“You guys are really lucky to play for the Penners,” the former Broncos safety, enforcer for the Super Bowl 50 champions, told me recently. “You know your owners are personable when they come up (and say), ‘Here’s my email. If you need anything, hit us up.'”

So he did.

“I met them a few times, actually,” Ward said of Carrie Walton Penner and her husband, Greg Penner, the first family of ����apountry. “They were great. Great couple. Great family.”

And you wonder why we want them to buy the Rockies?

Happy Week 1, kids. The Broncos’ defense of the 2025 AFC West title begins next Monday night in Kansas City. Bo Nix looks fine. Davis Webb is calling plays without Sean Payton calling him names (so far).

Thanks to Jonah Coleman, the orange and blue suddenly has more good tailbacks than carries to feed them. The Sack Pack is back, Jack, even if John Franklin-Myers isn’t. It’s Super Bo or bust.

Lombardi Trophies are usually won from the top down. Smart owners set the bar, then leave the football people alone to try and clear the blasted thing.

Look closely at the last 10 Super Bowl winners. Judy Allen in Seattle. The Hunts in Kansas City. Jeffrey Lurie in Philadelphia. The Kroenkes in Los Angeles. The Glazers in Tampa. Robert Kraft in New England.

With the Penners, the Broncos aspire to have the best of everything — team offices, training facilities, stadium–�� in order to be the best, every year. That stuff trickles down. It permeates.

“Oh, 1,000%,” ex-Broncos safety Justin Simmons noted by phone. “I came in, unfortunately, when Mr. B. (former Broncos owner Pat Bowlen) was declining in his health. But I could feel the family vibe. I felt included. I felt a sense of importance in 2016, and it wasn’t just because I was a draft pick.

“As the years went on and we were trying to figure out ownership, and all the things in between, it got messy at times. Some of those things got lost in the (ensuring years).”

Simmons, 32, retired this past spring after a nine-year NFL career, eight of which were spent with the Broncos (2016-2023). No. 31 was a darn good player, and an even better dude, stuck with trying to help carry some forgettable teams. During his Dove Valley tenure, Simmons was named an All-Pro four times and selected to the Pro Bowl twice. But until the Penners arrived in August 2022, what rested above him on the corporate chain of command, at times, really stunk.

The former Boston College star played for six different coaches, including interims, over his eight seasons here. What Simmons didn’t know when he was drafted in 2016 was that the Broncos were careening into The Wilderness Years. He didn’t know that winning a Super Bowl with an injured Peyton Manning and peak Von Miller in 2015-16 convinced management that anybody could quarterback the orange and blue as long as Miller and the No Fly Zone remained intact.

They were, to be kind, badly mistaken. A merry-go-round of “meh” signal-callers and blah coaches followed, and the Broncos averaged 9.9 losses per year during Simmons’ tenure with the franchise.

But No. 31 could also tell you exactly when that spinning slowed down and eventually came to a dead stop. Not long after the Walton-Penner Group purchased the Broncos four Augusts ago, the safety and Broncos punter Brandon McManus, two of the most tenured members of the locker room, were called into new CEO Penner’s office for a meeting.

“Hey, give me a rundown … you guys are longest-tenured players here,” Penner told Simmons and McManus in 2022. “Give me a list of things that people have complained about.'”

For starters? Small locker room. No family room. No individualized nutrition plans. No sauna.

“(Penner) said, ‘This is so helpful,’ didn’t give us any backlash,” Simmons recalled. “I’m super-appreciative of that conversation to this day.”

The proof is in the buildings. Broncos Park Powered by Common Spirit, the team’s brand-new HQ, features a state-of-the-art training room with pools, sleep pods, a hyperbaric chamber — and a sauna.

“In their first year, (the Walton-Penner Group) put in a whole new grass field at the end of the season, and we weren’t even in the playoffs,” Simmons marveled.

“You could just tell the type of people they were. You always see success as an organization, in my opinion, when you have people who lead like that.”

The best NFL franchises almost always are the ones that get it right at quarterback and at head coach first. But the perennial contenders are also the ones that don’t skimp on the margins. Or to accountability.

From 2018 through 2022, the Broncos were an NFL club locked in a contentious custody battle, rotting at the summit. The Battlin’ Bowlens, heirs to Mr. B., schemed and leveraged against one another as if tussling for

Meanwhile, The Bowlen Trust — a trio of former CEO Joe Ellis, team counsel Rich Silva and Denver attorney Mary Kelly — ran the Broncos like a committee of substitute teachers. Underwhelming signal-callers came, failed, and went. Uninspired coaching hires did the same.

Most ownership groups come in and take big swings. Great ownership groups are the ones that can course-correct swiftly, and efficiently, when those swings are obvious misses.

Bad NFL clubs — the Browns of now, the Bengals before Marvin Lewis showed up — are reluctant to move off of whiffs at coach and QB. Not here. Nathaniel Hackett and Russell Wilson quickly gave way to Sean Payton and Bo Nix, despite the costs.

“You see how some of these owners deal with their players,” Ward continued. “As commodities. Or capital. (With the Broncos), you have owners that treat you like people, are empathetic to what you’re going through — not only as a person, but maybe your family, all those type of things.

“Yeah, they want to win. Everybody wants to be successful. But there’s a certain way you treat your people, treat your employees. And I think that creates better business, at the end of the day, to get better players to want to come in and play for you.

“I grew up a Niners fan. And at the time (they were owned by) the DeBartolos, (and) they treated players completely different — and that’s why, at that time, they were winning. You start operating like that, providing the best resources for your players, the best training, the best facilities, travel — that stuff results in wins. If you try to shortcut everything and treat your players like items on the shelf, you’re not going to be very successful.”

Sean Keeler: Clearly, Badie found out who was taking pictures for Lil’Jordan Humphrey and got that dude under contract. I mean, I get it. I do. And I don’t. It’s a victory of film over eyeballs, the clever over the obvious. Badie blocks. Badie’s critical on special teams. Fine. Name something else he does better than McLaughlin. Tough yards north and south? According to Pro-Football-Reference.com data, Jaleel has a career “successful” rush rate of 53.5%. Badie’s at 35%. “Successful” reception rate? McLaughlin: 37.7%, Badie 37.1%. Fumble rate? McLaughlin has one in 285 regular-season touches. Badie’s had one in 43. Trust is a two-way street, but the only direction a Badie run play went last fall, by and large, was backward.

Renck: McLaughlin endeared himself to ����apountry with his ability and story. From sleeping in his car as a kid to making the team as an undrafted rookie from Youngstown State, McLaughlin made it easy to root for him. His work ethic was the stuff of legend, putting in a full day before teammates punched the clock. But, the reality is that keeping Badie made more sense. The fourth running back is a niche role. And Badie has responsibility as the up-man on the punt team, a spot he filled last season and during training camp this summer. He is also the reason the Broncos beat the Bills in the postseason. According to Sean Payton, a fake punt on fourth-and-11 in overtime — “Rutgers Special” — was called off despite the coach saying they got the right look. Video shows Badie scan the defense and look back at Jeremy Crawshaw before going ahead with the punt. If the trick play had not worked — the odds were against it — the Broncos would have almost certainly lost on a short field goal. That is a feather in the cap of the fourth back.

Keeler: So vetoing Sean Payton out of an embarrassing call on national television saves your bacon? That makes sense. Actually, it might be the only thing that makes sense. If you keep McLaughlin over Badie, you’ve got four backs who, in sets of two, sort of mirror each other. J.K. Dobbins and Jonah Coleman are super early-down and between-the-tackle runners who can catch and block enough to keep defenses honest. RJ Harvey and McLaughlin are smaller, elusive scatback types, capable of a house call anytime they touch the ball — especially if that call comes on a wheel route. If McLaughlin is in the game, it might be a run. Might be a throw. If Badie’s in the game, defenders can pin their ears back and make a beeline for Bo Nix, because No. 28’s in there to block. How is that a strategic advantage?

Renck: Fake punts aside, Badie is more trusted as a backup, third-down back. McLaughlin really had no spot on the offense, barring injury. He was also hurt by the fact that he struggled to gain any yards after contact. Not that Badie padded his resume. He was the featured performer in a running back screen, a play that was so ineffective we can only hope that new offensive coordinator Davis Webb ripped it out of the playbook, buried it under the Pat Bowlen Fieldhouse and demanded it never be spoken of again. In the end, having a slight foothold on third and fourth down gave Badie more traction for the final roster spot and I am fine with that.

Keeler: We scribes don’t play favorites when it comes to your most beloved team/player/coach. Honest. But, by golly, we do root for narratives, sometimes. And McLaughlin’s hooked our hearts, full-stop. But we already know that Payton’s soft spot is only about as big as the Grinch’s heart in early December, with the hugs reserved for guys who played for him in New Orleans. Mark my words, good sir: Badie might have rescued Sunshine Sean from himself once. Yet there will be a critical game in December, or in the postseason, when injuries or circumstances force Badie to be on the field when he shouldn’t. And we’ll remember this day. And shake our heads.

Most of Oct. 5, 2025 has evaporated from our minds. But the lingering memories in Philadelphia always capture a critical scene. On the final drive, as the Broncos marched for a field goal to seal an improbable victory, they were hanging on as Powers’ arm hung motionless from his body.

He tore his left biceps. It was actually more gross.

“Well, it popped off the forearm and rolled up on me,” Powers said Wednesday.

They said Powers was a brute when he signed four years ago. And he is, standing 6-foot-4 and weighing 310 pounds. They said Powers was willing to drop the gloves. He provided a reminder at training camp this summer, on occasion taking a swing at defenders after a miscarriage of justice.

They said he would protect the quarterback like his ATM PIN, and he allowed zero sacks across 465 snaps last season.

What they didn’t know — and neither did we — was his staggering pain tolerance. It is a defining characteristic.

When his limb became useless against the Eagles, he refused to exit, blocking with his right shoulder.

“Given the chemistry we have developed, I think it is pretty selfish to just kind of bow out because something is bothering you,” Powers explained. “It was the drive that won the game. I think we can all fairly say, looking back, that it was the turning point of our season. Beating the reigning Super Bowl champs in Philadelphia, down 15, that is where our team grew closer and gained a bunch of confidence.”

Powers is the thunderstorm that you hope doesn’t arrive at your doorstep. And if you think this was a one-off, you don’t know Ben.

After what is believed to be the fastest return on record from a torn biceps, Powers suffered a Lisfranc injury on the last snap of his first game back on Dec. 21 against Jacksonville. He thought he sprained his foot. As the trainer removed the ankle tape, Powers winced.

Getting an MRI was floated. Powers dunked the suggestion.

“I said, ‘I can’t do it.’ I had just missed all those games, and that exam could be a death sentence. It bothered me during the week,” Powers said. “Normally, it swells up like a football. My foot was an anomaly. The doctors could not give me a good answer why. So��I was able to get through it with the adrenaline of the games.”

Powers played well over the remainder of the season. He sacrificed his health and assumed the risk for the greater good.

Why not consider his contract status? Or how putting out poor tape could affect his future with the team?

“Simple,” Powers said, “because we are in this together.”

This answer rattled in my ears as we stood inside the Pat Bowlen Fieldhouse. It made me think of the Denver Nuggets. Peyton Watson, suspicions confirmed by his representatives, staged Operation Shutdown last April, declining to attempt to play in the postseason because of a hamstring injury.

Truth is, some players are agents for change. And some players are pawns for their agents.

Powers could not stomach the idea of missing a snap. That is how he thinks. He is not worried about the next game or the next drive, but the next play.

