When Horan Punts, It’s Not Just for Kicks

On a team of notorious underachievers, Denver Bronco Mike Horan is a professional. He gets paid to come up short.

Point out a goal for him and he better not reach it. Put a football in his hands and the worst he can do is put it in the end zone.

The ultimate Super Bowl Bronco, right?

The Denver dynasty-in-reverse explained at last?

Sorry. Horan only punts here. Punts well too. His punts have landed him in a Pro Bowl, the Broncos in three Super Bowls. And when his punts land inside the opposition’s 20-yard line, and stop in front of the goal line, he makes a lot of people happy.

“The one thing I don’t want to do,” Horan says, “is kick the ball in the end zone. The only person who feels more strongly about touchbacks than me is (Coach) Dan Reeves. He hates them.

“It’s gotten to the point where, any time we’re (punting) inside the 50, Dan expects the ball inside the 20. He’s seen me do it for four years.

“Now, if we’re in a no-man’s situation, in between a punt and a field goal, Dan would rather send me out there, because he expects the other team to be pinned inside its 20.”

It’s not just Reeves, though. Faces Horan will never see, names he will never know also assemble in his corner on every coffin corner.

Punts With A Purpose. That’s the name of the charity Horan and his wife, Kim, started in 1988, designed to raise funds for the Volunteers of America emergency shelter in Denver. For every punt he plants inside the 20, Horan receives pledges from local fans and businesses to aid the homeless.

“This year we raised a little over $20,000. That’s $30,000 in two years,” Horan says with pride. “It makes those coffin corners a little more meaningful. This year, I had 24 of them--a career high.”

Horan, a graduate of Sunny Hills High School and Fullerton College, lives in Fullerton during the off-season and, through his church, “became pretty active with the homeless situation at Featherly Park, the campground in Yorba Linda.

“When we came back to Denver, my wife and I decided that’s what we wanted to stay with,” Horan said. “We wanted to support the shelters and this is what we came up with.”

Some suffer for their art. Horan plies his art for the suffering. It’s an art he has honed for half of his 30 years, dating to his junior season at Sunny Hills, but an art National Football League teams were slow to appreciate.

Five teams passed on Horan before he became Denver’s punter late in the 1986 season. Quite literally, Horan spent his five professional seasons kicking around the league.

--1982: Drafted by Atlanta. Cut by Atlanta.

--1983: Signed by Green Bay. Cut in mini-camp. Signed by Buffalo. Waived before the season.

--1984: Signed by Philadelphia. Stuck for two seasons.

--1986: Caught on with Minnesota for one week but did not kick. Four weeks later, signed by Denver, out of emergency.

“From what the guys tell me, they had a major punting problem,” Horan says. “At Denver, our punt (coverage) depends on the punter kicking it in a certain direction--between the numbers and the sidelines. I’m told that before I got here, whenever the ball was kicked, no one knew where it was going.”

What Horan might lack in leg strength, he makes up in precision. Usually, the Broncos know where the ball’s going. Usually, they also know the ball’s not going to be returned. Only 36% of Horan’s punts were returned in 1989, the lowest percentage in the NFL.

He averaged 40.4 yards a try, with a 63-yarder his longest. And the dreaded touchback? Horan had five, bringing his 3 1/2-season total in Denver to 14.

Horan has punted in two Super Bowls, the 42-10 disaster against Washington and the 39-20 loss to the New York Giants. He claims the Redskin game was closer than it looked.

“Take away the second quarter,” he says with a grin, “and we win, 10-7.”

And take away Joe Montana, Roger Craig, Jerry Rice and John Taylor and the Denver might win this one.

Again, the Broncos are facing another bust, handicapped by history--San Francisco is 3-0 in Super Bowls, Denver 0-3--and handicapped as potential 12-point losers. In the Rockies, fans are prepared for the worst. Before last week’s AFC championship game, a Denver radio talk show tallied phone calls, keeping track of the ones hoping for a Cleveland victory, thus sparing the Broncos one more national humiliation in New Orleans.

Horan is annoyed by the idea that he should apologize for showing up here.

“I think that was started by a columnist in Denver,” he says. “I think it’s pretty stupid. I don’t think 76,000 people in Mile High Stadium wanted us to lose. Especially when they helped us to win.

“We know we’re coming in as underdogs. But we know that by being here and being able to compete in this game is certainly a better alternative than losing the last game.”

Now, there’s just a new last game to lose.

All Horan can do is do what he does best. Kick to the sidelines. Keep the ball away from Taylor. Play the corners. Avoid the end zone.

Do the people of Denver some good. If not the Broncos, there are others, with more at stake, who can benefit.