For fans of the Denver Broncos, it took forever for their team to receive recognition in the halls of football lore.

It wasn’t until 2004 when John Elway was elected to the Pro Football Hall of Fame that there was vindication for Broncos Country.

But it was well overdue.

Broncos purists would happily point back to the 1970’s when the Orange Crush defense came into existence and Randy Gradishar became Denver’s most prominent player as the team reached its first Super Bowl in the 1977 season.

Year after year, Gradishar’s name came up in Hall of Fame discussions and year after year, he was passed by. The Broncos contingent started growing in Canton with the likes of Floyd Little, Shannon Sharpe, Terrell Davis, Champ Bailey and even Pat Bowlen all earning their gold jackets.

But that didn’t right the wrong of leaving Gradishar out in the cold.

That mistake will be rectified in the coming weeks as Gradishar will take his rightful place next to those Broncos greats. It sounds insane, but he is the first member of the Orange Crush defense to make it into Canton.

Better late than never.

Last week, Gradishar joined Mile High Sports’ Gil Whiteley to talk about his impending induction. There is no doubt he is honored to receive his gold jacket and every bit of the recognition that has come with it. But Whiteley and Gradishar also touched on some of the reasons why it took so long for him to break through the Hall of Fame voting.

A big centerpiece of the argument has always centered around his career tackles number. The Denver Broncos website made a strong case for Gradishar, saying that he finished his career with 2,049 combined tackles (including assists) and that each one was counted by longtime defensive coordinator Joe Collier.

The problem is that Gradishar’s career started before tackles became an official statistic. This has left the door open for an argument that Gradishar’s 2,049 combined tackles (which would rank him second all-time in NFL history) isn’t an accurate measurement. When talking about it with Whiteley, Gradishar argued otherwise.

“That’s part of how things changing,” Gradishar said. “I’m very happy about the number of tackles. That’s always been a question I get from the media. They say that you couldn’t have had that many tackles in 10 years. Are you calling my defensive coaches, Myrel Moore and Joe Collier and those guys, are you calling them liars? Those guys watched the film and we as players watched the film. You knew how many solo tackles you had, and you knew how many assisted tackles you had. I just kept hearing over the last 35 years that you couldn’t have had that many tackles. And that’s one statistic that people really [got] behind. It didn’t make any sense to me. But that’s not something that I really have to worry about.”

On top of his 2,049 tackles, Gradishar also picked off 20 passes and scored three touchdowns off those picks. He also scored a touchdown on a fumble recovery. He played in just one Super Bowl in his career and that was when the Broncos lost to the Dallas Cowboys 27-10 in Super Bowl XII.

With those numbers, Gradishar had to wait 41 years to get the call from Canton. But as he got the call back in February and even received his gold jacket in recent days, it was a wait well worth it.

“It finally happened,” Gradishar said. “It took 35 years to do that, but I always knew it was always in God’s timing if it was going to happen.”

Listen to Gradishar’s full interview with Gil Whiteley below.