This type of mentality is threaded throughout the Broncos roster — and why they can win a Super Bowl. Longtime team employees talk about the character of this team like coaches did during the back-to-back Super Bowl titles in 1997 and 1998.

Coach Sean Payton and general manager George Paton have been intentional in how they built this locker room. Of course, a baseline of talent is required. But Payton demands players who are smart, love the game and demonstrate “we-over-me” toughness.

Dudes like Powers.

“There’s a unique part to the offense and defensive lines where they play for each other. It����ap those traits that are hard to measure when you’re doing the college evaluation,” Payton said. “And then when you kind of hit on those type, they’re special and Ben would definitely fall into that category.”

What makes Powers different is that he doesn’t consider himself unique.

Not in the Broncos locker room. Linebacker Alex Singleton missed 23 days and one game after undergoing surgery for testicular cancer. Safety JL Skinner played last season with a torn labrum. Brandon Jones planned to play in the Super Bowl — “thug it out,” as he put it — with a still-mending pectoral muscle if the Broncos had advanced. Same goes for running back J.K. Dobbins with his aching foot.

“It is not just me,” Powers pointed out multiple times, “it is 100 percent a culture of instilled physical and mental toughness.”

In a time where athletes obsess over their personal brand, social media followers and getting paid, the Broncos take us on a quantum leap back in time.

When the team mattered more than a witty tweet. This is why they can win a title.

Don’t confuse this as advocating playing with a concussion, as a new CTE study raises concerns about long-term risks for NFL players.

But in a sport that must continue to do more to protect brains, brawn still matters.

Powers, whose bicep is healed and foot strong after screws were removed a few months ago, is admittedly “old-school” in his approach and mindset. He punches his time card. Tapes every inch of his arms and hands. And goes to work.

Ask those who know him, and stories of grit began following him in college. Remember the Baker Mayfield flag plant game at Ohio State? Oklahoma’s team doctor ruled Powers out with a high ankle sprain. His replacement suffered a head injury in the first half.

At halftime, Powers said he could go. He helped lead the Sooners to a victory.

Moments like this create a sense of pride for Powers.

As he enters his eighth NFL season, there is one goal left for him to accomplish in Denver, something he refuses to let pain prevent.

“There is a standard that this regime has built over the past four years that you can’t let your brother down next to you,” Powers said. “The closer you get to that goal of a Super Bowl, you understand the significance of winning it all. You look back at the AFC Championship Game, and we were one drive away from playing in the Super Bowl. And that sucks. It sucks to think that, and now we have to look in the mirror and see how we can get over the hump. But we are in this together. At the end of the day, all that matters is the team and getting the win.”

The sea of orange splashed across the seats, home or away, speaks to the bond between rabid supporters and the team.

But mention the possibility of PSLs becoming part of the proposed privately-funded, retractable-roof stadium at Burnham Yard and eyes narrow, and expletives fly.

It is another example of The Man sticking it to the average fan.

Having to pay a one-time fee for the right to pay for season tickets? As a financial mechanism, it is a crowbar slammed across the shins.

Emotionally, I feel for the fan who gets priced out. But economically, I am on the Broncos’ side.

Even though president Damani Leech admitted that using PSLs was likely, co-owners Greg Penner and Carrie Walton Penner have not made a final decision.

“Really, it����ap the furthest thing from our minds right now. It����ap still a preferred site, but it����ap not finalized that we’re going to be in that location. Obviously, that����ap where we really want to be. So really, we haven’t even gotten to PSLs yet,” Greg Penner said Tuesday. “Our season ticket holders are vital to our organization and we’re going to keep them informed every step of the way once we get there.”

Because PSLs — personal seat licenses — have left some loyal sports fans SOL around the country, they have taken on a boogeyman quality.

At the risk of spamming my own email, I counter with simple math and fairness.

I would rather people who use the facility take on the burden of additional costs than taxpayers.

Not long after former Hall of Fame owner Pat Bowlen suggested the Broncos could move to Los Angeles nearly three decades ago, voters approved a sales tax that funded 75% of the cost of the current stadium, capped at $270 million.

How many of those taxpayers have attended a Broncos game?

The team has 22,000 season ticket accounts with a 99.5% renewal rate and 100,000 people on a waiting list. Based on supply and demand, owning a season ticket is a privilege. There will be those who die waiting for the opportunity to purchase.

Could new well-heeled folks change the fabric of the crowd from blue-collar screamers to cheese nibblers and wine sippers? Sure.

However, that transformation, if we are being honest, began with the construction of the current stadium. It has never been as loud as old Mile High.

Would it stink for a lifelong season ticket holder to get priced out? Yes.

Is that worse than never getting a chance to buy season tickets? Or paying taxes for a place you will never step foot in? Nope.

“You are not going to hear a lot of complaints from economists who view this through the public policy lens. They will have no problem with taxes on tickets for the users,” said Geoffrey Propheter, an associate professor of public affairs at CU-Denver. “But yes, it can be a shock to some, particularly if you have the perspective that they are part of the community. How can you do it to them?”

Because the Broncos ownership group is the richest in the NFL, there are those who view PSLs as unnecessary, if not a full-on betrayal.

But last time I checked, owning a team and building a stadium is a business.

Could this ownership group, given its personal net worth, privately fund the stadium and not use PSLs? In theory, yes. But in practical terms, PSLs have become equity and a way to recoup or raise capital for projects of this magnitude.

I would rather the owners tack on the equivalent of a resort fee to season ticket holders than ask for public money.

The last stadium built without taxpayer dollars or PSLs was in 2002 in New England. In the last 20 years, only the construction of Lucas Oil Stadium and State Farm Stadium did not use PSLs when first built, though the majority of the costs were subsidized by the public.

For those who say the Broncos should be different, should be like the Patriots, consider that Gillette cost $325 million. Per The Los Angeles Times, the SoFi Stadium price tag was $5.5 billion in 2020.

Given the rising construction costs, it is highly unlikely the Burnham Yard palace will come in under $3 billion, and that is only if it stays on track for a 2031 opening.

Let’s say the Penners use PSLs.

Haven’t they earned the benefit of the doubt that they will do it in a reasonable way?

In the four years since they purchased the team for $4.65 billion, they have made a larger impact than Patrick Surtain II or Bo Nix. They hired Sean Payton, kept George Paton, signed core players to nearly a half billion in contract extensions, poured in $100 million to the current stadium, financed a $175 million state-of-the-art team headquarters and are on pace to give $10 million to the community this year.

They brought one of the league’s flagship franchises back to life. The playoff drought ended. The streak without an AFC West title and postseason win is in the past.

Greg Penner said he expects Super Bowl titles. As in plural.

And the owners have committed to this goal by investing in everything from injury research to improving recovery to nutrition to give the Broncos the best chance to win.

The owners have prioritized the fans’ feedback since taking over, running surveys to improve the gameday experience and gauge reactions to things like PSLs.

It will be painful for some season ticket holders. But it will not be a blindside hit.

Looking at how the owners have gone about their business, save for their support of Jonathon Cooper, there is reason to believe the PSL program will have elasticity.

If someone purchases season tickets for several years, perhaps the Broncos could return part of the money the fan paid for the PSL. The PSL program could also offer a program to upgrade seats and provide steep discounts on concessions and merchandise and priority access to other events at the stadium.

If the team remains a contender, more likely with this ownership group, it also creates a path for the season ticket holder to sell a PSL for profit.

PSLs on the secondary market can cost as little as $75 dollars for the Browns to as much as $450,000 for the 49ers, according to pslsource.com.

There are going to be those who get squeezed out. I am not naive to this. I don’t like it.

But I would rather have a few thousand upset season-ticket holders than a few hundred thousand furious taxpayers.

The competition was fierce. We looked for those who had roots in Colorado that went beyond living here just a few months, had a profound impact on this state’s culture and history, helping the Centennial State become what it is today.

Some on the list are people whose achievements were of national, international or interstellar significance, so their inclusion is warranted even if their direct influence in Colorado was less marked.

We did not include notorious people. Just being famous, even very famous, wasn’t enough to earn a spot on the list. People are flawed, and some on this list were both deeply flawed and greatly influential. We weighed this in deciding whether or not to include them.

We sought to cover a broad array of fields. And sometimes we put two people in one entry because the accomplishment of one could not be separated from the other.

The Post hopes you enjoy our list!

Madeleine Albright

As the first female secretary of state, Albright internationally. The Graduate School of International Studies at the University of Denver is named for her father, Josef Korbel, who was also a diplomat.

Elias M. Ammons

Rancher and founder of the Colorado Cattle and Horse Grower’s Association, and one of the in 1906. As governor, beginning in 1912, he initiated a state parks system.

Susan Anderson

One of the first women to practice medicine in Colorado, she to the residents of Fraser, whom she tended to as the only physician in town for 49 years. (Some claim was based on her life.)

Philip Anschutz

An entrepreneur and one of the wealthiest individuals in the world, he has to the University of Colorado School of Medicine. He is the founder of AEG and owns sports teams and sports venues.

Bill Armstrong

The former U.S. senator was a pillar of Colorado’s Republican Party and a force behind the conservative economic policies of Ronald Reagan. He’s viewed as pivotal in helping the party recover after Watergate.

Marilyn Van Derbur Atler

The , University of Colorado graduate and former Miss America founded two nonprofits dedicated to strengthening laws to protect adult survivors and child victims of abuse. She is the subject of the documentary chronicling the years of sexual abuse by her socially prominent father.

Philip Bailey

The Grammy-winning Denver East High School graduate made his name as a lead singer for Earth, Wind, and Fire. The band sold worldwide.

Thomas Bailey

Thomas Bailey (now Janus Henderson), one of the largest asset managers in Colorado. The Janus Foundation helps more than 140 national nonprofits by offering education to at-risk youths.

Ceal Barry

Barry worked 37 years at the University of Colorado. In 22 seasons as the head women’s basketball coach, her record was 427-242. As an associate and later deputy athletic director, she championed women’s sports.

Odell C. Barry

Barry started in Colorado as a record-breaking kick return specialist for the Denver Broncos. He quickly transitioned into a statesman, business owner, mentor and philanthropist. Barry served on the Northglenn City Council and was elected the first Black mayor of Northglenn in 1980. U.S. Rep. Joe Neguse called Barry “a giant in our community.”

William Bent

The fur trader developed a strong relationship with the Cheyenne and built Bent����ap Fort, now a National Historic Site. He bequeathed land along the Arkansas River, specifying that it should be granted to mixed-race settlers, .

Alan Berg

Member of the in the 1980s, the outspoken liberal, a Jew, by the white supremacist group The Order outside his Denver home in 1984 at age 50.

Chief Black Kettle

Member of the Cheyenne tribe that settled on the Eastern Plains in the 1830s, near La Junta. He was an during the 1860s Colorado War and before and after the Sand Creek Massacre along Big Sandy Creek in 1864.

Claude Boettcher

His father built the family fortune through various business interests, including hardware, sugar and cement. Claude Boettcher created the Boettcher Foundation in 1937.

Frederick Bonfils and Harry Tammen

The two purchased a failing newspaper in 1895 and renamed it the Denver Evening Post, predecessor of The Denver Post.

Helen Bonfils

Bonfils became president of The Denver Post when her father, founder Frederick G. Bonfils, died. the Denver Center for the Performing Arts, the Bonfils Memorial Theater (now Lowenstein Theater) and the Bonfils Blood Center.

Frank Bonanno

The restaurateur has been at the helm of in Colorado, including Mizuna, Luca, Osteria Marco, Green Russell and Denver Milk Market. He is also the creator of the eight-episode

Steve Bosley

Bosley, a University of Colorado graduate, served for 12 years on the CU Board of Regents and was the president and CEO of Independent Bank of Boulder for 24 years. Bosley is a co-founder of the Bolder Boulder 10k race, which helped put the city on the map as a running mecca.

