose. He would always let out some kind of squeal from the slightest touch. I would have elaborate ways to get him, like coat hangers on coat hangers, just stretched around corners, just to get him. Id be on hands and knees, crawling on my belly, looking around corners when he was taping guys. Hed be looking for me every day, just to see what I would come up with next. I promise you, I got him every day. He would just make all kinds of noise.

But you can tell a close team by the number of practical jokes. When I played with the Giants, there werent many, because I dont think many people liked each other. If youre on a successful team, guys are in a better mood and want to laugh more and have fun.

One time, when I was a teammate with Steve DeBerg with the Broncos, we had a party where we all wore costumes, and you couldnt tell who was in them. I came as Father Time or something, and I forget what Steve came as, but when we went into the bathroom, we traded outfits. When we went back out, our wives didnt know who was who. And, we had a lot of fun playing with each others wives! They had no idea we were a different person. Then, we finally had a time where we showed who we were, and they were quite shocked, to put it mildly.

Another time, I had to go out and get Craig Penrose, whod been drinking a little. That night, I ended up putting some fingernail polish on his finger and toenails. I waited until he fell asleep and painted him with red polish. When he got up in the morning, he didnt know shit, he was so hung over. But when he reached down to tie his shoes, he noticed they were bright red. That stuff is hard to get off, and he didnt have any turpentine or whatever to get it off. So, he had to go to practice with it still on.

After Gradishar retired in 1983, wide receiver Steve Watson became one of the practical-joke ringleaders. One day, Watson filled a bowl in the Broncos locker room with what appeared to be Milk Duds. The outside of the snack items was chocolate-covered all right. But the inside was not chewy caramel. It was elk droppings.

The really funny thing is, some guys chewed them and didnt seem to notice the difference, kicker Rich Karlis said.

Some Cold Ones

Morton played in his share of cold-weather games in Denver, some in driving snow and temperatures that made the football feel like a rock.

But nothing ever topped the famous NFL Championship Game between the Dallas Cowboys and Green Bay Packers at Lambeau Field. The official temperature was minus-13, but the wind chill dropped it into the minus-40s.

We went out to practice the day before and it was about 25 degrees. It wasnt anything bad at all. The next morning, we get a phone call in the room, a wake-up call, at the Holiday Inn in Oshkosh, Wisconsin. I roomed with Peter Gent, who wrote North Dallas Forty . The lady making the call says, Good Morning Mr. Morton, Welcome to Oshkosh, Wisconsin. The temperature this morning is minus-18 degrees. And I said, Yeah, right. Im not going to fall for this stuff. I told Pete and we started laughing about it. We got dressed and went outside and absolutely just froze our asses off. We just thought this had to be a joke. It was really something unbelievable. Back in those days, I mean, we didnt have any cold weather gear. They had some tents on the sidelines that were about 70 degrees inside, but if you ever went inside there, you couldnt adapt coming out.