Christian learned the McCaffrey way from Ed. Panthers and Broncos aren’t that different
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Broncos at Panthers
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Ed McCaffrey had an odd routine on the Denver Broncos’ team plane in the 1990s, one that accurately predicted the way his son would behave as Carolina’s star running back a generation later — even during this lost season for Christian McCaffrey.
Before we get to that routine, though, let’s acknowledge this on the eve of Denver playing the Panthers at 1 p.m. Sunday at Bank of America Stadium.
Even though the two teams are separated by 1600 miles and usually only play each other every four years, there are a number of significant connections between the Denver Broncos and Carolina Panthers.
The most famous came in Super Bowl 50 on Feb. 7, 2016, when the favored Panthers couldn’t stop the Denver pass rush and got whipped, 24-10. Cam Newton made a business decision not to jump on his own fumble while it was still a one-score game with 4:16 left in the fourth quarter and then starred in a “Keep Pouting” postgame press conference.
In some ways, the Panthers have never been the same since that startling day in Santa Clara. Neither has Denver. Carolina is 33-43 since that Super Bowl; Denver is 31-45.
Vic Fangio, the Broncos’ head coach, was Carolina’s first defensive coordinator from 1995-98. I asked Fangio this week about his favorite memories while with the Panthers, and he smiled when he recalled his daughter’s birth in Charlotte and linebacker Sam Mills’ shovel-pass interception pick-6 that prompted Carolina’s first-ever victory in 1995.
But the most significant Denver-Carolina connection now is that former Denver wide receiver Ed McCaffrey, who won two Super Bowl rings with Denver in the John Elway era, is Christian’s father.
Christian McCaffrey — who likely will miss his 10th game of the 2020 season Sunday, this time due to a quad injury that has made his status “doubtful” — grew up going to Broncos games. Especially after wins, he would visit his Dad in the Denver locker room afterward along with the other McCaffrey boys (there are four brothers; Christian is second-oldest).
Wide receiver Willie Green played on both of those Super Bowl teams in Denver. A starter on the first two Carolina Panther squads in 1995 and ‘96, Green left for more money in free agency in Denver in 1997 and there became friends with Ed McCaffrey.
“Ed was a great guy — fearless going over the middle, a damn good blocker and probably an 850 credit score,” Green said. “The reason for the credit score was that every Saturday on a road game, when we flew somewhere on the team plane, Ed would bring his checkbook and his envelopes and his bills and pay them all through the trip, back in the days you had to actually write checks for everything. Most everyone else was in the back of the plane, playing card games and gambling. Not Ed. He was a bill-payer.”
The McCaffrey way
That sense of duty, even on road trips, has been passed on to Christian McCaffrey, who is nothing if not responsible.
McCaffrey’s latest injury — his third distinct one this season, to go along with a high-ankle sprain and a separated shoulder — came when he was working out on his own during the Panthers’ bye week and tweaked his quad. Then the quad tightened up on him in Wednesday’s practice. It’s not an ideal situation, but that’s the sort of “trouble” Christian McCaffrey gets into.
His father, former teammates say, was the same way.
Howard Griffith was another former Panther player who migrated to Denver for those two Super Bowl championships (this occasional pipeline has gone both ways — current Carolina center Matt Paradis played his first five NFL seasons for Denver).
Griffith scored two TDs in the 1998 Super Bowl win over Atlanta and likely would have scored a third if not for a last-minute play-call change, he said. Griffith was a battering-ram fullback who grew to know the entire McCaffrey family well and was mentioned earlier this week by Christian as one of his favorite former Broncos on his father’s teams.
“As good a player as Ed was, he never acted like that,” Griffith said. “He really worked. All his kids have taken on that same kind of personality.”
The father and son aren’t entirely similar. They play different positions. And while Ed McCaffrey — now the head football coach at the University of Northern Colorado — is 6-foot-5, Christian is six inches shorter at 5-11. The younger McCaffrey is also faster and more explosive than his father.
“As far as athleticism, there’s a big difference,” Griffith said. “I remember watching Christian play youth basketball games in Colorado, playing ‘up’ against older kids. He was special. You could tell it then.”
It’s not like Ed couldn’t run, however. You don’t spend 13 years as an NFL wide receiver and start for two teams that won the Super Bowl if you’re a tortoise.
“You’d have a lot of corners on the other team who would say, ‘Who’s the tall white guy?’ ” Griffith said, recalling those Denver teams. “It was, ‘I got him. He can’t run by me.’ And Ed would go right by them. Film didn’t really do him justice.”
Green added that the elder McCaffrey was legendary in the locker room for the lack of pads that he wore during games.
“Ed wore the smallest shoulder pads that you could find,” Green said. “It looked like he had gotten them from a six-year-old kid on a Little League team. He never wore thigh pads, or side pads, and his knee pads may as well have not been there. He wanted to be the lightest person on the field. If he could have played buck naked, I think he would have.”
Vic Fangio’s time with Panthers
Fangio spent 32 years as an NFL assistant before he got his first shot at a head coaching job at age 60 in Denver. He’s in his second season with the Broncos and employs former Panthers offensive coordinator Mike Shula as his quarterbacks coach.
This year for Denver has included a number of close losses, one near-miss vs. Kansas City and a 4-8 record. All of that mimics the Panthers’ 2020. Fangio and Shula also had to direct the Broncos in one game with practice-squad wide receiver Kendall Hinton playing quarterback when Denver’s regular QBs were all unavailable due to COVID-19; the Panthers placed eight players on the COVID list this week.
Denver will have starting quarterback Drew Lock back for this game, played in the same stadium Fangio coached in during Carolina’s run as a second-year franchise to the NFC championship game in 1996.
“The fondest memory I have in Charlotte was my daughter (Cassie) being born there in 1996,” Fangio said. “That was a great day. And our first two seasons there were kind of special … We won seven of our last 11 in 1995. I remember the one play that Sam Mills had that interception at Clemson to make the big play (in Carolina’s first-ever win, in 1995). And then we had the great year in 1996. So there were a lot of good memories there.”
The Panthers and Denver last played in the 2016 regular-season opener, about seven months after their Super Bowl. The regular-season game is mostly remembered for Newton taking four helmet-to-helmet hits (only one of which was flagged) and for Graham Gano missing a 50-yard field goal that would have won the game with nine seconds left. Instead, Carolina lost, 21-20.
The Panthers’ history with Denver hasn’t been good — they are 1-5 against Denver as a franchise, and they almost certainly won’t have Christian McCaffrey on Sunday to help them change it against the team he rooted for as a kid.
“I’m sure he wants to play in this game,” Panthers head coach Matt Rhule said of McCaffrey Friday, “growing up watching the Denver Broncos, watching his dad.... But this just wasn’t meant to be.” Still, as that Super Bowl from nearly five years ago showed everyone, it’s hard to predict where a Denver-Carolina game will take you.
This story was originally published December 11, 2020 at 10:01 AM with the headline "Christian learned the McCaffrey way from Ed. Panthers and Broncos aren’t that different."
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