Pat Bowlen

The former Broncos owner created a culture of winning and made himself the most successful sports team owner in Colorado history.

Stan Brakhage

Experimental filmmaker whose 300-plus works helped define the “language of American avant-garde cinema,” according to the . Taught Cinema Studies & Moving Image Arts at for more than 20 years.

Antonia Brico

The conductor and pianist settled in Denver in 1942, where she founded a Bach Society and the Women’s String Ensemble. In 1948, Brico became (later the Denver Philharmonic). She taught piano to Judy Collins, who directed a movie about the musician in 1974.

Clara Brown

Born into slavery, she headed to Denver in search of a daughter who had been sold. They would not be reunited for many years. She formed a laundry business in Central City, made enough to invest in mining claims, and later ��to Colorado using her own money to support the new communities.

Henry Brown

Brown arrived in Denver in 1860 and is linked to the city’s earliest development. He built the Brown Palace on his land and donated 10 acres for the state Capitol. Brown also is credited with establishing the Denver City Library.

Molly Brown

Before she was heralded as a hero of the Titanic for her efforts to help get survivors into lifeboats and raise money for them, Margaret Brown ran for the U.S. Senate and was a champion of women’s rights.

Norm Brownstein

He’s been given the moniker ��“America’s 101st Senator” because of the influence he wields as founder and chairman of the law and lobbying firm Brownstein Hyatt Farber and Schreck. Among his contributions was a major role in securing the

Doug Bruce

The Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights, or TABOR, is a fundamental element of how Colorado spends and taxes its residents. who served in the state House of Representatives.

Joy Burns

in Denver; chair of the Denver Metro Convention and Visitors’ Bureau; founder and director of the Women’s Bank, now called Colorado Business Bank; founder of the Women’s Foundation of Colorado; the first woman to chair the ; and president of the Sportswomen of Colorado Foundation.

William Byers

Byers founded the Rocky Mountain News, Denver’s first newspaper. He helped create the city’s first Chamber of Commerce and joined John Evans and Henry Brown in starting the Denver Tramway Company.

Patty Calhoun

Calhoun co-founded Westword magazine in 1977 (from which she is stepping down as editor this summer), a frequent panelist on “Colorado Inside Out,” and past president of the Association of Alternative Newsweeklies.

Ben Nighthorse Campbell

Known for his advocacy of Native American issues, Campbell pushed to upgrade the Great Sand Dunes National Monument to a national park. He was a fiscal conservative who left the Democratic Party in 1995.

John Francis Campion

Campion arrived in Colorado in 1879 and made a He is remembered as a key figure in founding the Museum of Natural History, now Denver Museum of Nature & Science, but also donated money to build the Cathedral of Immaculate Conception.

Hendrika Bestebreurtje Cantwell

The pioneering pediatrician started the in Colorado to help abusive and neglectful parents. As the physician for Denver Social Services, she established a Family Services Center and helped increase public awareness of child abuse.

Scott Carpenter

The Boulder native was the and the second to orbit the Earth — ending in a frightening landing far from the target site. He helped develop underwater training to prepare for spacewalks.

Gov. Ralph Carr

Governor during World War II, he was an outspoken

Kit Carson

Carson moved to and negotiated a peace treaty with the Utes. The famed frontiersman, who also led campaigns against Native Americans, ended his career as superintendent of Indian affairs for the Colorado territory.

George Caulkins

Caulkins played a critical role in raising the money that created Vail. The Ellie Caulkins Opera House is named for his wife, a supporter of opera in Colorado.

Thomas Cech

The in chemistry in 1989 (along with Sidney Altman) discovered that RNA had the ability to “form stable, structured molecules – not just transient messengers,” according to Yale School of Medicine. He is a distinguished professor of chemistry and biochemistry at the University of Colorado.

Walter S. Cheesman

The businessman, developed the real estate industry and, with his daughter, Gladys, planned his “grand mansion” along Eighth Avenue. It was built in 1908 and later became the Governor’s Residence at the Boettcher Mansion in 1924.

Chin Lin Sou

Chin arrived in Black Hawk in 1871 when work on the transcontinental railroad ended. He became wealthy when he and moved to Denver, where he ran an import business and was a leader in the Chinese community. His descendants still live here.

Adolph Coors

The founder of Coors Brewing Co., he His son, William Coors, is credited with developing recyclable aluminum cans.

Eric Cornell

Cornell, a physicist at the Boulder-based National Institute of Standards and Technology, was among the winners of the 2001 His team was the first to achieve the first pure Bose-Einstein condensate, a new form of matter predicted by Albert Einstein that makes the study of quantum physics less difficult.

Lillian Covillo/Freidann Parker

The Denver natives began a ballet school in 1951 that grew into Colorado Ballet.

Dana Crawford

Crawford is widely seen as a visionary for her ability to grasp the value of Denver’s historic architecture and preserve it. Her signature project was Larimer Square, which she saved despite city leaders who saw her as blocking progress and hurdles thrown up by bankers.

Bill Daniels

A pioneer in cable television, he founded Daniels & Associates, setting the stage for�� Denver to become the industry’s capital. His estate created the

Jack Dempsey

The “Manassa Mauler” became a legend fighting in front of record-breaking crowds. He became the world heavyweight champion in 1919.

John Denver

Born Henry John Deutschendorf Jr., he settled in Aspen and for his music and his activism. “Rocky Mountain High” is one of the state’s two official songs.

James Dobson

He founded the Colorado Springs-based conservative ministry Focus on the Family and was a major force in pushing conservative Christian ideals in mainstream American politics in the 1980s.

Jean Dubofsky

While a lawyer in the Legal Aid Society of metro Denver beginning in 1972, she contributed to 34 new laws, including one that got banks to issue . She was the first woman appointed to the Colorado Supreme Court and was the lead attorney in the 1996 challenge overturning .

Steve Ells

Ells is the founder of Chipotle Mexican Grill, which the noted pioneered a fast-food restaurant “serving fresh, whole, unprocessed ingredients cooked in an open kitchen.”

John Elway

The nine-time Pro Bowler and former NFL MVP led the Broncos to their first Super Bowl championship, winning back-to-back titles, completing a Hall of Fame career defined by breathtaking fourth-quarter comeback victories.

Elizabeth Piper Ensley

She was one of only a few Black women working for women’s suffrage and was key in persuading Black men to vote for women’s suffrage.

John Evans

cannot be separated from the Sand Creek Massacre, which led to him losing his federally appointed position in the years before Colorado became a state. He also founded Denver Seminary, now the University of Denver. He was instrumental in securing the land and money for the Union Pacific line from Cheyenne to Denver.

Mount Evans, named for disgraced Colorado territorial governor, officially has a new name

Curt Fentress

Founder of Fentress Architects in Denver, Fentress was the , as well as the Colorado Convention Center, the National Museum of the Marine Corps near Washington, D.C., and Incheon International Airport in South Korea.

Barry Fey

The concert promoter is credited with for musical acts, starting in 1967. Fey also started the “Summer of Stars” concert series at Red Rocks in 1976 that boosted the venue's national reputation.

John Fielder

The nature photographer highlighted the beauty of Colorado. He produced more than 40 books, and one of his photographs will be featured on a postage stamp for the state's 150th birthday.

Donald Fletcher

The 19th-century real estate developer (now called Aurora) in 1890.

Jay Fetcher

The Routt County rancher to preserve agricultural lands.

Justina Ford

In 1902, Ford became the first licensed Black female doctor in Colorado, but the Colorado Medical Society would not accept her. She took her practice door to door, delivering 7,000 babies over 50 years. Her home now houses the Black American West Museum.

Tim Foster

Foster Transitioned Mesa State College to Colorado Mesa University during his 17-year tenure as president. Before moving back home to Grand Junction, he served in the state House and was majority leader.

Nate Gart

Nate started selling newspapers to help support his family and finally saved $500 to buy a store. Gart Brothers Sporting Goods was formed in 1928.

Charles Gates Sr.

Gates arrived in Tincup in 1904 to work in the gold mines. He left for a few years and, when he returned, used his life savings of $700, plus borrowed money, to buy the They replaced leather with rubber and created The Gates Rubber Company in 1918.

Dick Gibson

Founder of the Fort Collins company that , Gibson ran an annual jazz party over Labor Day weekend in Colorado for 30 years, starting in 1963, “,” according to The New York Times.

Tim Gill

Gill, a University of Colorado graduate, made millions off his software company Quark, but his legacy will be the Gill Foundation, which for more than 25 years has fought in Colorado and across the nation for LGBTQ rights. He received the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

William Gilpin

Gilpin was the and raised the troops to protect the area from a Confederate invasion. He developed a theory called Isothermal Axis and used it to envision Denver as an important international hub.

Allen Ginsberg

The poet, along with Jack Kerouac and William S. Burroughs, was a�� in the 1950s and '60s. Ginsberg founded the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics at the Naropa Institute (now University) in Boulder, home to the Allen Ginsberg Library.

Rodolfo "Corky" Gonzales

Gonzales was a civil rights leader and founder of the Crusade for Justice. His efforts, as his Denver Post obituary noted, "energized Denver’s Chicano community, paving the way for Hispanics to seek a greater role in civic and political life."

Temple Grandin

Grandin has used around the world. She is autistic and speaks on that subject as well as animal behavior. She has taught at Colorado State University for 30 years.

Emily Griffith

A teacher and administrator, Griffith saw the need for a school for adults to learn useful skills. She raised the money, and her dream became Her 1947 murder remains unsolved.

Frederic C. Hamilton

The philanthropist and masterworks from his private collection upon DAM, creating one of the best collections in the Western United States.

Zipporah Parks Hammond

The first Black person to earn a nursing degree from the University of Colorado School of Nursing, her later work at the Tuskegee Institute helped establish treatment protocols for polio patients. Back home, she indexed materials about Denver’s Five Points community.

John Harold

In a region known for its corn, John Harold is the farmer most associated with the Olathe Sweet, his trademark brand. Harold founded Tuxedo Corn in 1986, and his produce was soon shipped across the country to Kroger stores. He helped to launch the Olathe Sweet Corn Festival.

Gary Hart

His presidential run was famously derailed when he was caught in an affair. After that, the former Colorado senator became involved in international law and business, serving as co-chair of the U.S. Commission on National Security for the 21st Century.

Todd Helton

The Hall of Famer spent 17 years with the Colorado Rockies, becoming the face of the franchise. He teamed up with Undue Medical Debt to erase $10 million of medical debt faced by Coloradans.

John Hickenlooper

Colorado’s current U.S. senator first made his mark with the Wynkoop Brewery in lower downtown, his restaurant investments and finally as the mayor of Denver. Hickenlooper worked to revitalize downtown before serving eight years as governor.

Bob Howsam

He was the founder of the Denver Bears minor-league baseball team, builder of Bears Stadium (later the original Mile High Stadium) and , in 1959.

Margaret and Phillip Isely

In 1995, they launched one of the first grocery store chains in America that would only stock natural and organic products. Vitamin Cottage, today called Natural Grocers, has 170 stores in 21 states.

Oliver Toussaint Jackson

A few buildings are all that's left of Dearfield, ounded by Jackson in 1910. The community's crops sold well during World War I, but the Dust Bowl caused the residents to move away in search of work. The town in Weld County is on the National Register of Historic Places.

Frances Wisebart Jacobs

What is now National Jewish Hospital or the work she did to establish it to treat tuberculosis patients.

