“On the outside looking in, I would have him on a (reps) restriction,” Warren Moon, the Hall-of-Fame quarterback, told me over the phone Monday when I asked about Bo Nix, the Broncos’ QB1.

“I think (the Broncos) should put him on some type of pitch count, like you would put a quarterback on a pitch count if he had problems with his shoulder.

“You put him in, limit his (reps), and you see how he’s handling it in practice. It’s something they’re going to have to monitor as they go along and see how much (this month) he can take and how much he shouldn’t take.”

The Broncos open Organized Team Activities this week, ramping up to a mandatory mini-camp June 16-18. Nix, who’s coming off January ankle surgery, followed by another procedure in April, is expected to do more watching than throwing this month.

Which, to Moon’s ears, isn’t just safe. It’s smart. The former great who played six seasons in Canada before a 17-year NFL career with the Oilers, Vikings, Seahawks and Chiefs once tried to rush back from a bum right ankle himself. Fall of 1996.

“The quick movements that you have to make in the pocket, you just aren’t able to make as quickly,” Moon recalled. “I tried to practice with it as much as I could. They tried to give it time to heal … I probably should have given it a lot more time.”

Moon had sprained his right ankle against Detroit in Week 1, then sat out a week. In hindsight, he told me, it should’ve been longer. Warren fought like holy heck to play through the pain. Even though he couldn’t plant. Couldn’t cut. Couldn’t move. If you’re Warren Moon, you can fake it as an NFL signal-caller on one good leg. Until the pocket collapses.

“When I got that ankle sprain, it made me feel like I was The Mummy, like I was Frankenstein’s monster,” the 69-year-old chuckled. “I couldn’t move at all. I just didn’t have the mobility, just didn’t have the lightness on my feet to do the things that I was comfortable doing.”

Moon sat out Week 2, then made six straight starts before the ankle got dinged again during a home loss to Chicago on Oct. 28. With one working ankle, Warren tossed six scores with seven picks, completing 56.6% of his throws. In ’94 and ’95 with the Vikings, Moon had averaged seven tilts per season of at least 275 passing yards. After the ankle mess, he managed just two such games for Minnesota in ’96 over eight appearances — a freak injury that, in hindsight,

“When you were trying to move in the pocket to avoid somebody, I just didn’t have the same quick-twitch ability as I did when my ankle was healthy,” Moon offered.

“And then when you look at someone like Bo Nix, someone who relies on his mobility — if it’s not completely healed, it’s going to definitely hamper his mobility. Which is one of his strengths.”

Moon is a Nix fan, by the way. Says he even reminds him of somebody Warren used to run into during those business trips to Denver those many moons ago.

“(Nix) has a little bit of John Elway in him, in the way he moves,” Moon said. “His arm’s probably not as strong as John’s. John was one of those guys who could bring his team back at the end of a game. That’s one of the things Bo has done a good job of …

“Then there’s the movement, of course, (Nix) being able to move around and make plays with his legs. He would be similar that way, in those aspects of his game.”

Like Elway, those aspects are hard to replicate — and even harder to replace, as Steady Stiddy reminded us against the Patriots in the AFC Championship.

“(The Broncos) do a lot of things because of Bo’s mobility,” Moon said of Nix. “They do a lot of rollouts, a lot of bootlegs, a lot of play-action to take advantage of his throwing ability on the run. And you want to make sure he’s able to do things where Sean Payton can still run the type of offense (that) he still wants to run. I’m sure that’s something they’ll be looking at at (during) the OTAs.”

When it comes to ankle recoveries, Moon added, it’s also about looking at the long view. Any rep Nix can manage on the field during June is found money. The points on the calendar that matter more are the start of training camp in late July and sometime around the second preseason game against the Packers on Aug. 21. Anything before that is gravy.

“The main thing is that (Nix) is there physically, as the leader of the football team,” Moon continued. “That he’s going to be in the meetings, for the (instruction) that he needs to digest, that the team sees that he’s doing things.

“The fact that he’s there (at OTAs), that’s huge. It’s not an Aaron Rodgers deal where you don’t know if he’s going to show up or not, where the team is wondering, ‘Is he going to be our leader?’ They know, ‘Hey, our QB1 is here.’ (The Broncos) seeing that he’s doing what he can on the field, that confidence bleeds over to the rest of the football team, too.”

