Rewatch: Broncos at Chiefs 12/2/84

The Broncos were coming off a disappointing loss to the Seahawks in which a game-tying field goal by Rich Karlis hit the upright, snapping their 10-game win streak. Although they had temporarily yielded control of the AFC West to Seattle, a matchup with the last place Kansas City Chiefs seemed to be the perfect way to get back on track. The Chiefs were 5-8 and had dropped four in a row.

But maybe it wouldn’t be quite that simple. Early in the broadcast Charlie Jones and Bob Griese mention that the Broncos are 16-32 all time against the Chiefs and 5-18 on the road. Also, it’s freezing cold. The wind chill is at -2 and only 38,494 are on hand at Arrowhead Stadium.

Denver doesn’t play particularly well in the first half, with most of their offense coming on a 48-yard touchdown pass from John Elway to Steve Watson. But Kansas City isn’t great either. With a minute left in the first half, the Chiefs are backed up in their own end of the field and it’s 3rd-and-12, trailing 10-0.

But then Bill Kenney goes deep for Stephone Paige, connecting on a 41-yard pass, and suddenly the Chiefs are in business. Dennis Smith gets his hands on two other Kenney passes, dropping an interception on one and tipping a third-down pass into Paige’s arms on another. Aided by the good fortune, Kansas City winds up scoring a touchdown to make it a three-point game at the half.

The touchdown didn’t seem to do much to sway the momentum in the Chiefs’ favor. On the first play of the second half, Tom Jackson strips Herman Heard of the ball, and the Broncos recover. They turn it into a Karlis field goal and a 13-7 lead. After a Chiefs punt, the Broncos are quickly in business again thanks to a 46-yard pass interference penalty and a 21-yard run by Elway. On first-and-goal from the KC 10, Sammy Winder carries 9 yards to the 1 yard line, and it seems like the Broncos are poised to put this game away.

However, an incomplete pass to Rick Parros and a run for no gain by Winder quickly make it 4th down. They mention that Denver is 4-for-4 on the season on 4th down conversions. Dan Reeves opts to go for it. Winder is stuffed.

However, the Chiefs still can’t seem to shift the momentum in their favor. They go three-and-out on their remaining two drives of the third quarter.

The Chiefs had possession of the ball on their own 15 as the fourth quarter began. With the benefit of the wind at their backs, the momentum gradually begins to shift in their favor.  Heard rushes of 13 and 9 yards and a 26-yard completion from Kenney to Carlos Carson set up a 46-yard field goal by Nick Lowery to make it 13-10.

The Broncos' drive stalls after six plays and they punt it back to the Chiefs. Kenney finds Carson for a 36-yard completion on 3rd-and-10 and on the next play hits Henry Marshall for 29 yards to the Denver 11-yard line. The Broncos' D keeps them out of the end zone, but Lowery comes on to attempt a  field goal. His kick glances off the upright, but goes through. Tie score.

Again, the Broncos can't move the ball and punt it back to the Chiefs. A 24-yard return by J.T. Smith gives them the ball at midfield with 4:25 remaining. Kenney finds Carson for 12 yards and then Heard rushes once for 11 yards and two more times for a total of eight. Kenney is sacked on 3rd-and-2 by Rick Dennison to end the drive, but Lowery comes on and boots his third field goal of the quarter to give the Chiefs their first lead of the game at the two-minute warning.

There's still time left on the clock for Elway and the Broncos to put something together, and they get a big boost when Gerald Willhite returns the kickoff 40 yards. On this particular YouTube video, there must have been a recording error because there are a few plays missing in here. Suddenly, the Broncos are in field goal territory. They've given us plenty of shots of Karlis and reminded us all what happened the previous week in an almost identical situation.

The barefoot kicker comes on to attempt to force overtime. This kick is longer than the previous week - 42 yards - and we've already mentioned the freezing temperatures. The Broncos are letting the clock run down as far as they can before kicking, but then they wind up having to call timeout because they aren’t ready, perhaps “icing” their own kicker.

Karlis awaits the game-tying attempt

Well, whatever happens, it can’t be as bad as the previous week where he hit the upright, can it?

Actually, it can be. This time he hits the left upright and it bounces back onto the field. Chiefs win.

