Broncos legend Craig Morton, the quarterback who led the team to its first Super Bowl appearance, died Saturday.
Morton, whose arrival in 1977 along with that of coach Red Miller helped pull together a team that had been building toward contention over the previous four seasons, was 83 years old.
The man who made No. 7 legendary in Denver before John Elway, Morton was the AFC Offensive Player of the Year and the NFL Comeback Player of the Year during that magical 1977 campaign, when the Broncos soared to a 12-2 regular season and advanced to Super Bowl XII before falling to Morton’s original team, the Dallas Cowboys.
ADVERTISEMENT
Morton landed in Denver via a trade from the New York Giants, where he started after coming out on the losing end of a quarterback battle in Dallas with eventual Hall of Famer Roger Staubach. Prior to that duel, Morton guided the Cowboys to their first conference championship and Super Bowl appearance in the 1970 season.
But it would be in Denver where he became a legend.
MORTON BROUGHT THE BRONCOS TO NEW HEIGHTS
After winning the starting quarterback job in the 1977 preseason, he helped the team to a 6-0 start, an AFC West crown and then, on Christmas Eve, its first playoff win, a 34-21 triumph highlighted by a touchdown pass to Riley Odoms, the All-Pro tight end who finally earned induction into the Ring of Fame two years ago.
But he paid a physical price. This excerpt from “Tales From the Denver Broncos Sideline” recalls Morton getting ready to play the following week’s AFC Championship Game despite his hospitalization:
Craig Morton was closing in on the ultimate redemption: a chance to return to the Super Bowl, to become the first quarterback to start for two different teams in the game, and to do so against the team that benched him, since the Dallas Cowboys were expected to easily run through the NFC playoffs to Super Bowl XII — and did.
But that was a long way from his mind and the Broncos. His lingering hip injury—and the measures he was forced to take in order to play—was his focal point. Morton checked into a local hospital on Christmas, one day after beating the Steelers. He spent the week before the 1977 AFC Championship hospitalized, repeatedly having blood and fluid drained from the hip and thigh that had been bothering him for weeks.
The game plan was brought to Morton as he convalesced, but backup Norris Weese ran the offense in practice. The sessions were closed to the media, so nothing leaked. Over the years, the NFL has become more stringent about how injuries must be reported. That hasn’t kept some teams from circumventing the rules by listing dozens of players as “questionable,” which is supposed to indicate a 50-50 chance of playing.
But questions about injury reports aren’t a recent development, and after Morton played the entire AFC Championship game, questions were raised by the top of the NFL food chain: commissioner Pete Rozelle. He was peeved that the Broncos had kept the severity of Morton’s condition a secret. “There should have been more candor. What the Broncos did was wrong,” Rozelle said after the Broncos’ win.
Red Miller said he only answered the questions in front of him.
“We didn’t hide anything,” he said at the time. “Nobody asked me if Craig had thrown a ball.”
Then game day arrived. In the first quarter, Denver trailed Oakland, 3-0. At that point, Morton looked for a teammate who would eventually make the Ring of Fame, Haven Moses. Throughout that season, Morton had unlocked Moses’ big-play potential. On a massive stage, he’d do so again, as noted in this excerpt from “Tales From the Denver Broncos Sideline”:
ADVERTISEMENT
Since coming to Denver midway through the 1972 season, Haven Moses had been the Broncos’ best deep threat since Lionel Taylor was catching everything in sight during the 1960’s. But his numbers had declined after injuries forced Charley Johnson to the bench, and eventually to retirement.
Morton changed that. His willingness to stay in the pocket for as long as possible and take the hit as he threw gave Moses more chances to get open. He hit his statistical peak not in his mid-20’s, but in his early 30’s—after Morton arrived.
But it took a few months in 1977 for Moses to understand what Morton could do for his career.
“When they made the trade, it really didn’t come out and hit me,” Moses said in the 1977 postseason. “It wasn’t like Denver got someone along the line of Bob Griese or Bert Jones.”