Jennifer Jasinski

She was the first Denver chef to win a ��in 2013.

Jonathan Kennedy

Kennedy had three deaf children. When he moved to Colorado, he convinced the territorial Legislature to begin a school for deaf children that is now the Colorado School for the Deaf and Blind.

Billy Kidd

Kidd was the first American to ever win an Olympic medal in Alpine skiing, taking silver in the slalom at the 1964 Winter Olympics. Kidd then spent the next 50 years heading the skiing programs at Steamboat Springs, helping to create the next generation of Alpine athletes.

Josef Korbel

Korbel was founder and first dean of the . The master’s program at DU’s Josef Korbel School of Global and Public Affairs is world-renowned. He was the father of Madeleine Albright and mentor to Condoleezza Rice.

Luther and Charles Kountze

Luther expanded the family banking business to Colorado, where he was joined by his brother. The bank became Colorado National Bank.

Jerry Krantz

Longtime owner of downtown, whose slogan “Hot Burritos and Cool Jazz Nightly” drew the coolest cats in Denver for decades. Frank Sinatra, Ella Fitzgerald and the Marsalis brothers played there, and Bill Clinton visited. Krantz is in the Colorao Music Hall of Fame.

Dottie Lamm

Colorado’s most active first lady used her platform from 1975 to 1987 to advocate for women’s rights and then had a weekly column in The Denver Post. She was a delegate to the United Nations in 1994 and 1995.

Richard Lamm

Colorado's longest-serving governor led the opposition to from coming here, in part because of the environmental damage the Games might cause. He was a strong supporter of immigration restrictions.

Mary Lathrop

She graduated from the University of Denver Law School in 1896 and became the first woman to open a law practice in Colorado.

Judge Benjamin Barr Lindsey

He established the and was known for his advocacy for the rights of women and workers.

Mary Elitch Long

What became o provide fruit and vegetables. That became Elitch’s Zoological Gardens, and, after she was widowed in 1891, Long continued work at the gardens, which offered entertainment. In 1897, she formed the country’s first summer stock company.

John Love

Love, a Republican, served as governor for 10 years starting in 1963. He sought to draw more businesses to the state. Among the key legislation while he was governor: State support for education increased, abortion was legalized, and the Sunshine Law opened government meetings to the public.

Henry Lowenstein

Holocaust survivor Lowenstein at the Bonfils Theatre in Denver. He designed and produced more than 400 plays through 1986. “Henry would have to be considered one of the 10 most important people in shaping this city,” said DCPA founder Donald Seawell.

Carrie Ann Lucas

Lucas, an activist attorney, won countless victories for Coloradans with disabilities, increasing parental rights and access to private businesses, public spaces and transit. She used the courtroom and civil disobedience to fight for federal Medicaid funding.

Joseph Machebeuf

Colorado's pioneer bishop arrived when there were two adobe churches in Colorado and Utah. His accomplishments included founding a convent for Sisters of Loretto, being the visionary behind St. Joseph's Hospital, and bringing College of the Sacred Heart, now Regis University, to Colorado.

John Malone

The New York Times described Malone as the of those who have transformed the modern media industry. The chairman emeritus of Liberty Media is also the second-largest private landowner in the United States.

Bill McCartney

The University of Colorado football team won its first national title under McCartney. He is remembered for the culture he created, featured in an ESPN documentary, “The Gospel According to Mac.”

Hattie McDaniel

McDaniel's career was marked by a series of firsts, including becoming the first African-American to win an Oscar, which she received for her role as Mammy in "Gone with the Wind." Segregation laws prevented her from attending the movie's premiere.

Bill McNichols Jr.

McNichols was Denver's mayor for 14 years, a time when the city began its transformation into the metropolis it is today. He was defeated by Federico Peña, in large part because of the city's inadequate response to the 1982 Christmas Eve blizzard.

Otto Mears

Mears built more than in the southern and southwest Colorado. He helped establish Saguache and the routes that became the basis for much of the region’s highway system, including the Million Dollar Highway between Ouray and Silverton.

Ellis Meredith

She was the leader of��and, according to a 1910 newspaper headline, the first woman elected to office in Denver. After Colorado gave women the right to vote in 1893, Meredith became a national leader in the movement.

Joyce Meskis

The pioneering bookstore owner and fierce First Amendment advocate built Denver’s Tattered Cover into one of the nation’s most beloved literary institutions.

Glenn Miller

The Fort Morgan High School graduate recorded the first gold record: "Chattanooga Choo Choo." His music came to

Enos Mills

Mills homesteaded the area around Longs Peak and led the fight to preserve the area as a national park. Congress established Rocky Mountain National Park in 1915.

Larry Mizel

Mizel founded M.D.C. Holdings, parent company of Richmond American Homes. His philanthropy is far-reaching. He founded the Mizel Institute, which includes the Mizel Museum and the Counterterrorism Education Learning Lab (CELL).

David Moffat

Moffat was the visionary behind the tunnel through the Continental Divide that now bears his name.

The Monfort family

In 1930, Warren Monfort founded a Greeley feedlot, and his son Kenneth Monfort revolutionized the industry with butchering facilities in the 1950s. Warren’s grandsons, Dick and Charlie Monfort, are principal owners of the Colorado Rockies.

Isaac E. Moore Jr.

He co-founded the law firm Flanigan & Moore and served in the state House in the 1950s and ’60s, co-sponsoring “some of the strongest civil rights laws in the country at the time,” according to the at the University of Colorado.

Lt. Col. John Mosley

After graduating from Manual High School, Mosley became one of nine Black students enrolled at Colorado State University. He was the first Black athlete on the CSU football team. Mosley then pushed during World War II to enlist as a fighter pilot, eventually joining the Tuskegee flight training center.

Rachel B. Noel

The granddaughter of a slave, Noel became the first in Colorado when she was elected to the Denver School Board in 1965. The Noel Resolution highlighted the de facto segregation of the Denver schools.

George Norlin

He served as the University of Colorado president from 1919-1939, during which time the current campus was developed.

Sue O’Brien

O’Brien was the editorial page editor at The Denver Post for eight years until her death in 2003. Dean Singleton called her the “conscience of Colorado.” She was a press secretary for Gov. Dick Lamm and ran Gov. Roy Romer’s first campaign for governor.

Chief Ouray and Chipeta

The U.S. government declared him He negotiated the treaties that led to the loss of Ute territory. He was considered a promoter of peace who fought to prevent the destruction of his people by a U.S. government intent on taking their land at any cost.

William Jackson Palmer

The founder of Colorado Springs. He came to Colorado, where he co-founded the ��running a narrow-gauge line from Denver to what became Colorado Springs.

Trey Parker and Matt Stone

The creative partners are best known for writing "The Book of Mormon" and "South Park." " for its use of satire to explore some of the biggest issues of our time. The duo also bought and restored Colorado's famous Casa Bonita restaurant, saving it from closure.

Federico Peña

Peña Boulevard is named for this two-term mayor, who began work on Denver's new airport. He also played a role in Peña went on to serve in the Clinton administration as both secretary of transportation and energy.

Spencer Penrose

Penrose was a who was active in the Colorado Springs region, financing the Broadmoor Hotel and Cheyenne Mountain Zoo and establishing the El Pomar Foundation.

Antoinette Perry

The are named for this Denver native, who first performed at Elitch Theater. Among her greatest successes was directing the play "Harvey," written by Coloradan Mary Chase.

The Rev. James Peters

Peters led the New Hope Baptist Church in Denver for nearly 30 years. He marched with Martin Luther King Junior in Selma, Ala., in 1965, and spent much of his life fighting for Civil Rights in Colorado, including pushing for reform at the Denver Sheriff’s Office.

Gerald Phipps

The founder of GH Phipps Construction (in 1952) bought the Denver Broncos in 1965 and with his brother, Allan, took the team to its first AFC Championship. He was the first non-player to be inducted into the , in 1985.

Bishop George Maxwell Randall

The Episcopalian missionary established the School of Mines, known then as the Territorial School of Mines in 1873. It became Colorado's first public institution of higher education.

Bruce Randolph

Daddy Bruce, as he was known, quit school after third grade. He worked odd jobs until figuring out how to make his love of barbecue successful in Denver, where he had moved to be near his son. , marked by his legendary Thanksgiving dinner for those in need.

Condoleezza Rice

The former U.S. secretary of state moved to Colorado in 1968, when her father took a job at the University of Denver. She attended St. Mary's Academy and earned her bachelor's degree at the University of Denver. George W. Bush appointed her secretary of state. She is now part of the Denver Broncos' ownership.

Clark Richert

An artist known for his brilliantly colored paintings of geometric shapes, he was a groundbreaking creative force who helped inspire thousands of artists as a teacher at the Rocky Mountain College of Art and Design. He helped found Drop City, the legendary hippy artist colony outside Trinidad.

Dan Ritchie

Ritchie's business acumen, steady leadership and knack for philanthropy righted the rough seas for a number of Denver's most iconic organizations, including the University of Denver and the Denver Center for the Performing Arts.

Walter Orr Roberts

Roberts moved to Colorado in 1940, and his early solar research labs drew scientific investment to Boulder for the High Altitude Observatory and eventually the National Center for Atmospheric Research.

Cleo Parker Robinson

The dancer grew up in Five Points, transforming the neighborhood's historic Shorter AME Church into the Cleo Parker Robinson Dance studio, which has brought the healing power of dance, music and art to thousands of children across the state.

William Green Russell

Russell and his party of Georgians established, in November 1858, the first significant white settlement where Cherry Creek and the South Platte come together.�� They called their new town Auraria.

Florence Sabin

The Central City native led an investigation i helping lay the groundwork for a cure. Upon her retirement, she returned to Colorado, where she helped educate health professionals about the disease. She is immortalized with a statue at the U.S. Capitol.

Ken Salazar

The fifth-generation Coloradan served in the U.S. Senate and was secretary of the interior under President Barack Obama, ��As the state’s attorney general (1999 to 2004), he established the Fugitive Prosecutions Unit. He was a visionary behind Great Outdoors Colorado.

Katherine “Kay” Schomp

The longtime Denver education and arts activist was known as the "founding mother" of the Denver School of the Arts, which she crusaded to establish.

Don Seawell

The former publisher of The Denver Post left his greatest legacy as the visionary behind the Denver Performing Arts Complex.

Pat Schroeder

The congresswoman from Denver helped define the role women have in politics. She was an advocate of family-work issues, famously saying, “I have a brain and a uterus, and I use both” when asked about being a congresswoman and a mother. She was a force behind the Pregnancy Discrimination Act and the Family Leave Act.

Peter Seibert

After he was injured in World War II, Seibert headed to Aspen as the head of the ski patrol. His career developed, and he set out to find the land to Seibert raised the money needed and became president of the Vail Corporation.

Frank Shorter

Two-time Olympic medalist Frank Shorter moved to Boulder in 1970 to pursue high-elevation training for marathons. After Shorter’s gold medal win in the Montreal Olympics, athletes flocked to Boulder to mimic his training. He is the co-founder of the Bolder Boulder 10k.

John Sie

The Entertainment Group, Sie wrote the first white paper on digital High Definition Television (HDTV) submitted to Congress and the FCC. The Anna and John J. Sie Foundation supports multiple causes, notably research for people with Down syndrome.

Dean Singleton

Denver Post readers can thank for The Post existing today. The founder of Media News Group is credited with winning the newspaper war with The Rocky Mountain News and securing The Post's future.

Silas Soule

Soule was a Union officer, and he and his company refused to fire a shot at the Sand Creek Massacre. Shortly after he testified against Maj. John Chivington, he was shot and killed in Denver.

