Crossing a picket line wasn’t something Joe Dudek wanted to do. But when the NFL decided to hire replacement players to keep the 1987 season going amid the players’ strike, Broncos officials tried to persuade Dudek to play. He declined their initial invitation to play in the Broncos’ first game using replacement players, Oct. 4 against Houston.
“Out of respect for my former teammates … and the union,” he said in a recent interview. “I was with the team the prior year, and I had a lot of friends who were on the picket line.”
But when the Broncos called the following week, the second-year mighty- mite running back out of Division III Plymouth (N.H.) State decided he couldn’t pass up the opportunity to play on “Monday Night Football.”
“At that point, across the league and even with the Broncos, people were already starting to cross,” Dudek said. “And for me, personally, to finally get the opportunity to be the featured back on ‘Monday Night Football’ at Mile High, it made my decision pretty easy.”
That Monday night game, Oct. 12 against the Los Angeles Raiders, featured mostly replacement players but also players who crossed the picket line. It became known as “The Game That Broke the Strike,” as 61,230 fans ventured to Mile High Stadium. Because of the incredible fan support, the union lost leverage against the owners. Fans were coming back and watching replacement players, just as the owners had hoped. But it did not diminish the importance of the three-week walkout, which was born out of the players’ desire to have a better free-agent system.
“In many ways, it changed the entire league,” said former Broncos linebacker Karl Mecklenburg, who was the team’s player representative.
Twenty years later, there are those who still don’t want to talk about those 24 autumn days in 1987 because of the pain it brings. Baltimore Ravens offensive coordinator Rick Neuheisel has never gone on record about the role he played as a replacement quarterback for the San Diego Chargers. Broncos owner Pat Bowlen refused a request to talk about the season.
“I remember that the thing that probably impressed me the most was how the players were torn about it,” said Larry Zimmer, Broncos radio color analyst for KOA that season. “They were really upset that this was going to happen, for the most part. They were just devastated that they were going to go on strike.”
The replacements
Many of the players who took the field that Monday night against the Raiders were familiar to fans only in that they donned Denver’s orange and blue. The names and faces had been changed to protect the product. The NFL owners made sure of that.
The league brass wasn’t about to have a repeat of 1982, when the NFL went dark for eight weeks and each team missed seven games – and countless dollars – to a 57-day players’ strike.
After canceling the first week of games at the start of the ’87 strike, calls were made to players who had been college standouts but never stuck in the pros.
“I was surprised by that,” Mecklenburg said. “I was surprised there were that many ballplayers out there that could do it. And I was quite pleased that our replacement players were good.”
Broncos replacement players went 2-1 through the turmoil, a stretch that proved essential in the team finishing 10-4-1 and making the playoffs with the AFC’s best record, and later advancing to the Super Bowl.
“You had two wins, and obviously those wins helped toward your record,” said replacement quarterback Ken Karcher, who was apprehensive about playing. “We all understand how unions work. I was born in Pittsburgh, so I had a good understanding of that. And I didn’t want to do anything to hurt the other players.”
The coach
On the field, Broncos coach Dan Reeves was satisfied on two fronts during the walkout. The replacement players Denver signed came in with the right stuff, and the players who struck stayed in peak condition.
“We never looked at it, organization-wise, as some people did, that this was something that shouldn’t be,” said Reeves, now an NFL analyst. “We looked at it that these guys had every right to come in and play.
“Those guys had the attitude that they wanted to be the best that they could be. And that’s what helped us a great deal….It was excellent.”
Reeves had a small hand in putting the team together, which during the course of three games gained a smattering of starters back as players crossed the picket line. But he gives the majority of the credit to Denver’s personnel department.
“We signed a lot of free agents out of college that weren’t drafted,” Reeves said. “And they did a really good job of staying in touch with some of the players that we had released that were with us in training camp that were excited about coming back because they could play in the National Football League.
“Some of them had dreamed about it all their lives, and even though it was replacement games, they were excited. And from a coaching standpoint, it was really fun to coach those guys because they were so attentive, wanting to do anything that you asked of them.”
The player rep
Perhaps no one in the Broncos’ organization had it tougher than Mecklenburg. The linebacker was Denver’s assistant player rep, but that changed when Ricky Hunley, the actual player rep, went to Arizona when the strike started.
Mecklenburg took the hit. He became the chief liaison between the team and players union head Gene Upshaw in an unpopular strike. Fans booed him once he took the field again after the strike.
“The one guy I really felt sorry for was Mecklenburg,” Zimmer said. “He was doing his job; there wasn’t much else he could do. And the fans really sort of took it out on him, because the fans were certainly not on the players’ side.”
Mecklenburg soon became tired of the stubbornness on both sides.
“I was frustrated that the NFL tried to come in and bribe me into coming back and cross the picket line,” he said. “But the thing that frustrated me more than anything was I loved to play football. And the whole idea that the business side of things would make it so I wouldn’t have that opportunity was really frustrating.”
Maintaining solidarity among the striking players was difficult. Many crossed the picket line as early as the second replacement game, strengthening the owners’ resolve.
“The way I looked at it was, you’ve got to look at your own personal feelings, your own personal code of ethics and do what’s best for you and for your family and what you think is the right thing,” Mecklenburg said. “Everybody’s situation is different. Some guys just didn’t have a choice. Fortunately, I had a choice.”
He stayed out until it was announced Oct. 15 that the strike would end. By then, almost a month of inactivity had clarified what he says are the important things in life, but in no way soured what he feels was a beneficial period for the NFL.
“I think in many ways it was,” he said. “From a fan’s standpoint, I know it’s more difficult to follow a team because there’s more movement (with free agency). But the other thing that really changed was the atmosphere before the strike was basically ownership vs. players.
“When we came out of the strike, there’s a salary cap, the owners make a percentage of the gross income of the league, the players make a percentage of the gross income of the league. Now it’s the owners and the players both trying to make more money for the league because then their cut is bigger.
“It just made the league a much healthier place for employee-employer relationships.”
Chris Dempsey: 303-954-1279 or cdempsey@denverpost.com