But in 1977, Morton was the equal of those stellar passers of that era. And the AFC Championship against the Raiders displayed what they could accomplish together.
Morton keyed on Moses early; on two of the Broncos’ first four plays, he looked for Moses downfield. Both fell incomplete, and the second pass, into traffic down the middle, was nearly intercepted by Oakland safety Jack Tatum.
The third time was the charm. Morton gingerly dropped back, turning for a play-action fake. From the Denver 19-yard-line, seven yards behind the line of scrimmage, he spotted Moses cutting toward the Raiders sideline at midfield, with two steps of separation from Oakland cornerback Skip Thomas, a defender who answered to the nickname “Dr. Death.” Thomas caught up to Moses at the Oakland 40-yard-line, but tried to bring him down high, and Moses easily shook him off and sprinted the rest of the way.
Seventy-four yards, touchdown. The frigid, 18-degree day warmed up fast. Mile High went mad. Teammates mobbed Moses in the north end zone, but Morton was not among them; all he could do was hobble back to the Broncos’ sideline to receive his congratulations.
The Broncos had been down 3-0 when Morton hit Moses. They never trailed again. Morton continued to key on Moses, and he caught four more passes for 96 yards, finishing the day with 168 yards on five receptions. M&M accounted for 20 more yards together than anyone else on the offense, and the Broncos held on for the 20-17 victory that sent them to Super Bowl XII.
The win was typical of the 1977 season; the Broncos forced three Oakland turnovers and held the Raiders to just 4.1 yards per play. But the explosion of Morton and Moses was something that couldn’t have been foreseen in Week 1, when the passing game had no rhythm and the offense remained a work in progress.
The win was tinged with controversy; to this day, the Raiders maintain that Rob Lytle fumbled near the goal line in the third quarter, allowing Oakland’s Mike McCoy to recover. Head linesman Ed Marion whistled the play dead, claiming Lytle’s forward progress was stopped. Given the reprieve, the Broncos scored one play later when Jon Keyworth plunged over the goal line.
Said Miller: “All season long, they said we were too young and that we didn’t belong here. “I wonder if they believe we’re for real now? I guarantee you we’re for real.”
In the emotional locker room, most Broncos whooped and hollered in jubilation, much like the fans who stormed the field. Morton celebrated quietly, not because of the pain, but the emotion of the moment. His circuitous road back to the Super Bowl was unlike any other to that point, and it would take another three decades before Kurt Warner traveled a similar path.
“It’s not the hip,” Morton told Sports Illustrated in the locker room after the win. “I’m frankly just overcome with emotion.”
MORTON SHOWED RESILIENCE, TOUGHNESS OVER HIS YEARS WITH THE BRONCOS
The Broncos lost two weeks later in Super Bowl XII, and while they won the AFC West the following season, Miller flirted with opportunities for backups Craig Penrose and Norris Weese. In fact, it was Weese who started in Week 4 of 1979 when the Broncos faced Seattle — and fell behind, 34-10.
ADVERTISEMENT
That set the stage for what remains the team’s greatest comeback — along with the 24-point rally at San Diego in 2012:
Never was Morton’s persistence better displayed than on September 23, 1979, when the 2-1 Broncos dug themselves a 34-10 third-quarter hole to the explosive Seahawks.
Morton started the game on the bench, just as he had the previous three weeks. The Broncos had averaged 14.3 points in those games, and Weese was inconsistent, but Morton, in a relief appearance in a Week 2 loss to the Los Angeles Rams, had also failed to move the team effectively.
But after Weese threw his second interception of the game, he was benched for Morton, who took over with 9:19 left in the third quarter. The impact was profound. Morton completed five consecutive passes for 77 yards, the last of which was to offensive lineman Dave Studdard, who scored on a tackle-eligible play. He followed that with two more touchdown passes in the next two minutes and thirty-four seconds, aided by a Bob Swenson interception and a three-and-out forced by the roused defense.
