A lifetime later, Mark Herrmann still misses Denver, still clings to what might have been.
Back then, he could smell his big chance looming, in a place that offered frosty ski slopes for his downhill habit, in a town where everybody knows your name if you are the No. 2 quarterback. It felt right.
But soon, he heard John Elway was refusing to play in Baltimore. And next, coach Dan Reeves was phoning him about a blockbuster in the works: Herr- mann, lineman Chris Hinton, a draft pick and a mountain of money being dangled for the NFL’s unsigned top pick. And then, Herrmann was taping up cardboard boxes in his townhouse near County Line Road. And finally, he was watching from 1,000 miles away as Elway bathed Colorado in Mile High goose bumps.
Like anyone in the South Stands, he knows the score: The trade changed a team and a city. What might have been? Never meant to be. Still, when Herrmann wonders aloud, 22 years later, his disappointment seems as thick as tailgate smoke.
“I was very down. I was hoping to spend a good portion of my career in Denver. I really enjoyed living out there, the fans, the team, the winter sports. It was pretty tough,” says Herrmann, 46, today an NCAA honcho who talks to schoolkids about fair play and sportsmanship.
“I thought I was ready to make a run at the starting job. Instead, I had to readjust my thinking and go to a team in Baltimore that was struggling.”
After his rookie season in Denver – two games, one touchdown pass, four interceptions – Herrmann spent 10 years backing up starters in Baltimore, Indianapolis, Los Angeles and San Diego.
To many Broncos fans, he is a vague footnote to their own Sunday thrills. But during occasional trips back to ski at Winter Park, visit his brother in Westminster or call games for the Colts radio network, Herrmann is reminded of the time and place he learned his hardest football lesson.
Sometimes, that wisdom makes it into the inspirational talks he gives to students in the Indianapolis area. Sometimes, he has to remind himself.
“Always,” he says, “go forward.”
