John Elway understands from experience exactly where Joe Flacco is coming from.
The Broncos’ newest starting quarterback said last week he doesn’t want the team to draft a quarterback with the 10th overall pick unless he’s the understood starter. Flacco added he hopes the Broncos use the choice on a different position, with drafting a quarterback “not of most importance.”
“I’m glad he [said] that. I like that. I understand that,” Elway, the team’s president of football operations/G.M., said Tuesday during a pre-draft news conference. “That’s what you want from your guy that is your starting quarterback right now. You want him to have that mentality. I thought those comments were fine.”
Elway had just finished his ninth season, made his fourth Pro Bowl and was only 31 years old in the 1992 draft when the Broncos used the 25th overall choice on UCLA quarterback Tommy Maddox.
“I was standing at the baggage claim at DIA [Denver International Airport], and we needed a wideout,” Elway recalls. “I said, ‘Oh, [Carl] Pickens must have been gone.’ He didn’t go until the second round.”
Elway admits he was upset.
“Sure. Yeah. How’d that work out?” said Elway, who played seven more seasons, made five more Pro Bowls, won two Super Bowls and, five years after he retired, became a Hall of Famer.
Maddox spent only two seasons in Denver, going 0-4 as a starter with six touchdowns and nine interceptions.
