Dan Reeves, the Player and Coach, Never Quite Made It to the Rams

DENVER —  Coach Dan Reeves of the Denver Broncos was once almost a Ram, and later was interviewed as a possible coach of the Rams.

Dan Reeves, the late owner of the Rams, was inclined to sign the quarterback from the University of South Carolina in 1965 but said: “We can’t draft him. Everybody would say Reeves drafted him because he had the same name.”

After the Cowboys had signed player Reeves as a free agent and converted him to running back, the Rams were playing at Dallas, and player Reeves was having a good day.

“You know, on second thought I should have changed my name,” owner Reeves said to aide Jack Teele.

In 1978, when the late Carroll Rosenbloom was trying to hire a successor to Chuck Knox as head coach, he interviewed Reeves, then an assistant with the Cowboys.

“I thought I had a chance to get that job,” Reeves said. “It was one of the better jobs in the league. I was really impressed with Carroll Rosenbloom. I thought he was one of the neatest people I’d ever met.

“But one thing Rosenbloom said was that I didn’t have any experience except at Dallas. It was kind of a disappointment.”