Robert Speer

Speer was elected mayor of Denver three times, starting in 1904. He died during his third term. He is remembered for the that brought Denver its network of parks, tree-lined boulevards and public buildings.

Jack Swigert

The Denver native and University of Colorado football star on the moon flight Apollo XIII. He made the famous statement, “Houston, we have a problem here” when an oxyen tank exploded.

Horace and Baby Doe Tabor

Horace Tabor's Leadville silver mines made him a rich man, and . But he and his second wife, Baby Doe, were also lavish spenders, and she died in poverty.

Harry Talbott

Palisade peach farmer Harry Talbott helped . He started land trusts for the area and fought off a home development scheme during the oil shale boom that soon went bust.

Hunter S. Thompson

where the journalist becomes central to the story, spent decades living in Woody Creek. He wrote "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas."

Dalton Trumbo

This once cub reporter for The Daily Sentinel in Grand Junction published his first book, “Eclipse,” in 1935, which was . Trumbo was forced to testify before Congress during the Red Scare. He became a fierce defender of the First Amendment.

Brian Vicente and Mason Tvert

The two were the big, leading to legalize recreational marijuana in Colorado.

Wellington Webb

The mayor from 1991-2003, Webb played a major role in shaping Denver’s economic future. Most of Denver International Airport was finished under his watch. Downtown experienced a revitalization with new housing and restaurants. His efforts supported the opening of Coors Field. He was the city's first Black mayor.

Byron "Whizzer" White

The first University of Colorado football player to be named an All-American, White went on to become a U.S. Supreme Court justice. He wrote the opinion

Beatrice Willard

Willard was a tundra ecologist who did important work high in Rocky Mountain National Park, understanding the impact of human trampling on alpine tundra.

Judi and Marvin Wolf

Philanthropists who gave their time and money to the arts and the University of Colorado, supporting the Denver Center for the Performing Arts, Opera Colorado, the Denver Symphony Orchestra, the Denver Art Museum and the CU law school.

Pierre Wolfe

Chef and in Capitol Hill, which was ranked among the best restaurants in Denver for more than 30 years. He also opened Normandy French Restaurant and Tante Louise. He hosted a for 60 years, “America’s Dining and Travel Guide.”

Richens Lacy “Uncle Dick” Wootton

The frontiersman built a 27-mile toll road over Raton Pass. According to “The Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe Railway offered him $50,000 to buy the road in 1878. He turned them down. Instead, Wootton asked that the railroad give his wife groceries and a pass to ride the train for life.”

Mildred “Babe” Didrikson Zaharias

The Associated Press named her Female Athlete of the Half Century in 1950. She competed in multiple sports and helped break down stereotypes of women in professional sports. She was a founder of the LPGA.

And still, he returned for a Broncos curtain call, on Monday, in the building where he helped lay the current foundation.

Ten years to the day that the Broncos drafted him in 2016, the 32-year-old Simmons announced the end of his playing days on Wednesday morning through a video announcement on the Broncos’ account. After a one-year stint with the Falcons and a year-long absence from football, Simmons also signed a ceremonial deal to retire with the Broncos.

Simmons welled up several times in a 30-minute-long press conference later Wednesday afternoon in Dove Valley, thanking a seemingly never-ending slew of backers: wife Taryn for supporting him, Broncos executive John Elway for drafting him, general manager George Paton for extending him, and the Denver fanbase for sticking with him.

“It just felt like there was a lot asked, and I feel like I fell short,” Simmons said, on his eight-year career in Denver. “So, that’s why — a lot of the emotional aspect of it. And so, I felt like I let a lot of people down over the years.”

“And so, to see that type of reaction for me is more than I deserve,” he continued, on the response to his retirement. “It’s heartwarming. I’m thankful. I’m blessed, I’m honored.”

The heartbeat of the Broncos’ defense

For eight seasons after Elway took him with the final pick of the third round in 2016, Simmons led the Broncos’ secondary, defense and locker room at large. His 30 interceptions are tied for seventh all-time in Denver franchise history. And he lives in rooms he’s never touched — still flashing across the tape that Cowboys defensive coordinator Christian Parker shows players, a deep-safety model for the defense that the former Broncos secondary coach wants to install in Dallas.

Parker has a simpler lasting memory of his years with Simmons, though.

By Jan. 8, 2021, the Vic Fangio era as the Broncos’ head coach was over. The locker room, Parker remembered, had a “feeling” about that, heading into a Week 18 matchup with the Chiefs. For a fifth straight season in Denver, they had nothing to play for. Simmons’ safety partner, Kareem Jackson, was hurt. Future Defensive Player of the Year Pat Surtain II was hurt. Ronald Darby, the other starting corner, was hurt.

And yet Simmons trotted out to play like everything was on the line.

“He was still scratching,” Parker said, remembering. “He was clawing, out there.”

One’s football legacy is strange, Simmons said. His is no exception. He was a two-time Pro Bowler and four-time All-Pro, and tied for seventh all-time in Broncos history in interceptions. He showed up, as Parker pointed out, playing 118 of a possible 131 games in Denver. He also had one season with a winning record but never made the playoffs.

It ate at him, as Simmons said. He told reporters on Wednesday that he believed each passing year would be the year. Behind the scenes, he had “a lot of talks” with Parker about a burning desire to simply make the postseason, as the Dallas defensive coordinator recounted.

“That����ap really all he wanted to do, to be honest with you,” Parker said. “I think if you asked if he would trade some of those career accolades relative to the interceptions and All-Pro nominees, and all that kinda stuff — to have that taste of January and February football, he would trade it in a heartbeat.”

That never came, and the Broncos cut Simmons for his price tag while rebuilding under Payton after the 2023 season. He signed in Atlanta in 2024 to try and chase a playoff berth — but found it “miserable,” as he said, to be away from his wife and FaceTime-parenting his three children, who were still living in Denver.

Simmons continued to train throughout the 2025 season but never signed with a franchise. The time he regained with family, though, was invaluable, as he recounted. Eventually, he found peace in realizing that it was “just time” to move away from his playing days, he said.

The safety had always wanted to retire a Bronco, even after being cut, Parker said. And the two years away from Denver helped Simmons find peace, too, with a tenure that lacked wins but had a much greater effect on the orbit around him.

“My overall goal was to leave here, and continue the legacy and to be a Hall of Fame player,” Simmons said. “Obviously, I fell short of that, I think. Not I think — I know I fell short of that.

“I think what I’m the most proud of, though, is the adversity that popped up in those eight seasons … it����ap hard to get recognized as a player when your team is not doing well,” Simmons continued. “It����ap a very difficult thing. So I’m proud of the way I was able to fight through some adversity in that aspect. It����ap hard when you have a lot going on. It helped me, though. It����ap part of my journey and my career. I’m thankful for it.”

Simmons has been a bridge between eras in Denver. He was drafted in 2016, the year after the Broncos’ Super Bowl 50 win. His time ended in 2023, the year before the Broncos returned to the playoffs. Denver went 52-79 in Simmons’ eight seasons, and saw six different coaches don a headset, and pivoted through a massive ownership change from the late Pat Bowlen to the Walton-Penner Group.

Still, Simmons became a “legend in his own way,” as former teammate Melvin Gordon told The Post. He organized Thursday bowling sessions and dinners with the defensive backs, and took care of the youngsters, Gordon said. Simmons was named a three-time captain and remained consistently accountable to local media during losing seasons. His impact ripples through foundational pieces still on the Broncos’ roster — Garett Bolles, Courtland Sutton, Surtain and Alex Singleton.

Gordon, a former Pro Bowler who played for the Broncos for three seasons, is quick to admit he fell into a bad place in Denver by his final year. He fumbled five times in 2022 and said he began to lose his “love for the game.”

Simmons, Gordon said, helped keep that passion burning through simple words and simple locker-room games of UNO.

“Sometimes, you do need a leader to show you the way,” Gordon said. “And I think he made his mark that way.”

The safety made his mark��in the community,��too, serving as��an active mentor at the Broncos Boys and Girls Club. And after retirement, Simmons said he intends to try to wedge a foot into the broadcasting world — and explore a potential position at a local high school program, similar to Cherry Creek High head coach Dave Logan.

“I want to be the guy in the community that����ap a consistent, reliable figure for kids to look up to,” Simmons said.

And he hopes he left a legacy, as he said Wednesday, of a man who cared.

“I passionately cared,” Simmons said. “I wanted to do well. I really wanted to win. Didn’t work out. And I’m so glad that they’re winning now.”

Peyton Manning is more organized than Kim Kardashian’s closet. His life operates on routines, consistency. Complete the task. Move on.

So after several weeks of rehabbing a plantar fasciitis foot injury that season, throwing to Jordan “Sunshine” Taylor in the Pat Bowlen Fieldhouse, Manning was ready to return.

Feeling like he was being spied on, Manning delivered a message to coach Gary Kubiak.

“When you are hurt, you feel left out. Like the kid that doesn’t get to go on the playground. I felt like I was throwing the ball well,” Manning said. “I wanted to see if someone was really watching.”

Turns out, Kubiak was indeed checking on the former MVP. What he saw surprised him. And more than a decade later, it still does.

“The first video I saw, it only had one barrel (flipping him off),” Kubiak said with a laugh. “I knew he was mad. Really he was saying, ‘Hey, dumb (bleep), are you going to put me in?’^”

Wednesday night provided a reminder of how it turned out when Manning returned to the lineup. Joined by five teammates and Kubiak, the 2015 Broncos celebrated the Night of Champions at the Paramount Theatre.

The bulk of the team came together last fall for a 10-year reunion and the induction of the late Demaryius Thomas into the Ring of Fame.

But this was different, more personal, more laughs, showing why Manning decided to hold live events honoring the 2006 Colts, 1989 San Francisco 49ers and Pat Summitt����ap legacy at the University of Tennessee.

“It was special (in October), but we didn’t have the MVP of the team there, Von Miller, because he is still out there playing. So we felt like it was missing something,” Manning said. “This was a chance for the fans to go behind the ropes. When you have a team honored in a stadium it is not the most intimate. This event was all about the fans.”

Based on the reaction of the orange bleached crowd, it is clear Manning read the room like he did defenses for 18 seasons. Manning received a standing ovation. And the roar that greeted Von Miller pierced ears down the 16th Street Mall.

There is a common refrain about seasons that end in rings. The players, it is said, walk together forever as champions.

But the fans become part of the connective tissue as well.

“Why come here? Why wouldn’t I? This was such a special team. This gives us a chance to hear the stories and relive it,” said Leroy Garcia from Colorado Springs, before posing with a replica of the Super Bowl 50 trophy. “There was no way I was going to miss this.”

Manning brought together a cross-section of players whose stories highlighted the special talent and personalities on the Super Bowl 50 team. DeMarcus Ware and Manning are football immortals, enshrined in the Hall of Fame. If Miller ever retires, he will join them.

Star power was required, but unselfishness defined the locker room. Kubiak spoke of the importance of everybody contributing, of playing for the person next to you in the locker room.

The Broncos knew during minicamp that something different was percolating. The offensive had weapons and the defense boasted two fang-bearing edge rushers and a No Fly Zone secondary that humbled All-Pros, MVPs and journeymen without remorse.

“I remember when I joined the team, I thought I was going to be The Man. Then we went through a walk-through and I was like, ‘(Bleep) I am not going to be The Man,’^” Talib said. “We didn’t have one hole. Not one.”

The Broncos opened the season with seven straight wins. The confidence was tangible. Denver believed they could beat anyone because of a defense that closed better than the Yankees’ Mariano Rivera.