Want Bo in the flow?

Low and slow is the way to go.

“I really like what they’ve done in a short period of time. The future looks great for them,” Moon stressed. “And the kid from Miami (Jaylen Waddle) they got in the offseason — I know Sean is going to come up with a lot of ideas as to how to use him. They’re going to be right there in the thick of things at the end of the regular season. Just like they were last year.”

Keeler: Broncos-Giants was so drunk, it couldn’t even get up to stagger home. You’ll tell your grandkids. You’ll call up YouTube. They still won’t believe you. “Nineteen to zip,” you’ll mutter. “All hope was lost.” We were in the press box, tapping out raging epitaphs for Bo Nix and Sean Payton for more than two hours, only for the pair to grab the moment by the scruff of its neck and flip the narrative on its head. In the heat of the moment, it has to be No. 1. But I want to give Sunday some breathing room, a little time and space, before I start fitting it for the crown.

Renck: The numbers do not compare, but context strengthens the argument. Remember, the Rockies’ 2007 play-in game? Of course you do. Lost in the discussion about whether Matt Holliday touched home plate were the circumstances that led to the moment. The Rockies trailed 8-6 entering the 13th inning and faced future Hall of Fame closer Trevor Hoffman. They walked off the Padres in the greatest baseball game ever played in Denver. Ramon Ortiz — who? — picked up the win in relief. Jamey Carroll, not a star, delivered the deciding sacrifice line drive. Because of what it meant, this game cannot be dismissed out of hand.

Keeler: We’ve seen plenty of Miracles at a Mile High, haven’t we? Rocktober 2007 is burned into my psyche. Until this past Sunday, I wasn’t sure I’d ever see a finish as crazy as CU-Michigan in 1994, when Bill McCartney’s Buffs scored 13 unanswered over the last 3:52 in Ann Arbor, capped off by Kordell Stewart’s walk-off heave. Heck, I remember when the CSU Rams under Jim McElwain put up 18 straight points over three minutes in the fourth quarter on a Mike Leach Washington State team, sealing a nutty 48-45 win in the 2013 New Mexico Bowl.

Renck: There are a couple of Broncos games that deserve mention, if not respect. John Elway hinted of his future in Canton when he rallied the Broncos from a 19-point deficit against the Colts in his rookie season. But it wasn’t exactly Picasso. He completed 9 of 20 passes for 151 yards in the fourth quarter of a 21-19 victory. Tim Tebow once stared down a 15-0 gap in Miami with 7:34 remaining and sprinkled pixie dust in an 18-15 win. But neither quarterback matched Nix, who became the first player ever with two passing and two rushing touchdowns in a quarter. Nix went 15 for 23 for 162 yards and rushed for 46 on three carries. There is no reason to pore through the Nuggets highlights or Avs boxscores, this game stands alone as the best comeback ever.

Keeler: Elway would like a word with you on that last one, my friend. Denver, led by Front Range folk hero Russell Wilson, wiped away a 21-point deficit at Chicago in 2023. And did you know that of the eight largest comebacks in Broncos history, regular season and playoffs, Payton has already had a hand in two of them?  As rallies go, I’ve still got a sentimental spot for “The Drive II” against Houston in the 1991-92 playoffs, in which Denver erased a 21-6 second-quarter deficit, a postseason tussle with higher stakes and a Hall-of-Fame QB1 on the other side in Warren Moon. “Best” comeback? Ask me when the orange and blue put a bow on 2025-26. Most bonkers? Without a doubt. Top of the looney leaderboard.

“Aren’t we having a great time here?” CU Buffs football coach Deion Sanders asked Tuesday “When we appreciate and we love where we are, it’s hard to look at someone else.”

Painkillers ain’t cheap, Shedeur, but math is math. Caleb Williams and Drake Maye will be rich and miserable in the winter of ’25, leaving a hole at the top of the NFL Draft that only a man with a diamond watch flex can fill.

But hey, if you don’t want to listen to me, fair enough. Listen to the man with the gold jacket from Canton.