Although disappointing, the loss doesn't end up having a detrimental effect on the Broncos' playoff hopes. The following week, Kansas City crushes Seattle 34-7, breaking Seattle's win streak and setting up a Week 16 winner-take-all clash between the Broncos and Seahawks. So if the master plan was to let the Chiefs have this one in order to boost their confidence, which they would then use to bring down the Seahawks.....brilliant.

Rewatch: Broncos vs. Vikings 11/18/84

In 1983, Terry Bradshaw, who was on the tail-end of a brilliant 14-year career as quarterback of the Pittsburgh Steelers, publicly ripped rookie John Elway, who had forced a trade from the Baltimore Colts after being selected first overall in the draft. "In my opinion, he's not the type of guy you win championships with," Bradshaw said. "He never did it when he was at Stanford. I don't think he'll do it in Denver, and personally don't care if he ever does it."

Well then. 

Bradshaw retired after the 1983 season and joined CBS as an NFL analyst.  

This was the only game the Broncos played on CBS in 1984, and the network sent Verne Lundquist and Terry Bradshaw to the Mile High City.  I'm not sure of what went into the assignments of broadcast teams for Week 12. Maybe it was because Verne had a place in Steamboat Springs. But maybe they just couldn't resist the idea of sending Bradshaw to see Elway in person.

The Vikings managed a decent return on the opening kickoff. However, they fumbled on the first play from scrimmage. The Broncos recovered, and a few minutes later went up 7-0 on a Gerald Willhite touchdown. And things never really got better for the Vikings after that. The Broncos led 28-7 midway through the second quarter after converting two other Minnesota turnovers into touchdowns. 

They mentioned that the winning entry for a naming contest for the ‘84 Broncos defense was "The Plundering Herd” - a reference to their uncanny ability to force turnovers. One graphic during the game indicated that the Broncos had turned 46 takeaways into 126 points, which represented 50% of their scoring on the season.

Terry, the Louisiana kid, was still pretty new to the gig and was pretty folksy on the broadcast. He used a lot of southern dialect, such as “they’re gonna chunk it” and “this ol’ boy.” 

 

Meanwhile, Verne referred to "Danny Reeves" about a dozen or so times. I assume this was due to his roots in broadcasting as radio voice of the Dallas Cowboys during the era in which Dan Reeves played for the team.

The game was briefly interesting late in the first half when the Vikings then staged their only threat of the game, driving to the Denver 7 at the two-minute warning. A touchdown would cut it to 28-14 and make it something of a ballgame again. However, Tommy Kramer’s pass deflected off Roger Jackson and into the arms of Randy Robbins for the fourth Bronco takeaway of the half.

Terry was a little concerned at the Broncos end-of-the-half lack of aggressiveness with still time on the clock. But then almost as if Danny Reeves was listening, Elway went deep, hooking up with Steve Watson for 50 yards to set up a TD pass to Ray Alexander and a 35-7 halftime lead. 

The Broncos received the ball to start the second half and made the score 42-7 when Elway tossed his fifth TD pass of the game. So what could have been a 28-14 score quickly turned into 42-7 in just a few minutes of game clock. 

Gary Kubiak took over at quarterback with the Broncos up by 35. They didn't score again, but they didn't need to. The Vikings managed a pair of garbage time touchdowns to make the final score a respectable 42-21, although they needed to use a "gadget play" on the final play of the game to score the second one. "Gadget play" has completely disappeared from the football lexicon, but the term was used quite liberally on broadcasts in the 1980s.

Elway after 50-yard completion to Watson

Verne appropriately questioned Terry on his criticism of Elway. Terry insisted that it was all water under the bridge and that he was a big fan of Elway's.

Apparently not so much.

Five years later during the runup to the Super Bowl XXIV matchup between the 49ers and Broncos, Bradshaw again took a swipe at Elway, saying that Elway had been "babied" and "had it too easy" and again mentioned the lack of championships and he'd never had it tough like Bradshaw had in the early days in Pittsburgh.

Now that the careers of both of these Hall of Fame quarterbacks are in the rearview mirror, I suppose we could do a full analysis of who truly had it easy and who didn't, but we'll have to save that for another day.