You just can’t help it as a sports fan. It’s not enough for us to watch the games, follow the trades, free-agent signings, or get overly invested in the future of teenagers on draft night. We don’t just live to tell the tales of what happened. No, spinning the yarn of what could have been goes hand in hand with the lived experiences of every sports fan.
Sure, this team lost that one game, but what if they hadn’t? Can you imagine if my team hadn’t gotten such lousy lottery luck that one year? What would my world look like if that one key player hadn’t gotten injured? Everything would be different!
And that’s the ambitious project we here at DNVR decided to embark upon for this year’s Rank Week. We’ve done the best athletes and most memorable games, but those are easy enough. We saw those happen. What about the alternate universes that we all think about but didn’t get to live in?
Colorado sports fans, we give you the top “What If?” moments in Colorado sports history.
(This list will be updated throughout the week with “What If’s” #1 and #2 released Friday.)
There have been some valiant attempts at the vaunted “three-peat” in NFL history, but no team has ever won three consecutive Super Bowls. Back when John Elway was quarterbacking Denver Broncos and was joined in the backfield by Terrell Davis, they won Super Bowls 32 and 33. There was a genuine belief that Mike Shanahan could coach the Hall of Fame 1-2 punch to a third Super Bowl.
While there was a lot of talk leading up to Super Bowl 33 between the Broncos and Atlanta Falcons that it would be Elway’s final game, Elway himself wasn’t quite sure. When he eventually won Super Bowl MVP after going 18-for-29 and throwing for 336 yards, including an 80-yard touchdown to Rod Smith, the conversation was about what special run it was for Elway and the Broncos. The hard-luck loser early in his career was going out on top after winning consecutive championships.
What if he didn’t? The Broncos still had Davis, who had won the regular season MVP after eclipsing the rarified air of the 2,000-yard club, and was one of the game’s premier backs. Shanahan’s brilliance on the headset was just beginning and Elway was the guy to bring it all together. Without Elway, the Broncos went with second-year pro Brian Griese behind center and it was his ill-advised throw that resulted in the devastating knee injury that derailed Davis’s career.
If Elway stays, does Davis ever get hurt? Does he continue to dominate with Elway only having to serve as a high-level counterpart and not the main player? Certainly, the Broncos would have done better than the 6-10 record they managed but it isn’t hard to envision Elway and a healthy Davis bringing that team to the mountaintop for a third time, cementing itself as the truest dynasty in league history.
Back in a time when replay review was still a foreign concept, destined for a distant future of pitch clocks and pitch comms, the play at the plate with Matt Holliday was decided solely by the naked eye of home plate umpire Tim McClelland. It remains one of the bigger in-game controversies in baseball, and for good reason.
The Rockies aren’t a franchise known for deep-rooted history. As a franchise celebrating its 30th birthday in 2025, you could make the argument that by 2007, the organization had yet to find its defining moment. The team made the playoffs back in 1995, but that celebration was short-lived after getting bounced in the divisional round by the Braves.
The Rockies wouldn’t grace the playoffs again until that day in 2007 when Matt Holliday did (or did not) touch home. But I’m not here to debate whether or not Holliday was safe or out. I’m here to talk about the impact that single play made on the franchise we see today.