The 2024 NFL Draft is less than two weeks away and the Denver Broncos need to be leaving no stone unturned in their battle to get things turned around and going in the right direction.
The draft is largely a crapshoot in many ways and teams have been known to find diamonds in the least likeliest of places. That is why the draft is so important. Everyone knows the stars and the big names from the big schools. But the best general managers are the ones that find the little-known player from the largely unknown school that becomes a star.
So when you watch your team draft on day three on Saturday and you think those sixth and seventh-round picks are just a waste of time, that is not always the case. Huge contributions can be made by players who the vast majority of football fans have never even heard of. Football is a great game played all over the country and now, many other parts of the world. So for every big name that comes out of Alabama, Michigan or Ohio State, there are players from all over the league that come out of programs with far less notoriety. And in some cases, they become major pieces of a team's success.
Here are five players who became stars for the Broncos despite playing at schools that are nothing more than a small blip on the radar of college football. In order to be included in this list, the player had to be drafted by the Broncos or signed as an undrafted free agent.
Most unlikely schools to ever produce a Denver Broncos star
Lyle Alzado, 1971- Yankton College
To this day, Lyle Alzado remains one of the most interesting players in Broncos history and he came from Yankton College.
Where is Yankton College, you ask? That would be Yankton, South Dakota, which had to be a bit of a culture shock back in the late 1960s for a kid who was born in Brooklyn. Alzado went there after playing for two years at Kilgore College in Kilgore, Texas. Alzado was asked to leave that team and he stated that happened due to him becoming friends with a teammate who was black.
At Yankton, Alzado competed in the NAIA, the National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics, so he wasn't even in the NCAA. At the time, Broncos scout Stan Jones went on a scouting trip that landed him at Montana Tech in Butte, Montana. He was there to watch a running back for Montana Tech, who were squaring off against Yankton. Instead, it was Alzado, a player not really on the NFL radar at the time, that caught the eye of Jones.
The Broncos ended up using a fourth-round pick on Alzado in 1971 based on Jones' assessment and he became one of the best defensive players on the team during a time when the Broncos were known for the "Orange Crush" defense.
He made the Pro Bowl in 1977 and 1978 for the Broncos but a contract dispute between he and the organization before the 1979 season led him to be traded to the Cleveland Browns.
Alzado finished his time in Denver with 64.5 sacks and 14 fumble recoveries. He was also an amateur boxer who once fought Muhammad Ali in an exhibition match and he appeared in some movies as well. Sadly, Alzado passed away at the age of 43 in 1992. He was quite open about his abuse of steroids near the end of his life and unfortunately, is most remembered for that by many.
However, Alzado was a great football player, far better than he is often given credit for and the Broncos did an excellent job of finding him when and where they did.
Shannon Sharpe, 1990: Savannah State
Savannah State has only seen a small handful of players ever make it to the NFL. In 1990, the Denver Broncos decided to take a shot on Shannon Sharpe in the seventh round with pick No. 192. Back in those days, the draft lasted 12 rounds, so it wasn't like the Broncos didn't have some other picks to burn, but there were still nearly 200 players drafted ahead of Sharpe.
Though Sharpe was a terrific player at Savannah State, it was a Division II school and the level of competition he went against could be easily scoffed at. The 1990 draft was not deep at the tight end position. It saw 13 tight ends get drafted and of those, Sharpe was the seventh one taken.
The athletic upside was there and it didn't hurt that his brother, Sterling, was a star wide receiver for the Green Bay Packers. It certainly was one of those high-upside kind of picks. What the Broncos ended up getting was one of the best tight ends in NFL history.
Sharpe caught 675 passes (second on the team's all-time list) for 8,439 yards and 55 touchdowns during his time with the Broncos which included back-to-back Super Bowl victories and an eventual place in the Pro Football Hall of Fame.
Rod Smith, 1994: Missouri Southern State University
Rod Smith is the best wide receiver in the history of the Denver Broncos. He still sits atop the team's all-time list in receptions, receiving yards and touchdown catches and in the eyes of some, has a Hall-of-Fame resume.
But no one saw that coming when he was in college.
The Broncos signed Smith as an undrafted free agent out of Missouri Southern in 1994, a small school that competes in the MIAA Conference of Division II. Smith is on a short list of players that have ever gone to the NFL from that school and he is far and away the best.
He didn't make his presence known until the 1995 season where he caught a last-minute touchdown pass from John Elway to beat Washington. That play would lead to Smith becoming a bigger part of the offense and eventually, Elway's go-to guy.
Smith would help the Broncos win consecutive Super Bowls in 1997 and 1998 and he remains one of the best undrafted players in league history. He became the first undrafted wide receiver to ever eclipse 10,000 yards receiving. He played his entire 14-year career in Denver.
He is a member of the College Football Hall of Fame and the Denver Broncos Ring of Fame. Though seeing him get to Canton seems somewhat unlikely because he was just never a flashy player, it's not like he doesn't deserve it.
John Mobley, 1996: Kutztown
Some eyebrows were raised when the Broncos used their first-round pick in 1996 on a linebacker out of Kutztown, a tiny Division II school in Pennsylvania, but the team knew what it was doing.
Mobley was one of the best defensive rookies in the league in 1996 and the following season, he was a First Team All-Pro. When the Broncos won championships in 1997 and 1998, Mobley was a massive part of that result.
He played his entire eight-year career with the Broncos, having to retire in 2004 following a scary neck injury during the 2003 season. But in his time with the team, he did it all. He was a sure tackler who could rush the passer and also drop back into pass coverage.
He finished his career with 621 tackles, 10.5 sacks and five interceptions. He had three season with at least 100 tackles and outside of the 1999 season where an injury forced him to miss nearly the entire year, he was reliable, making 102 career starts for the team.
Mobley is often forgotten when talking about the best linebackers in team history, but he belongs high on that list. Another thing to note is that three of the four players listed here were part of the team's back-to-back Super Bowl wins, proving that it pays to scout players from the more obscure schools on the map.
Quinn Meinerz, who the Broncos drafted out of Wisconsin-Whitewater in 2021, could easily land on this list if he continues his trajectory. And if you're looking for small-school players in this draft that could become future stars for the Broncos, Jaden Shirden, a running back out of Monmouth and Jalyx Hunt, a linebacker from Houston Christian are some names to watch.