“Legendary. The D-line, they had their own special relationship. Our linebackers (Danny Trevathan and Brandon Marshall) were two of the best in the league, straight ballers. And obviously we knew as a secondary we were always going to do what we needed to,” Pro Bowl safety T.J. Ward said. “When you perform the way we did, that’s how you become legendary.”

The way sports operate, however, titles are required to bring people together years later. Greatness is measured in championships.

Miller and Ware wrote a diary of havoc in the postseason. And the offense did just enough, squeaking past the Steelers and Patriots. The New England game remains the loudest the new stadium has ever been. The victory required noise and faith.

“I played for (defensive coordinator) Wade Phillips for like 10 years. And he dedicated one game every season to his dad (Bum Phillips). We won all of them,” said Ware. “I am tearing up thinking about it. We couldn’t let him down.”

As the confetti fell, the gravity of what was ahead took shape. Owner Pat Bowlen wanted a third Super Bowl crown. The players wanted one for Ware, who was ringless, and Manning, who was expected to retire. And, they did not know it then, they needed it as a touchstone memory to honor Thomas.

“If there was a Hall of Fame for teammates, he would be in it,” Miller said. “When I had my first child, he was the first person I called and Face-timed. He was one of one.”

The Broncos thrashed the Carolina Panthers, turning regular season MVP Cam Newton into a Fig Newton. That game is remembered in photos of the defense pouncing, taunting, finger-wagging. All of the swag came together in one night.

It took a coach with patience, who was honest and stern. It required role players willing to sacrifice. And it demanded stars meet the moment, no matter how bright the glare and long the odds.

As the calendar has flipped, as the years have passed, the narrative of those Broncos has changed, filling in the gaps. They were characters. But they won because of character.

“Everybody that wins a Super Bowl, they all say it was a unique team. But I am telling you that the word team could not be more personified than with that Super Bowl 50 group,” Manning said. “Everybody had a job. Everybody was completely unselfish. We never argued. It was really special.”

In October 2020, Tom Bonds had called Paton one morning and said the family was taking brother Jim home from the hospital for hospice, after a long battle with cancer. So Paton, then the assistant general manager for the Vikings, hopped on a flight from Minnesota to California before the Vikings were set for a rivalry game with Green Bay in a week’s time. No questions asked. This was Paton’s college roommate at UCLA, fraternity brother, revered high school coach in Southern California and longtime friend.

Paton came to Jim’s house in Valencia and stayed. At one point, Paton drove 45 minutes across Los Angeles to a hospital to retrieve some medicine for Jim. He told the family — wife Tricia, and children James and Katie — that he’d be there for them. He regaled the kids the night he arrived with stories of their dad, and after Jim died the next week, his kids have said that the day Paton spun memories with them was one of the most impactful days of their lives.

“That,” said Brian Schwartz, another longtime friend and UCLA fraternity brother, “just exemplifies George.”

Years later, Paton is now in Denver, coming off an AFC title-game run as the Broncos’ general manager just two years after eating Russell Wilson’s $242.6 million contract and swallowing the . Many who call Paton a close friend do not attempt to explain his steadiness via the particulars of roster management or cap analysis. Instead, they mention Jim Bonds and Paton, the friend who was there until the very end and sought no shred of credit or public attention .

“I think it’s because of his personality,” Schwartz told The Post, discussing Paton’s steadiness. “His desire to not see the limelight. Just like he did with Jimmy.”

In Denver, it has created a decision-making ecosystem with some balance, partnering with a head coach who is constantly in the limelight. It did not come easy. When Sean Payton arrived as the Broncos’ head coach in 2023, he needed time at first to feel out Paton. The general manager was a very unpopular man in Denver following a couple of massive misfires — the disastrous hiring of Nathaniel Hackett and��the trade and massive extension for Wilson. So Payton sought advice from longtime mutual friend and NFL insider Jay Glazer.

Glazer, also an MMA trainer and motivational speaker, told Payton he could trust Paton.

“I’ve seen a ton of GMs backstab the head coach, and vice versa,” Glazer told The Post. “And George has always had Sean’s back. Always. And that is so valuable. Especially when you’re going to try and make a lot of changes in the place.”

Three seasons with Payton and the Walton-Penner ownership group, indeed, have brought sweeping change in Denver. But the general manager has not changed. Somehow. Payton is known across the NFL for his desire to surround himself with allies he trusts, and members of Denver’s front-office regime were initially concerned Paton would get pushed out, an NFL source with knowledge of the Broncos’ building recounted to The Denver Post.

“If you ask anybody in the league … they’re like, ‘Oh, well, George’s days are numbered, that’s a bummer,'” the source said.

Instead, Paton’s days are on the verge of extension. He “never wavered,” Tom Bonds said. Paton has led the Broncos to re-sign 13 current members of their 2026 roster to new deals (according to data collected from Spotrac), add key starters from Zach Allen to Talanoa Hufanga on team-friendly deals, and found cheap young offensive production in the draft from quarterback Bo Nix to running back RJ Harvey. The franchise’s baseline foundation, suddenly, stacks up with most any across the NFL.

“I mean, I never flinched,” Paton told The Denver Post on Tuesday in a brief conversation, walking between obligations at the combine.

“Always figured we would turn it around,” he continued. “And we did. And I’m not surprised.”

Payton, across that time, has given increasingly glowing public reviews of Paton, and has privately lobbied Broncos ownership for a new contract for Paton as the general manager heads into the last year of his deal. The relationship has clicked in large part because of Paton’s nature, a man who knows the attention in Denver is centered around the head coach’s office — and who’s perfectly fine with that.

“I think they are positioned to win,” one NFL agent told The Post, “for as long as this group of people stays together.”

Elway’s successor

In January 2021, members of Denver’s scouting department got an email from then-Broncos GM John Elway.

“He was like, ‘Everybody needs to hop on a Zoom call in 30 minutes,'” a source in the building said. “Everybody was like, ‘What the hell?'”

Elway’s announcement — he was stepping away from his duties as general manager, and would lead a search for a new GM — sent shockwaves through the organization . The man, after all, was immortal in Denver, with two Super Bowl rings as a player and one as an executive. Elway told staff on that call he felt the search for his successor was part of his legacy in Denver, too.

Paton, a Vikings assistant GM who’d bootstrapped his way through NFL circles, was among the names floated. After a stint as a defensive back in UCLA’s program and a brief overseas career, he coached the sophomore football team at his alma mater, Loyola High School, in 1996 on a stipend of $1,000 (they went undefeated). In 1997, Paton landed a scouting job with the Bears and showed up on the doorstep of Tom Bonds’ house in Chicago, asking if he could crash in his basement for a few days (he ended up living there for 2.5 years). In the mid-2000s, when Paton was the director of pro personnel in Miami, he’d play games of four-on-four lunchtime hoops with Nick Saban.

Their squad was usually Saban, Paton, and assistant coaches Jason Garrett and Derek Dooley. Paton was a “little scrawny dude,” as friend Schwartz said, who didn’t play basketball much. But he could scrap, and always ended up on the floor. One day, as Garrett recalled to The Post, Paton couldn’t play, and Saban grew frustrated with his remaining teammates’ levels of effort.

“Nobody’s getting any loose balls!” the future Alabama mogul roared, as Garrett remembered.

Paton, too, was a grinder in personnel rooms. Equally as important, he had a sense of how to level out coaching personalities, from working with Saban to working with Mike Zimmer in Minnesota. He’d largely bided his time, outside of a push for San Francisco’s general manager job in 2017, under Minnesota GM Rick Spielman. And the Broncos’ situation in 2021 wasn’t entirely stable, since Denver was operating without a primary owner after the 2019 death of Pat Bowlen.

But Paton respected the history in Denver. When Elway got dinner with him at Elway’s Steakhouse after a formal interview in early January 2021, Elway made it clear he wouldn’t let him leave without a commitment to Denver, Paton told now-close-friend Tom Bonds the following morning.

“I think he saw a lot of the qualities of, like, an old-school football man in George,” a source who was in the Broncos’ building told The Post. “A guy that has a meticulous process that he sticks to that was calm and collected, and confident, and steady, and not erratic as a personality.”

A week before Paton’s first NFL Draft in the spring of 2021, he, Schwartz and Schwartz’s wife were out to dinner at Los Dos Potrillos. Paton’s phone buzzed. It was Elway, who was still serving as Denver’s president. Paton took the call, left, and came back.

“He just wants to know who we’re drafting,” Paton told Schwartz, as he recalled.

So Schwartz asked, too. Paton refused to tell him. Schwartz started to get frustrated. They were buddies, after all. And then it occurred to him that his friend was so quiet on all matters that he hadn’t even told John Elway,��of all people, a week before the draft.

“He probably even keeps it,” Schwartz joked, “from his own son.”

The dark times

The Broncos were drafting Pat Surtain II, of course.

There was plenty of pressure back in 2021 on Paton to take a quarterback in his first draft, and he and staff sat for hours and days and weeks in April, crushing tape on Ohio State’s Justin Fields and Alabama’s Mac Jones. Paton consulted analytics. He consulted scouts who’d visited Ohio State. And he kept coming back to one conclusion: Alabama cornerback Surtain was the cleanest player, regardless of position, in the draft.

Paton is “beloved” in the personnel community, Glazer said, for his aptitude in collegiate scouting. Paton was a key voice in the Vikings drafting longtime Vikings difference-makers like safety Harrison Smith, tight end Kyle Rudolph and defensive end Brian Robison, former Minnesota head coach Leslie Frazier told The Post. And Paton has a near-photographic memory, friend and former Broncos quarterback Matt Mauck said, to recall specific traits and medical history from most any player in any draft class.

All that aside, though, the city of Denver — a quarterback town — was not particularly pleased with the Surtain pick at No. 9 at the time in 2021.

“He’d be like, ‘Oh, (expletive), why you got The Fan on?'” the NFL source with knowledge of the building said, referring to Denver sports radio station 104.3 The Fan. “Those guys are killing me.'”

The city of Denver was pleased, of course, with the following year’s blockbuster deal for Wilson. Paton had gone to see North Carolina’s Sam Howell and Pitt’s Kenny Pickett in person, the source said, and was largely unimpressed with the crop of quarterbacks in the 2022 draft class. The Wilson deal was a win-now move, meant to catapult a struggling franchise behind a 10-time Pro Bowler; Paton already made clear to Wilson’s agent Mark Rodgers during trade negotiations that the Broncos had the intention to extend Wilson, and Paton “kept his promise,” as Rodgers said.

The rest is ugly history. Wilson didn’t fit with Paton and Denver and especially Payton, after Paton hired and then fired young offensive mind Nathaniel Hackett in less than one season in 2022. The Broncos benched Wilson with two games to play in 2023, and ate a record $85 million in dead cap money . Wilson later accused Denver of threatening to bench him midseason if he didn’t adjust his contract.

“I have a very positive feeling about George,” Rodgers told The Post. “And some people might be surprised by that. But I think if you’re going to stay in sports, you have to be able to separate the people from the problem.”

The Surtain pick was made with the philosophy that there would be no shortcuts, after Paton assumed the helm of a franchise that had gone 32-48 in its five seasons since winning Super Bowl 50. The Wilson trade was an attempted shortcut, though, for an executive who has always made his money more from scouting collegiate talent and high-upside pro personnel than gambling on high-leverage deals.

“I think — if you just look at George, I think you would say that’s out of his character a little bit,” Schwartz said, reflecting on the Wilson trade. “Because he’s so much about the draft … he’s like an encyclopedia about people that he didn’t draft.”