And I don’t mean your dad.

“Past players never had those NIL deals, or any of those options, so most guys couldn’t wait to get out of school,” Pro Football Hall of Fame QB Warren Moon told me by phone Tuesday night.

“Now, because of NIL, you can take your time. That’s one of the reasons Michael Penix Jr. came back to Washington. He was like, ‘Hey, why should I be a second-round draft pick (after ’22)?’ And now he’s one of the leading Heisman Trophy candidates.”

That’s you, dude. Next fall. I mean, Coach Prime’s got to land not just one, but probably two or three offensive line upgrades between now and July, granted. Otherwise, scouts are gonna have to scrape you off the turf at Folsom Field with a spatula.

“He needs to stay (at CU),” longtime former NFL scout Dan Shonka offered earlier this week. “He needs more games against big-time competition under his belt and to keep improving every week, like he’s been doing. Because he’s definitely an ascending player.”

Despite the younger Sanders running for his life these past nine weeks, NFLMockDraftDatabase.com, which factors in 226 online first-round NFL mock drafts and 103 team-based mock drafts,

On the upside, that slots him behind only Williams, Maye and Michigan’s J.J. McCarthy. The downside? The site’s aggregated projection also has Shedeur, if he came out for the ’24 draft, landing in Levis territory — taken early in the second round, at pick No. 38 on average.

If that wasn’t good enough for Penix, why should it be good enough for the Son of Prime?

“We’re in the same boat — we’ve always won,” the elder Sanders said Tuesday in .

“So this is tremendously tough, hitting this hurdle that we’ve hit. (But) I don’t see him flinch. I don’t see (any) quit in him. I don’t see (any) shutdown. … So I’m proud of the young fella. I really am.”

Given the perilous state of CU’s offensive line, staying in school has its financial risks, too — never mind the physical ones.

On3.com estimates Shedeur’s NIL value in the current market as second-highest nationally ($4.6 million) among all NCAA athletes, trailing only USC basketball’s Bronny James ($5.9 million), son of NBA icon LeBron James. In 2023 alone, he’s reportedly added deals with Beats By Dre, Urban Outfitters and Topps to a portfolio that already included Mercedes-Benz, Gatorade and Brady, Tom Brady’s clothing line.

The first quarterback taken after the first round, Levis, who went 33rd overall to the Titans, landed a four-year deal with an average value of $2.385 million — with an amortized signing bonus worth $984,939 this fall as a rookie.

Top of the first round, though? Different story. Bryce Young (No. 1 overall), C.J. Stroud (No. 2) and Anthony Richardson (No. 4) all nabbed four-year deals worth an average annual value of $9.01 million with an average amortized, first-year signing bonus of $5.78 million.

Advantage: Staying put.

One last ride for ’25.

“I really do like him,” Moon said of Shedeur. “I didn’t know what to expect (this fall) after I saw him (at Jackson State). … I really like how he makes quick decisions, gets the ball out of his hands. He has taken a beating along the way, and that’s another thing that’s really impressed me about him, is his courage out there and his toughness. He keeps getting up.

“He’s taken some hellacious hits. Some guys wouldn’t go back in the game. He doesn’t quit. He comes back, he plays with a lot of guts. He’s more mobile than I thought he was (at JSU). I think he’s going to be a good one. If he stays in school another year, it’s only going to help.”

It’s just not about dollars, kid. It’s about sense.

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“He’s been trolled a lot,” the Hall-of-Fame quarterback told me last week when the discussion turned to the Broncos’ franchise quarterback. “Man, I feel bad for him. But he brings some of it on himself.”

Moon’s been there. He transitioned from Houston to Minnesota late in his career, at age 37, after six Pro Bowl berths with the Oilers. The former Washington Huskies great would go on to notch three more Pro Bowl nods — two with the Vikings and one more, at age 41, with the Seattle Seahawks. From the CFL to Canton, Moon’s living proof that quarterback tales can have happy second chapters. Or happy thirds. Or happy fourths.

Meanwhile, from a Mile High, we’re waiting for the clouds to part. And as Wilson and his 2-3 Broncos prepare for another prime-time — hey,  any more than you, America — showcase, this time on Monday Night Football against Justin Herbert and the Chargers (3-2) in Los Angeles, Moon said he’d give Big Russ two sage pieces of advice. Right now.

