Wide receiver Ed McCaffrey looked more like a high school guidance counselor than a professional football player. Maybe that made opposing teams look past him a bit because the guy seemed to pretty much always be open. Having already gotten himself a ring while a member of the 1994 San Francisco 49ers, McCaffrey didn’t seem to be intimidated by Denver’s Bowl-losing legacy. During the ’97 regular season, he gained only 590 yards … on 45 receptions, a 13.1-yard average. When teams began to take notice of him after the Broncos’ back-to-back Super Bowl wins, McCaffrey responded by increasing his output every year, setting a team record for receptions (with 101) during the 2000 season.

These days, McCaffrey has indeed returned to high school — not as a guidance counselor, but as head coach at Valor Christian in Highlands Ranch, Colorado, which his sons attend. If it seems a bit unfair to have an all-time Broncos great coaching the squad of your private school, just take a look at the staff he’s assembled: ex-Ravens and Broncos receiver Brandon Stokely, former Broncos tackle Tyler Polumbus, and ex-Broncos and Seahawks guard Ben Hamilton, a coaching staff which — McCaffrey included — boasts 16 Super Bowl rings between them. Prior to McCaffrey’s hiring in 2018, Valor went 11-1 and took a narrow loss in the 5A quarterfinals; at this point, you might as well just hand them the next several years of championship trophies.

Linebacker Bill Romanowski was not exactly what you’d call a lovable player. Most of his peers would use a certain word to describe him — a word which rhymes with “grass pole” — due to his outspoken and volatile nature, and the fact that he was prone to picking fights with teammates (one such skirmish even cost a guy his career) and spitting in the faces of opposing players. He defected from the Philadelphia Eagles to help Denver to their first championship. When even the Eagles think you’re a little too intense, you may have some personality problems, but “Romocop” got it done on the field, and today is philosophical about his legacy.

In 2011, the Denver Post named Romanowski the dirtiest player of all time (“It’s fair,” Romanowski said in response), with former teammate Shannon Sharpe opining that he should’ve taken the top four spots. When he’s not sticking his foot in his mouth because of racially insensitive comments or getting in trouble for not paying taxes, he’s writing with surprising eloquence about his well-earned reputation. In an op-ed for The Players’ Tribune, Romanowski explained, “At the end of the day football is a dirty, nasty, violent sport. … The meaner you are, the more you are feared; the more you are feared, the more you get noticed. … Whatever you may think about me — good or bad — there was nobody on the planet that wanted it as bad as I did or who worked harder.”

It seems as though every great team must have one resident loudmouth, and for the ’97 Broncos, the role was ably filled by tight end Shannon Sharpe. Never short on opinions, Sharpe had the game to back up his talk. In the Super Bowl, he made a couple of difficult grabs in traffic late in the game to keep Bronco drives moving and the clock running. After participating in both of Denver’s Super Bowl wins, he departed via free agency to the Baltimore Ravens — who promptly won Sharpe another championship behind one of the stingiest defenses to ever take the field. Until his marks were surpassed by Tony Gonzalez and Jason Witten, he led every tight end in NFL history in both receptions and receiving yards — and since his retirement, the Hall of Famer has put his knowledge of the game (and legendary mouth) to good use as an analyst.

Alongside James Brown, Dan Marino, Boomer Esiason and ex-Steelers coach Bill Cowher, Sharpe provided pregame analysis for CBS’ The NFL Today for a decade. After being replaced (again) by Gonzalez in 2014, he found a new gig at Fox Sports One hosting Undisputed, on which he regularly engages in verbal sparring matches with famed Dallas sportswriter Skip Bayless. It’s the perfect format for his talents; he gets to flex his football knowledge by way of daily shouting contests with Bayless, who is just as much of an opinionated loudmouth as Sharpe himself.

If there’s anybody who knows about overcoming obstacles, it’s former Broncos and Redskins guard Mark Schlereth. For starters, due to undiagnosed dyslexia, he didn’t learn to read until he was in the seventh grade. In a Chicago Tribune interview, he said of the experience, it “helped mold me into a great athlete because I’d pick out those kids who made fun of me in class and then we’d go play dodgeball or football and I wanted to prove something to those kids. I wasn’t mean or hostile. I’ve never been in trouble … but I wanted to prove to them that I did have self worth and that came from my ability as an athlete.”

Later in life, his perseverance would be tested again. In 1993 while with Washington, he was diagnosed with the auto-immune disease Guillain-Barre syndrome, which causes numbness and weakness in the extremities. He beat back that condition in time to join the Broncos for the 1995 season, and spent the rest of his playing career in Denver. His post-retirement career has been spent as a respected analyst for ESPN, where he was a fixture for 16 years before recently joining ex-teammate Sharpe at FS1. He’s also dabbled in acting; he had a small part in 2012’s Red Dawn, played himself in several episodes of HBO’s Ballers, and — this isn’t made up — snagged a recurring role as Detective Roc Hoover (a name of his own creation) on the CBS soap opera Guiding Light.