From his favorite moments as a player to his view of Tebowmania, Elway provided new insights about his time as a player and general manager.
Elway has arrived.
Netflix’s latest sports documentary, releasing on Dec. 22 on its streaming platform, chronicles the career of the most iconic Denver Bronco.
As a quarterback, John Elway led the Broncos for 16 seasons, earned nine Pro Bowl nods, reached five Super Bowls and won the championship in his final two seasons. As a general manager, Elway landed another Hall of Fame quarterback for the Broncos, Peyton Manning, in free agency and built the team that captured Denver’s third Super Bowl in the 2015 season. Elway’s story also had its share of intriguing twists and turns that are the stuff of documentary filmmakers’ dreams: his maneuverings to avoid playing in Baltimore, his brief stint in Major League Baseball, his late-game heroics in The Drive, a literal twist in the Super Bowl — the helicopter spin in Super Bowl XXXII.
Before the documentary Elway made its way to Netflix, Elway himself visited the Guerilla Sports studios to sit with After the Horn hosts Woody Paige, Ron Zappolo and Tom Green. The special episode touched topics ranging from “The Play” in Elway’s college career to the arrival of Peyton Manning to Elway’s true thoughts on Tim Tebow.
In need of some light pregame viewing material before screening the documentary, or ready for more John Elway content after the doc? These are five of the best moments from Elway’s Guerilla Sports debut.
Elway recalls how his rivalry with fellow Class of 1983 quarterback Dan Marino inspired him.
Dan Marino is to the Dolphins what John Elway became to the Broncos, and early on, Marino had a faster start to his career by breaking all sorts of NFL records in his second season. Marino became the first NFL quarterback to throw for over 5,000 passing yards in a year, set a new record with 48 touchdown passes that would last until the end of the 20th century and led the Dolphins to a surprise Super Bowl appearance.
Elway recounted that he was more than ready to have the green light to direct the offense like Marino.
“Yeah, there’s no question,” Elway said. “I mean, Danny threw for 5,000 yards his second year — that was just unbelievable. Especially as a guy who came out in the ‘83 draft, right, so there was a competition there no matter what. With Danny coming out and doing that in the second year, there’s no question, yeah, we’re the same age, I want to do that too. I think I can do that. I’d like to have a chance to do that.”
Elway’s three Super Bowl victories are still among his life highlight.
After losing in his first three Super Bowl appearances, Elway captured Super Bowl titles in his last two seasons as a player and once as the Broncos’ general manager. In the moments of celebration after Elway’s first title, Broncos owner Pat Bowlen declared, “This one’s for John!” Elway returned the favor a couple decades later by dedicating the Super Bowl 50 title to Bowlen, saying, “this one’s for Pat!”
The victories provided the ultimate validation for a Hall of Fame career.
“No doubt — it solidified me as a quarterback and as a GM if you think about it, to be on the winning team and to help put a Super Bowl team together,” Elway said. “Yeah, those two. Plus, the relationship I had with Pat, and to be able to do that was special. When Mobley knocked that pass down in Super Bowl 32, that was like the happiest I’ve ever been in my life.”
Elway saw Peyton Manning as the perfect opportunity to move on from Tebowmania.
Elway was candid in his thoughts about polarizing quarterback Tim Tebow, who arrived in Denver a year before Elway took over as GM and took over the league spotlight in a shocking run to the playoffs in 2011. Tebow led a sequence of incredible late-game victories, none more so than Denver’s Wild Card win against the Pittsburgh Steelers in overtime.
Still, Elway wanted to move on at quarterback and knew the Denver fan base would not be happy if he let a quarterback who just won a playoff game loose… unless he signed a clearly better option. Along came the perfect opportunity: four-time NFL MVP Peyton Manning, available after a surprise release from the Indianapolis Colts.
Elway shared his perspective as the Broncos’ general manager at the time.
“Tim was a great kid,” Elway said. “He played his tail off and competed. … The thing is, the first year that I was here, we hadn’t played well the first two games. Tebow had been drafted the year before I got here. Kyle Orton was starting and I went to John, I said, ‘John, at some point at time… if things aren’t going well, we have to find out what we have in Tebow.’ … Then you go through that whole year and it was absolutely crazy. The wins we had, we go to Miami, we’re down 14-0 with three minutes to go, we got one first down, we win, 15-14. So after that year, it was like, ‘oh, boy.’”
“[Peyton] was the savior. I knew the only out for Tim Tebow, Peyton was the only out. They might have blown up Mile High or blown up my house — we had to have an option. You can’t [do that after a] win in the first round of the playoffs.”
Elway shares how the 2015 Super Bowl-winning Broncos defense compares to the elite 2025 unit.
While the 2013 Broncos reached the Super Bowl with a historic passing offense and Manning’s 55 touchdown passes, the 2015 Broncos proved that defense wins championships with a vicious defense led by Super Bowl 50 MVP, Hall of Famer DeMarcus Ware and the No Fly Zone secondary. Elway compared that unit to the current Broncos’ defense, which boasts a reigning Defensive Player of the Year and the league’s best pass rush.
“That defense was as good as there was,” Elway said. “… Experience-wise, we were better than [the 2025 defense]. I think they do more now than we did more in 2015. Wade was, we’re gonna man it up.’ It’s a different style of defense, because this one is a lot more aggressive. We could pressure with four [pass rushers] in 2015. That’s why we won the Super Bowl, because we could pressure with four.”
That said, the 2015 team had the advantage of an all-time recruiting advantage.
“My first 10 years, that’s what kept us in every game, was the defense,” Elway said. “In 2013, Peyton broke all the records and all the TD passes and went through the roof offensively statistically, and then we went and got beat by the Seahawks in New York in Super Bowl 48. I remember after that game, I’m like, ‘Oh we’re going back to the defensive side.’ Peyton was starting to slide a little bit too. And then it worked out. I will tell you, the easiest thing in the world is recruit to Peyton Manning. That’s what you don’t realize is, when you have a guy like that, guys will take that, they’ll come play here.”
Elway reveals his message to current Broncos quarterback Bo Nix amid dominant season.
At the time of Elway’s November episode, the Broncos had raced out to a 9-2 record. Still, the debate around second-year quarterback Bo Nix was a constant source of discourse, as Nix’s late-game heroics always seemed to follow uninspiring performances earlier in games.
Elway said that he doesn’t know Nix well, but he had a simple message for how to deal with the haters.
“I said, ‘Bo, turn it down, don’t listen to it,’” Elway said. “‘You keep winning games, everything else goes away.’”
Elway is also pleased with Nix’s progression in year two. After finishing as the runner-up in Rookie of the Year voting last season, Nix has been a crucial contributor in the Broncos’ 12-3 start and ranks in the top ten league-wide in touchdown passes (24) and passing yards (3,608).
“I think he’s settling down a little bit,” Elway said. “For the first part, it looked like he was moving too quick. Things were moving really, really fast for him. Once he slows that down. … He’s got all the tools.”
To see the full episode of After the Horn, you can click this link or find Guerilla Sports on X or Instagram. The documentary Elway is now available on Netflix.
