When John Lynch, Peyton Manning and Steve Atwater go into the Hall of Fame, it's one more celebration of Pat Bowlen's legacy, too

Three Broncos legends will enter the Pro Football Hall of Fame in two-and-a-half weeks’ time.

One was a Bronco by chance. Two were Broncos by choice.

Now, Steve Atwater quickly embraced the fact that the Denver Broncos selected him with the 20th pick in the 1989 NFL Draft. But it was entirely possible that it might never have happened.

I’ll explain that later.

But John Lynch and Peyton Manning became Broncos in large part because of the organization and culture that had been so carefully built, starting with owner Pat Bowlen on the top and extending through all corners of the Broncos’ home stadiums and training facility.

“I had great admiration for the way the Broncos were run as an organization,” Lynch said last week. “Those things travel. There was a reputation they were going to give you a chance every year. That’s all you can ask for in this league.”

It is possible that Lynch would not be a Hall of Famer without those years in Denver. He added four Pro Bowl selections with the Broncos, which seemed unlikely when he signed with the team in March 2004 after the Tampa Bay Buccaneers released him — in part because of concerns about Lynch’s neck.

In four Broncos seasons, Lynch missed just four games. He compensated for the half-step he had lost over the years with the wisdom of experience, to the point where he often seemed to know what play was coming.

The result for Lynch was “four great years,” although the Broncos fell short in the 2005 AFC Championship Game. In the parlance of eventual Broncos coach John Fox, they “picked a bad day to have a bad day,” and Pittsburgh trounced the Broncos, 34-17.

That was the closest the Broncos came to a Super Bowl after John Elway’s retirement as a player and before Manning walked into the building just over six years later.

“My only regret is we never won a championship,” Lynch said, “but I gave it everything I had.”

So did Manning, although he was able to win the title that eluded the Broncos during Lynch’s years, walking off as a world champion thanks to the Broncos’ 24-10 win in Super Bowl 50.

“Mr. Bowlen was such a tremendous man and he was all about winning and he was all about facilitating anything that it took to win,” Manning said in February. “He was an owner that was there all the time but wasn’t doing people’s jobs for them. He was just there to let you know he cared and wanted to do everything he could to win.”

By the time Manning joined the Broncos, Bowlen was not as involved in the day-to-day operations as he had in his prime years. Alzheimer’s disease had already begun to exact its grim toll. But Bowlen was there to introduce Manning when he joined the Broncos, and set the tone for how the organization would embrace its new quarterback.

“I remember having a couple conversations with him that first year even though his health was declining,” Manning recalled in February. “Everybody made me feel welcomed, and that was really helpful in that transition period into the second chapter of my football career.”

Lynch and Manning chose the Broncos in part because of the organization Bowlen built. Atwater was a part of the building process, joining five years into Bowlen’s 35-year stewardship.

But there was an element of chance involved in Atwater becoming a Denver legend.

If the Broncos’ initial offseason plan for 1989 had come to pass, they would not have had the draft choice that they used on Atwater.

Early that year, the Broncos were remaking their defense under recently hired coordinator Wade Phillips, who brought with him an array of pass-rush principles he learned under the late Buddy Ryan in Philadelphia, running the famed 46 defense.

Looking for the same pass-rush punch the Eagles had with Reggie White, the Broncos had their eyes on another eventual Hall of Famer: Buffalo defensive end Bruce Smith. They signed him to a 5-year, $7.5-million offer sheet, giving the Bills seven days to match.

Under the byzantine free-agency rules of the day, the Broncos would have surrendered two first-round picks to the Bills if they declined to match Denver’s offer. But Buffalo owner Ralph Wilson swallowed hard and matched it.

Smith would play another 11 stellar seasons with the Bills, and then four more in Washington, meaning that he was still suiting up and terrorizing quarterbacks by the time Atwater had hung up his shoulder pads for the final time.

With Smith still in western New York, Denver kept the first-round picks.

Weeks later, they turned their 1989 first-round pick — No. 13 overall — into the 20th overall pick, picking up second- and fifth-round choices in the deal with the Browns. Cleveland selected running back Eric Metcalf in the deal. The second- and fifth-round picks weren’t notable: defensive end Warren Powers and cornerback Darren Carrington.

But the player at No. 20 was Atwater.

By being denied in their pursuit of one Hall of Famer, the Broncos found another in Atwater.

Now, Atwater and Smith teammates for eternity in the Pro Football Hall of Fame.

It’s another reminder of how chance and circumstances affect outcomes, and how sometimes not getting what you want in one moment can lead to exactly what you need in the next.

Denver wanted Smith and didn’t get him. But the team did land a safety who was at his best in the biggest moments, who could have legitimately been the MVP of Super Bowl XXXII, and whose play ended up being a model that Tampa Bay’s coaches used to show Lynch what he could be … which came to benefit the Broncos when Lynch chose Denver in March 2004.

So, the Bowlen-led Broncos were a little bit lucky.

But they also made their own luck, too. And the result was an organization that became an NFL standard-bearer, and a legacy that will be celebrated once again when Broncos and friends from far and wide gather in northeast Ohio just over a fortnight from now.

The celebration is one more chance to toast Pat Bowlen’s legacy. In the free-agency era, he made Denver into a destination spot for the league’s best.