Hackett came and went. Wilson’s contract became an albatross. New ownership and a culture-changing new coach arrived at the beginning of 2023. And Paton’s own friends worried privately for him. After an 8-9 season that invited promise in 2023, though, Paton went to a happy hour at Ocean Prime with Mauck, who marveled at the fact that the general manager had stuck around.

“This is gonna sound really bad,” recalled Mauck, who’s now the team dentist for Denver. “But I said, ‘The fact that you still have a job lets you know how good you are at what you do.’

“And I think that����ap true. He was able to survive something that a lot of people wouldn’t.”

In those days, Tom Bonds and his wife, Julie,��tried to visit Denver and attend games as many times as they could when the “times were the darkest,” as Bonds put it.

“Because,” Bonds said, “it felt like that would signal to him that we’re in this forever. Just like he was with us, as Jimmy was in his last days.”

The Payton partnership

At the time, the Hackett hire made some sense. So did the Wilson trade. So did the Wilson extension, even. All were swings that didn’t connect.

“He took a big swing on Nathaniel Hackett, and you could make – just objectively speaking – you could say that was a swing and a miss,” Rodgers said. “And he took a big swing on Russell Wilson, and at the end of the day … some people would say that was a swing and a miss.

“But I’ll be damned if he didn’t take a swing at Sean Payton,” Rodgers continued, “after those two situations.”

Payton’s arrival brought even more potential instability. Inside the Broncos’ building, as the NFL source recounted to The Post, any player who was a previous Paton draftee was “put under a microscope.” The head coach wasn’t initially sold on 2022 second-round pick Nik Bonitto, for one. And Payton verbalized his frustration over the Wilson deal, the source said, done before his arrival.

Payton, though, had a couple of trusted connection points to Paton in Zimmer — who Payton worked with under Bill Parcells in Dallas in the mid-2000s — and Glazer. Paton trusted in Payton’s ability to build Denver’s locker room. And he didn’t waver, even in private, multiple friends told The Post.

“I knew he was going to win, and I knew the culture he would bring,” Paton told The Post in Indianapolis. “I didn’t feel like I had to prove — I just had to be myself. And just do what I’m doing, and come together, and develop a process together.

“And it wasn’t about me,” Paton added. “We just wanted to win.”

That was made slightly more difficult by the Wilson deal, which impacted how the Broncos shaped their offseason approach. From Payton’s first season in Denver, the Broncos focused on “building this up front,” as former Broncos assistant GM and now-Jets GM Darren Mougey told The Post this week. Denver shelled out over $138 million to bring tackle Mike McGlinchey and guard Ben Powers into the fold in 2023 free agency. Beyond that, their payroll was weighed down under Wilson’s cap number.

“We had to really be decisive in who we were bringing in,” the source with knowledge of the building said. “Because you don’t have room to miss, in that situation.”

Paton arrived every day to work, still, at 6 a.m. Free-agency meetings ran later. Denver let defensive lineman Dre’Mont Jones walk in 2023’s free agency to sign a three-year, $51.3 million deal with the Seahawks. The Broncos instead signed Zach Allen for three years and $45.8 million. He’s become a two-time All-Pro in three years in Denver. The Broncos then found major value in safety Brandon Jones and defensive tackle Malcolm Roach in free agency in 2024.

Paton’s superpower in Minnesota, former GM Spielman recalled, was his ability to relate to all members of the coaching staff. Former Vikings HC Frazier remembered feeling “symbiotic” with Paton, and Paton working to understand what Frazier and the rest of Minnesota’s staff were looking for in defensive talent. Much further into Paton’s career, that same understanding has built with Payton, as the Broncos’ general manager has grown well aware of the player profile (smart, tough) that Payton favors.

“I think he treats it just the way he would any other coach,” Schwartz saidof Paton’s relationship with Payton. “His thinking, at least what he’s told me, is, his job is to — know the coaches. And know, and have real good communication with them on what they need. And then he goes out and executes that.”

The Pa(y)ton relationship, now, is about balance. Payton loves trading up. Paton loves accumulating capital. Payton attracts the spotlight. Paton sits a comfortable distance outside of it.

“He’s the face,” mutual friend Glazer said, of Payton. “And George wants him to be the face. That����ap kinda rare.”

Next steps

Recently, Schwartz asked former UCLA buddy Paton what he thought about the Bruins’ hire of new football coach Bob Chesney.

“What do I know,” Paton joked, as Schwartz recalled, “about hiring a coach?”

Jamaal Stephenson, a longtime Vikings personnel staffer, noted that Minnesota’s building “felt different” after Paton took the Denver job in 2021. He brought levity, Stephenson recalled, in a league of serious moments.

“We missed him,” Stephenson said, now a senior personnel executive with the Vikings. “We missed his personality, we missed his evaluating, we missed his friendship.”

Talk around a potential Paton reunion in Minnesota has swirled since the Vikings fired former GM Kwesi Adofo-Mensah in late January, with Paton’s original six-year deal in Denver heading into its last season. Several of Paton’s friends who spoke with The Post, though, said the general manager is quite happy in Denver.�� And staff who’ve been inside the Broncos’ building believe owner Greg Penner sees the value in Paton’s balance in personality to Payton, as Penner said at an end-of-year news conference he believes their partnership is “complementary.”

“Find me the head coach and the GM tied at the hip, and then you got a chance, you know?” Payton said in January.

Tom Bonds would once go to Empower Field and hear boos rain down from the Broncos’ own fanbase — boos Bonds couldn’t help but think were reflective of Paton, given his seat at the table. The dark times have passed, now.

When Bonds does come to games, he usually rides into Empower Field with Paton. The general manager will park and walk into the stadium, and straight onto the grass, Bonds said.

“Just so that he gets to take it in before the stadium’s filled up, and before the people are there …��and just look around and appreciate how far that he’s come,” Bonds said. “And that the Broncos are almost there.”

Watching owner Terry Pegula stumble through Wednesday’s press conference trying to explain the firing of popular coach Sean McDermott and promotion of Brandon Beane elicited one response: Thank goodness the Broncos no longer traffic in this dysfunction.

Pegula rarely talks to the media, and it became obvious why. Even if his intentions were good and necessary when receiving $850 million in public funding for the new stadium, Pegula did the impossible. He made coaching Josh Allen seem unappealing.

It was a disaster class in how not to communicate a message and stay on point. Pegula insisted he fired McDermott because of the visceral reaction he witnessed after the loss to the Broncos. Players were upset. Some cried.

Has he never been in a locker room after a season ended?

Whatever, McDermott was canned for the latest playoff loss (All Pegula had to say was the team had gone as far as it was going to go under the coach, so a new voice was needed). But, wait, didn’t Pegula exclaim in his opening remarks, “that was a catch,” regarding Brandin Cooks getting the football wrestled away by Denver cornerback Ja’Quan McMillian?

So, the coach got fired for a game when your team was robbed?

Make it make sense.

For good measure, Beane, the man who assembled rosters that have never reached a Super Bowl, received a cushy new title and more autonomy and, in case you were wondering, Pegula declared that the GM should not be blamed for drafting Keon Coleman. That beep, beep you heard was Pegula backing the bus over an active player on the roster and the coaching staff.

It is easy to laugh because the Broncos no longer live in this world.

When trying to explain how the Broncos reached the AFC championship for the first time in a decade with $32 million in dead cap money for Russell Wilson, don’t forget ownership.

As someone who began covering the Broncos in the early 1990s, my respect for Pat Bowlen is immense. But Denver was not returning to the NFL’s upper crust as a family business.

A Shakespearean drama played out after Bowlen stepped away from daily operations in 2014, passed away with Alzheimer’s in 2019 and until the team was sold in August of 2022.

In an ideal world, Bowlen would have left a cornerstone NFL franchise for his children that would have united them forever in joy and victories.

Instead, the trust was a mess, leading to legal battles. No child was specifically groomed for the role and Bowlen never declared a successor. There is no way you will ever convince me that the issues upstairs did not affect the Broncos’ product on the field.

The Broncos missed the playoffs for eight straight years and posted seven consecutive losing seasons, their most since 1963-72. This was not a coincidence.

A great quarterback, even if Allen was not that last Saturday, is not a chameleon. They cannot camouflage everything. It is impossible to win championships when discord exists in the corner office.

The Walton-Penner Family Ownership Group gave the Broncos more than deep pockets. They provided direction, discipline, creating the expectation of excellence. No excuses.

The Broncos would not be in this position without the evolution and involvement of Greg and Carrie Walton Penner.

Greg Penner fired coach Nathaniel Hackett with two games remaining in the ownership’s first season. He made it clear why — the team was rudderless — and what he was seeking in a replacement. He wanted a coach with a strong personality and belief system to set the tone for the organization.

He landed on Payton, getting what he paid for in a sport where there is no salary cap for coaches. And to hear Payton tell it, he came to Denver, in large part, because of the owners. He is not shy about saying poor ownership makes winning a fantasy.

Payton established a culture, creating accountability, while leaving no gray area on how and who he needed for Denver to climb back to relevance. He has worked well with general manager George Paton. Both report to Penner, fostering creative and dynamic friction.

As Greg and Carrie have grown to know the NFL, they bring leadership that is present and understanding. They don’t meddle, but they constantly ask questions and seek answers, making them demanding in the name of winning.

The money matters. It always does. But only if spent wisely. Over the past 18 months, the Broncos’ owners agreed to 10 in-house contract extensions totaling more than half a billion dollars, with in excess of $300 million guaranteed for core players.

Bowlen was a Hall of Famer. Even he would not have been able to pull this off.

The Walton-Penners are modern owners. They are not the Dodgers, but they are closer to that model than the Steelers, who are afraid to rebuild, operating under the delusion that a winning record is the ultimate goal.

In their fourth season, the Walton-Penners watched the Broncos win their first division title and playoff game in a decade. They have alignment with the coach, quarterback and front office.

That’s why the juxtaposition between what was happening in Buffalo and Denver on Wednesday was so alarming. The Bills became a bad reality show right before our eyes.

And the Broncos, back in the NFL’s Final Four, were staring at their new reality:

They are just getting started.

He saw Bo Nix and Courtland Sutton maneuver on the grass at the Broncos’ facility during organized team activities (OTAs) in June. He saw a quarterback and receiver who could feel��where the other was. This was the training ground for the second year of the Nix-Sutton partnership, the two growing a shared awareness of space and timing. A tango. A rumba. Swaying to each other’s movements.

Morris knew them both from his days as a college coach. Sutton was Morris’ captain when Morris was rebuilding at Southern Methodist University, from 2015-17 . Nix was Morris’ quarterback when he was an offensive coordinator at Auburn in 2020 , still the most competitive player he’s ever coached. And Morris knew, from just Day 1 at OTAs, that Sutton trusted Nix. And Nix trusted Sutton.

After practice, the three grabbed lunch at the team cafeteria at Dove Valley. At that moment, Sutton’s future in Denver was still unclear, engrossed in extension negotiations after a career-best 81 catches in 2024 . So Morris asked Nix, at that table, about Sutton’s contract.

“Look,” Nix said, as Morris recalled. “We’ve got to get this guy signed. This is my guy.”

Sutton, Nix told Morris, was so much of Denver’s pulse. And so much of its heartbeat.

“I know Bo,” Morris repeated, Nix’s quarterbacks coach and offensive coordinator at Auburn. “I know Bo. And I know Bo was sharing that with the management and the ownership of the Denver Broncos. I know that for a fact.”

Less than two months later, on July 28, Sutton came bounding out for practice as his representation finalized the particulars of a four-year, $92 million extension with Denver brass.

The Broncos signed the player. Really, though, they signed the pillar.