First, until your passing gets right, get the heck off social media.

“He’s just out there too much,” the 65-year-old Moon stressed. “And I don’t know where that comes from. I don’t know if it’s because of the money that you can get from being an influencer, by having so many followers, and the way you can create your business — because I know long-range business is something that’s been important for him, as far as a second career and all that stuff, after his career is over.

“But when you make a choice to transition (to another team) like this, you have to put a little bit of stuff on hold for a while until you get yourself re-acclimated and solidified where you are. And I think he’s trying to do a little bit too much on and off the field … all it does is bring more attention. It brings more attention and more expectations on you when you’re doing that type of stuff. And gives people a chance to get back at you when it doesn’t happen (on the field).”

People like, you know, The shots at No. 3 are coming outta every corner these days. Especially from ex-teammates.

But Moon thinks Wilson could avoid taking more shots on the field if he’d give up the idea of being more like Drew Brees — and go back to being more like his old self. Throwing on the run. Throwing from a moving pocket instead of a fixed one.

“I think he has to get back to being who he is. I think he wants to be something else,” noted Moon, who was elected to the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 2006.

“He wants to be more of a pocket passer, but I think he needs to get back to who he is and what got him to where he is today. And that’s more of a movement, play-action guy.

“And his coach needs to get him out on the edge a little bit more as far as running some bootlegs and different things like that, where he’s not always in the same spot all the time. He can throw from the pocket, but that’s not his strength. When you’re 5-foot-10-and-a-half, you’re not going to make a living throwing the ball from the pocket all the time.

“Brees was never a guy that was on the edge. Brees was never a guy that was threatening to run. Russell can’t try and be something that he’s not. He can’t try and be somebody else. Be who you are.”

Moon knew who he was. Or thought he knew, at any rate. The Hall-of-Fame quarterback was a Seahawks radio analyst a decade ago, when Wilson joined a franchise that would play in two Super Bowls, winning one, over his first three NFL seasons.

“My (advice) to him (then) was to try and make sure he’s a good teammate, make sure he gives a portion of himself to everybody on the team so they understand and know who he is,” Moon recalled. “Because he tended to be a little bit isolated sometimes. The team wants to know who their quarterback is, so they can fight for you.”

Can you fight your way out of this mess with a season potentially hanging in the balance? The Broncos are averaging a putrid 15.0 points per game. Wilson heads into Monday Night Football with career lows in passer rating (82.8) and completion percentage (59.4). The irony for Moon is the same as it is for the rest of us: The harder this thing is to watch, the harder it is to change the channel.

“As far as his work ethic, I never had a problem with that,” Moon said. “(Wilson) worked as hard as anybody when he first came in the league. But I just can’t imagine you can still be doing the same amount (of work) when you’re also focused and concentrating on all these other things.”

“(Feeling) up and down, health-wise,” the trail-blazing former Broncos quarterback told me earlier this week. Then he laughed. “I hope the Denver Broncos resurrect themselves.”

He’s hoping Teddy Bridgewater can resurrect his career, too, starting with that season-opening rhumba with the New York Giants on Sunday. And that the portions of ����apountry that still refuse to accept that Bridgewater beat out Drew Lock for the starting job will come around to reality. Or sanity. Eventually.

“Fans are going to be pro- fans or anti- fans, regardless, at some point and time,” said Briscoe, the first Black starting quarterback in team history, a man whose rookie record for Broncos passing touchdowns in a season (14, 1968) still stands proud.

“(Bridgewater) has enough experience — it����ap not like he’s just being thrown to the wolves. He’s had experience with fan (feedback), all that stuff. It����ap not like he hasn’t or won’t experience (different) reactions. He can handle it. Denver fans are rabid, now. He’s lucky he doesn’t have to play in the old (Mile High) with the south stands.”

With that, Briscoe laughed again. He’s been there. A 14th round draft pick out of the University of Omaha, the 5-foot-11 Briscoe — nicknamed “The Magician” for the tricks he pulled with his right arm and his legs — became the first Black starting quarterback of the Super Bowl era.