Three touchdowns in less than three minutes. Morton had completed eight of nine passes for 136 yards since coming into the game, and the deficit was down to three points. Morton lead another scoring drive the next time he saw the football, and the Broncos had the biggest comeback in franchise history, for a 37-34 win.
“When I sent Morton in, I just told him, ‘Let’s go; we’re going to win,’” Miller said.
But after a wild-card appearance in 1979, the Broncos traded for Matt Robinson in 1980. The two passers split time before Morton re-emerged with the job after Robinson threw just two touchdown passes against 12 interceptions. After Edgar Kaiser bought the team the following offseason, he jettisoned Miller as head coach for Dan Reeves — Morton’s former teammate.
ADVERTISEMENT
The 1981 season that followed would be Morton’s final full campaign — and by statistical measures, his best, as noted in this book excerpt:
Reeves was eleven years younger than the quarterback he inherited, the one who had earned a reputation as a survivor—of both hits from defenders and attempts to replace him. One local headline called Morton “The Quarterback Who Won’t Go Away.”
Norris Weese, Craig Penrose, and Matt Robinson all had their chances. But one by one, they dropped the ball, and by 1981, everything finally came up Morton once again. With his old Cowboys teammate Reeves on the sideline as the NFL’s youngest head coach at the time, Morton started from Week 1 onward and had the best statistical season of his career—and the best for any Broncos quarterback to that point. His 21 touchdown passes was a career high, as was his 90.8 rating. His yardage total of 3,195 was also the best of his career, and broke Frank Tripucka’s 21-year-old franchise record.
Reeves and Morton were close as Cowboys teammates — so close, in fact, that Reeves was in Morton’s wedding party. But Morton didn’t reclaim the job because of old-school sentiment that dated back to the Cowboys’ Cotton Bowl years; he got it back because he could still sling the football, despite a laundry list of infirmities that left him immobile in the pocket.
“Give him time and he’ll throw the eyes out of the bail,” Reeves said during Morton’s renaissance season. “His arm’s as good as it ever was.”
With Morton slinging passes and young Steve Watson setting a then-club record with 1,244 receiving yards, the Broncos finished with their fifth winning season in six years. Watson rang up his tally on just 60 catches—a 20.7-yard average that remains the highest for any Broncos receiver with at least 25 receptions in a single season. The 95-yard Morton-to-Watson touchdown strike against Detroit on October 11, 1981, remains the Broncos’ longest play from scrimmage since 1962; a 93-yard connection by the same men two weeks earlier against the Chargers is tied with Bo Nix’s 2024 pass to Marvin Mims Jr. the second-longest in the last half-century.
But in the regular-season finale that the Broncos needed to win in order to take the AFC West, Morton and the offense froze in the 14-degree chill of Chicago’s Soldier Field. He threw a pair of interceptions that were returned for touchdowns, and was sacked five times. Steve DeBerg relieved him and threw a pair of second-half touchdown passes that narrowed an 18-point deficit, but the Broncos fell to the Bears, 35-24.
“The wind was blowing and it was just cold,” defensive end Rulon Jones would later recall. “When it got cold, it was tough for him to move. We were sure we would win and go to the playoffs. Well we didn’t win and it was probably the most uncomfortable game I have ever been in.”
The next night, San Diego defeated Oakland, taking the AFC West away from the Broncos, who finished 10-6 but lost not only a tiebreaker for the division, but the last wild-card spot, which went to the Buffalo Bills.
A year later, Morton was demoted to the third team as Reeves sought to get more playing time for Steve DeBerg, acquired in a 1981 trade from the San Francisco 49ers. Morton was less than three months away from his 40th birthday when he made his final career start, a 17-10 loss to the Seahawks on November 21, 1982.
“I think Dan made the decision based on what he wants to do over the long run,” Morton said.
Morton was honored before his final home game and eventually inducted into the Ring of Fame. At the time of his last game, he defined jersey No. 7 in the orange and blue.
Jersey No. 7 quickly was passed to John Elway; it’s been retired for him since 1999. But Morton’s contributions remain unforgettable in Broncos annals.
ADVERTISEMENT