Sutton has played in 110 of a possible 117 games (excluding a torn ACL in 2020) in his years in Denver . He , while playing for 11 different starting quarterbacks in eight seasons . He’s had five offensive coordinators and five head coaches. And he has never once requested a trade in those eight seasons, sources close to Sutton told The Denver Post.

Sutton’s presence — from Vic Fangio to Sean Payton, from Pat Bowlen to the Penners — sticks in the minds of those who’ve shared a locker with his corner cubby in Denver.

“He wants to be the face of a program, of a franchise, of a building, of a team, however you want to phrase that,” former Broncos quarterback Drew Lock told The Denver Post.

“And honestly, that place — with how much turnover there has been — they’re lucky to have a guy like that … (who) can be so even-keeled,” Lock, now the Seahawks’ QB, said.

Has it been easy? No. Heavens, no. Every offseason brought a new offensive carousel. Around Sutton’s third or fourth year in Denver, his frustration started to boil as the end of his first deal approached, fellow former Broncos receiver Tim Patrick recounted. Fellow former Bronco Kendall Hinton chuckled, remembering the times he’d pass Sutton and remember to steer clear.

If Sutton isolated himself, or got quiet, Hinton knew:��Let me give ‘Court’ some space right now.

Sutton and the Broncos have found stability in each other during the Payton Era. Nothing’s ever perfect. Frequently, opposing secondaries have shaded Sutton’s way in 2025; Denver’s WR1 is second to Troy Franklin on his own team in targets over the last 12 weeks. Frequently, Sutton’s old high school coach Glen West will flip on a Broncos game on Sundays and wonder if his former receiver is even on the field.

None of it fazes Sutton anymore. Ask Denver’s receivers: Their leader does not care about his touches. He provides a “sense of security” for the rest of his room, as Franklin says. Kyrese Rowan, an undrafted rookie receiver who’s bounced around Denver since May, swears — straight face and all — he’s never seen the 30-year-old vet in a bad mood.

For more than a decade, Sutton has been committed to mastering his own mind. Nobody else’s.

“He has a calmness to him where he knows what he can do on this field, and nothing really surprises him anymore,” Patrick reflected.

“He has stability now with a coach and a quarterback, to where … you don’t have to worry about every offseason or every week, some years, where you don’t know who’s going to be the starting quarterback,” Patrick continued. “So you can tell, he’s at peace.”

The beginning

In late 2014, a book called “The Mental Game of Football” made its way to Morris, who’d just been hired as the head coach at SMU. Morris loved it enough to get his recruiting director, Mark Smith , to call the book’s author, Brian Cain . The three met and agreed that Cain would come on in an official role as a mental-performance specialist.

Sutton was one of the first players the staff wanted Cain to work with.

“If a coach says, ‘Hey, I think this is going to be beneficial for you and your development,’ he doesn’t ask, ‘Why?’ ” Cain said. “He says, ‘when.’ And that����ap Courtland Sutton to a T.”

Sutton was coming off a redshirt-freshman season for a 1-11 program , and was converting from defensive back to receiver. He wanted his development to happen right then, Morris recalled. So the head coach asked Cain to work with him on mental transitions: flushing the bad, keeping him grounded.

Through Sutton’s next three seasons at SMU and beyond, Cain worked with Sutton on what he called “process goals.” Breathwork. Meditation. Visualization. Journaling. Teammates voted Sutton a captain, and voted him as having the best work ethic on the roster, one of many core values that Cain and Morris tried to establish at SMU.

During fall camp before Sutton’s senior season, core players held a two-hour meeting to deliver individual presentations on implementing the core values.��Long after players cleared out at the end of the meeting, Sutton lingered in the back of the room, re-stacking chairs the group had taken from another space down the hall.

“I think of any guy in that program — and any guy I’ve worked with as a college athlete — he understood what was controllable and what was not as good as anybody,” Cain said.

On Wednesday, when asked about Cain, Sutton grinned. Sutton estimated 60% to 70% of football is mental. He is a man of routine, and his routine established at SMU has only compounded in pursuit of self-actualization.

Still, Sutton said he lives by a set of “ABCs” that Cain preaches: Act big. Breathe big. Commit big.

“It’s something so simple,” Sutton said, “but being able to bring yourself back into focus. Into the now. Into where your feet are. I’m a big ‘be where your feet are’ type of person.’ ”

Act big

On Sept. 9, 2018, in the third quarter of his NFL debut against Seattle, Sutton came off the field on third down. Fellow rookie wideout Patrick cycled in, and missed a ball over the middle from then-Broncos quarterback Case Keenum.

Emmanuel Sanders, a 31-year-old veteran receiver, came back with Patrick to the sideline, pulled both he and Sutton aside, and gave both a lashing that would last a lifetime. Four-letter words. Biting words. Patrick was cussed out for not catching the ball. Sutton was cussed out, more importantly, for simply not being out there on third down.

Patrick would not reveal Sanders’ specific words to Sutton, because they are not fit for print. But the sentiment was simple, as Patrick recalled: No matter what’s going on in a game, be on the field on third down. That’s the money down. That’s how you get paid.

“I swear, after he cussed us out, embarrassed us on the sideline,” Patrick recalled, “there was just a different ‘Court.’ Like, he just turned into a different animal on the football field after that.”

With first and second-round quarterbacks, with veterans and backups, Sutton’s reliability on third down has only grown in Denver, even as his overall role has fluctuated. Over the past two seasons, Sutton has single-handedly accounted for 39% of the Broncos’ conversions in third-and-long situations (greater than 7 yards), according to Next Gen Stats data compiled by The Post. It’s where his physical leverage best comes into play: Isolate his 6-foot-4 frame, long limbs, and 216-pound strength in press coverage, and he establishes “a lot of trust” from quarterbacks on third down.

“(Nix) understands that …. If you get into any trouble whatsoever, just find me,’ ” Sutton told reporters in late September. ” ‘I’ma be somewhere around.’ ”

A 23-year-old Sutton learned that from Sanders, Patrick believes. They had two veterans in that room in 2018, their rookie year: Sanders and the late Demaryius Thomas, who Sutton still reveres. And a 30-year-old Sutton carries the torch in Denver, years later.

These days, Broncos rookie Pat Bryant goes to Nothing Bundt Cakes on gamedays to pick up specific orders for the entire receivers’ room. Franklin and Devaughn Vele did the same as rookies in 2024. Sanders and Thomas started the tradition; Sutton enforces it now.

He followed Sanders’ words, back then. And he followed Thomas’ actions.

“They’ve had some guys like Demaryius in the past that have been those kind of people, that are just the rock of that place,” said Steelers receivers coach Zach Azzanni , who coached the Broncos’ wide receivers from 2018-22. “And I think (Sutton’s) that.”

Breathe big

At SMU, Sutton and Cain developed a method they called the “clap” technique. If Sutton dropped a pass, or a play didn’t connect, he’d slap his hands together as a sort of Pavlovian self-conditioning. Wipe the slate clean.

Over the first five years in Denver without a consistent starting quarterback or a stable offensive staff, Sutton learned to control what was within his own sphere, as Azzanni reflected. And the thorn in his side, always, was drops. He dropped nine of his 51 targets in his rookie year in 2018. Six years later, even in a career year with 1,081 yards in 2024, Pro Football Focus credited Sutton as tied with the Cowboys’ CeeDee Lamb for the most drops in the NFL (11).

His response to any adversity — within his control or not — has always been internal. Sutton wears his emotion on his sleeve, Hinton said. But he doesn’t erupt. If Sutton puts his hands on his hips and crosses his legs while standing on the sideline during games, he’s in the middle of processing, according to Morris.

“I know he likes that — throw a little tantrum,” Patrick cracked. “And then once he gets that tantrum out, he’s back to normal.”

Sutton’s process has rarely wavered over the years. Undrafted rookie Rowan has sat next to him often in meetings and noticed the veteran’s notebook is still filled to the brim with scribbles. He’s still the most diligent note-taker in the room — in Year 8.

Azzanni began every practice in Denver for years with seven minutes on the JUGS machine; Sutton would be the first receiver out, Azzanni recalled, no matter what.

Sutton’s drop rate in 2025 (6.7%) is now the lowest it’s been in any full season since his only Pro Bowl nod in 2019, according to Pro Football Focus. The misses still come. They linger less.

In Week 5 of October, the Broncos traveled to Philadelphia to play the reigning Super Bowl champion Eagles in one of the biggest regular-season games of Sutton’s career. On Denver’s third play of the game, Nix dropped back to loft a one-on-one pass to Sutton down the right sideline. The ball slid through the empty air between Sutton’s open forearms, and the receiver tumbled face-first into a rough drop.

He got up, tossed his head back, and��clapped��his hands together.

“You see some guys that may not be as mentally strong, or have that release,” Sutton said. “And one play turns into two plays turns into three, and it carries over to the next game. And then some people spiral. And the last thing you want to do is to have something spiral, because you can’t get out of your own head.”

Sutton went on to catch eight passes for 99 yards, including three massive fourth-quarter first-down conversions, and the Broncos beat the Eagles 21-17.

Commit big

Before Bo Nix, there was Ben Hicks.

In the third quarter of the first game of Sutton’s junior season at SMU, starting quarterback Matt Davis tore his ACL. SMU’s season suddenly rested on the shoulders of Hicks, the backup QB and a redshirt freshman. Strength coach Trumain Carroll realizing the importance of the coming minutes, went over to Hicks to impart a few words.

Except Sutton was already there, feeding him reassurances, Carroll remembered.

You got this. It’s go time. This is what you’ve been preparing for.

In the season that followed, Sutton spent 15 to 30 minutes after every practice running routes with Hicks and talking through coverages, former SMU safety Jordan Wyatt said. SMU went 5-7 that year, and then 7-5 in Sutton’s subsequent senior season, with Hicks fully running the show.

“He helped Ben grow up,” Carroll reflected. “He helped Ben gain the respect and earn the right to lead the locker room.”

A decade later, Nix shares a certain ESP with Sutton — and a trust — different from any other Bronco receiver. After the Broncos’ win over the Bengals in early October, Nix’s wife, Izzy, and Sutton’s wife, Brea, posted a picture of themselves wearing shirts with Nix and Sutton’s faces A week later, Nix credited Sutton for constantly reminding him he had his back in the Broncos’ comeback win over the Eagles.

“In that situation, it’s almost like — who wants the football?” Nix said, “And ‘Sutt’ wants the football.”

Sutton has committed to Nix. And the rest of the building. Take undrafted-rookie Rowan, who just re-signed to the Broncos’ practice squad this week after being cut last week. He is waiting out a short-term rental home. He knows his current stay might be short. The 24-year-old has no family in Denver, and no partner, and no kids, and no dog, he rattled off to The Post on Thursday.

Sutton knew all this. So he invited Rowan to his home for Christmas.

“I can talk about him all day,” Rowan said. “I talk about him all day with my friends. Because I thought he was, like — if you’re a WR1, you’ve been in the league for as long as he has, you’ve done what he’s done, you’d expect a little bit of an entitled, cocky (guy).

“But nah. Not at all.”

Sutton has put together another great, if unspectacular, campaign this season: 56 catches, 773 yards, five touchdowns through 13 games . Where could he be, perhaps, if he hadn’t torn his ACL in 2020? Or had more early-career stability? Or played in a different system entirely, where he was force-fed targets?

All of that, though, exists in the past or the future. Not the now. Denver is a “place that appreciates him,” as Lock reflected. And Sutton, Lock believes, understands that.

“There’s so much going on that you can miss,” Sutton told The Post, “if you’re looking past what����ap right in front of you.”