As such, he had to play well enough to win over the masses. Fans. Teammates. Coaches. Front offices. Briscoe had to scrap for his chance, lighting a path for successors such as James Harris, Doug Williams, Warren Moon, Randall Cunningham — icons through the generations to come.

“I believe that if I had failed,” Briscoe said, “then James Harris wouldn’t have gotten drafted that very next year (1969) as a quarterback. And I take pride in that, for sure.”

Bridgewater is slated to become the first Black quarterback to start a Week 1 game for the Broncos. The big deal there, Briscoe said, is that five decades after his historic start on Oct. 6, 1968, it����ap no longer that big of a deal.

“With the plethora of Black quarterbacks we have in the league, it����ap not as profound,” Briscoe said. “When I was playing, it was as a ‘Black quarterback.’ Now it����ap just a ‘quarterback.’

“He’s the field general, so it really doesn’t matter at this juncture. When you look around the league and you look in college and look in high schools, the kids that are playing quarterback, they just happen to be (different races).”

To that end, the Broncos last month in honor of Briscoe, who left Denver after the 1968 season and played the next eight years as a wide receiver with Buffalo, Miami, Detroit, San Diego and New England.

“That����ap really cool,” Briscoe said. “Anytime I can help youngsters or others that show their skills to get a break, I’m for that.”

His favorite part of Bridgewater’s skill set ain’t the arm. Or the feet that give Steady Teddy more time to work with in the pocket. Or the field vision that allows him to see what some younger peers don’t.

No, for Briscoe, it����ap the stuff between the ears. The calm. The Zen.

“He’s a very interesting kid,” Briscoe said of Bridgewater. “From what I have seen of his play, (he) doesn’t seem to get rattled. He has the temperament (to) block out any negativity that happens to him and go on to the next play. There’s always the next play.

“So it����ap good to have that type of mentality, that he’s overcome adversity. And that����ap going to bode well for him in tight situations. And there will be tight situations.”

And if, after some of those tight situations, the boos come raining down?

“Block it out,” Briscoe replied. “He’s the quarterback. He’s the one that, if you’re (going) to show poise, and in the line of fire, it����ap going to last him through the season.

“No matter what happens, he’s going to have naysayers. He’s got to be like a cool glass of lemonade.”

The sting?

The sting needs work.

“Wide receiver is probably one of the more difficult positions to come into this league and already be good right away at,” Warren Moon, the Hall-of-Fame-quarterback-turned-analyst, said of Jeudy, the Broncos’ rookie wideout whose propitious debut in Week 1 — four catches, 56 receiving yards — was overshadowed by two untimely drops.

“You’re playing against more polished cover guys than you ever did in college and you’re playing against more sophisticated coverages. The talent level goes up and your learning curve goes up.”

Next up on the syllabus: A Steelers defense that last week held Saquon Barkley to six rushing yards and picked off Giants quarterback Daniel Jones twice. Pittsburgh notched a sack on 16.8% of New York’s pass plays in Week 1, or roughly one out of every six drop-backs.

Courtland Sutton will likely be a coin-flip all the way up to Sunday morning. And Drew Lock is going to need all the friends he can find at Heinz Field.

So: Can he trust you, kid?

Can we trust you?

On the road? In the Steel City? Trying to prevent the Broncos from opening a season 0-2 over back-to-back campaigns for the first time since the rotten salad days of 1965 and ’66?

“Those critical drops, one on third down and one that could have changed the momentum of the game, I felt like I failed my team on those two plays,” Jeudy told reporters last week in advance of the Broncos’ Week 2 visit to Pittsburgh.

“Me learning from that, just going out here and practicing and really focus on catching the ball and (focusing) on the little details of catching the ball, is really going to help me. Those two drops will probably help me on not dropping passes for the whole season.”

From Florida to Alabama to the Front Range, Jeudy’s never been short of work ethic. Or want-to. Failure is growth, the kid . He gets it.

And yeah, it����ap great that you walk into battle thinking that every ball in the air is yours by divine right. Now you’ve got to make the rest of us believe it, too.

Nothing gives wideouts an edge in this league — or sinks them — quite like trust. Trust from your quarterback. Your teammates. Your coaches. The fans. In the NFL, it����ap earned the hard way, over time and under fire.

“It does take time,” Moon noted. “Right now, in the modern passing game, it doesn’t take as long, but it����ap going to take these guys until later in the season before they get a feel for it. And for some guys, it might take into their second year. But the good thing about these guys is they’re going to be able to get together and build something with their quarterbacks.”

Alas, chemistry also takes time, and Jeudy and Lock, without a preseason to iron out the kinks at game speed, are having to build theirs on the fly.

Without Sutton, the rainbows over the top that you fell in love with last December are a lottery ticket. The Broncos still have a lot of interesting, viable YAC threats, Noah Fant and Jeudy chief among them. But with DaeSean Hamilton and Tim Patrick, the vertical stuff isn’t going to scare the Steelers the way it does when No. 14 shoots up the boundary.

Which puts the onus on offensive coordinator Pat Shurmur to either get bonkers creative or to throw caution to the wind. And hope it����ap at his back.

Can he trust you, kid?

Can we trust you?

“You never really see a receiver coming into this league and tear it up their first year,” Moon said. “Randy Moss did it, but it usually takes guys a year or so to figure it out. Jerry Rice had people in his rookie year think, ‘He’s a bust.’ But now he’s become the all-time leading receiver.”

Sutton dropped seven passes as a rookie two years ago, or 8.3% of the times he was targeted. Jeudy’s old pal Calvin Ridley dropped the rock 10 times over 16 games as a rookie, at a rate of 10.9%. Jeudy’s at 25% after one night����ap work.

Is this rare? Or routine? The most picture-perfect route running in the world, if you can’t hang on to the ball, is nothing more than a sexy incompletion. A little failure is growth. A lot of failure is a narrative.

“You can’t think of yourself as ‘just a football player,’” Marlin Briscoe, the former Broncos quarterback and the first African-American signal caller in team history, said of current stars Von Miller, Justin Simmons and Kareem Jackson. “Because now, you’re not.

“Although we had a lot of thoughts on how we thought the world should be, we couldn’t speak on it. Today, these kids have a voice. And more and more, with LeBron James and Colin Kaepernick and those who have shown that if you believe something isn’t right, and you really believe in it, you should express yourself.”

The man’s on notice now. Everywhere. Yes, political correctness is too often couched as an excuse to condescend. And yes, political discourse has devolved into a blood sport. But respect is a double-edged sword that cuts both ways.

When Oklahoma State football coach Mike Gundy wears the shirt of a right-wing news network that mocks the Black Lives Matter movement, it����ap only natural that African-American players, , think twice about their fealty.

Longtime University of Iowa strength-and-conditioning coach Chris Doyle, the highest-paid muscle man in college football, was considered untouchable for two decades — until black players who used to be in the program shared stories of his sins. In past years, the Hawkeyes might’ve coughed uncomfortably and looked the other way. On Monday, the university gave Doyle $1.1 million and 15 months of benefits

Locker rooms in the NFL are roughly 70% African-American. The coaching staffs are roughly 30% black. Last fall, . And just 15% of the head coaches.

Black lives matter. Black respect matters.

“It����ap a trying time,” Briscoe said. “And it always has been for a black man. You’d be surprised the personalities who’ve had to undergo the battle with the white establishment, being a black man.”

When Miller marches, he’s not just stepping for his peers. When Simmons speaks, he’s not just preaching for his heirs. They’re carrying the flag for Briscoe, now 74 and retired in Long Beach, Calif., a proud man whose anger left the righteous stage ages ago.

Before Lamar Jackson, before Russell Wilson, before Warren Moon and Doug Williams, there was Marlin The Magician,

A 14th-round draft pick of the Broncos in 1968 out of Omaha, he refused to sign with the team as a defensive back unless he was given at least a three-day look at quarterback, his collegiate position, during training camp. On Oct. 6, Briscoe became the first African-American starting quarterback in the AFL and the first black signal-caller to lead a major pro football franchise in 15 years.

No. 15 threw for 14 touchdowns in 11 appearances, including four in a game — a Broncos rookie record — against Buffalo on Nov. 24. He connected on 10 touchdowns over his final four starts. He averaged 7.5 yards per touch and 7.1 yards per pass attempt.

The next winter, while Briscoe went back to Nebraska to finish his degree, he found out the Broncos were holding positional meetings for signal-callers. Only they’d never bothered to call and ask him to show up.

“Black players knew the deal,” said Briscoe, who finished his NFL career at wideout, making the 1970 Pro Bowl with Buffalo and winning two Super Bowls with the Dolphins. “It took a lot of guts to do what (Kaepernick) did. A lot of guts.

“As things progressed, it����ap something that a lot of players felt. But they couldn’t stand up to the powers-that-be. We all had feelings, especially talking about the ‘60s … but you just couldn’t (say) it, because you’d lose your job. We had a rule: We couldn’t express our feelings. There were a lot of Kaepernicks in the world, quietly, back then.”

There was a Broncos teammate, also African-American, who found himself lopped by then-coach Lou Saban for the sins of an open mind and a free spirit.

“He was the only veteran in the entire backfield and would’ve been a starter,” Briscoe said. “But because he wouldn’t cut his afro and wouldn’t stop reading Malcolm X between practices, they cut him. That was a rude awakening for me.”

More than one night has been sleepless since. Briscoe recounted being pulled over recently near his home in Southern California after trading glances with a passing police officer in one of the so-called “nicer” parts of town.

“Sure enough, he turned around and (stopped me),” the former Broncos quarterback said. “He asked me, ‘Did I hear any loud music?’ And I said, ‘No sir, I came here to pay my mortgage.’

“He took off. But I already knew he was going to stop me just by the way he was looking at me.”

A pause.

“It hasn’t changed. It hasn’t changed.”

Moon did an extensive radio interview on KIRO-FM to address claims of sexual assault brought in a lawsuit by Wendy Haskell.

“A lot of women have held a lot of these feelings in for a long time, and are coming out and expressing these feelings, and they should be applauded for that,” Moon said. “And I applaud those women for doing that. But in this particular situation, in my case, it just doesn’t apply.”

Haskell filed the lawsuit in Orange County, California, this month, asserting that Moon made “unwanted and unsolicited” sexual advances while she worked for Sports 1 Marketing. Moon, who played parts of 17 seasons in the NFL with Houston, Minnesota, Seattle and Kansas City, is the co-founder and president of the company.

Moon said Thursday he had a friendship with Haskell before she was hired as his assistant last summer and that their relationship was never sexual. Moon said he believed the lawsuit was in response to her being switched to a different job within the company.

“Our relationship kind of escalated over the last year or so and became more of just a friendship; we basically became like really close companions,” Moon said. “But we have been very, very close. We’ve shared a lot of things; we’ve talked a lot; we’ve been a lot of different places together; we’ve traveled together; we’ve done a lot of different things. So that’s one thing that people don’t know. There was a pre-existing relationship before she ever started working for me.”

The lawsuit alleges that Haskell was forced to sleep in the same bed with Moon on business trips while wearing lingerie. Haskell says she complained about the arrangement, but that Moon responded, “this was the way it was.”

In the interview, Moon admitted the pair had shared a hotel bed on trips but said nothing sexual occurred. He said Haskell was never forced to wear lingerie. When questioned if he thought sharing a room was appropriate, Moon said he didn’t view the behavior as out of the norm, noting he had done that in the past.

“At times we did share rooms together, and at other times we didn’t,” Moon said Thursday. “It just depended on the situation.”

Haskell also contends she was drugged by Moon during a trip to Mexico in October. The lawsuit alleges that Moon acknowledged drugging Haskell because he thought she wasn’t “having fun.” She also claims Moon pulled off her swimsuit during the Mexico trip.

“All of that is totally untrue, and I have witnesses that would testify to that, that were present or knew the situation. So, no truth to that at all,” Moon said.

He also was accused of sexual harassment in 1995 by a Minnesota Vikings cheerleader in a case that was settled out of court. Moon was also arrested the same year in Texas for an altercation with his wife. Moon was acquitted in the case after his wife testified she started the fight.

Moon took leave from his job as a commentator on the Seattle Seahawks’ radio broadcasts after the suit was made public.