Robert Hanashiro/USA TODAY Sports

INDIANAPOLIS – At least one NFL executive won’t hold it against any quarterbacks who might choose not to throw, run or do other workouts here at the NFL combine in Indianapolis.

“I mean, if I was a quarterback, I wouldn’t throw here. There’s too many things going on. I probably shouldn’t be saying that,” Broncos general manager John Elway said Thursday, laughing.

Elway can joke about it now because he remembers his own pre-draft process in 1983, when he ducked out of a regional combine in Seattle in the months before he was the No. 1 pick in that draft.

“I skipped. I didn’t want them to see my bad knee,” Elway said.

Elway on Thursday recalled how it went down.

“I was up there going to a Gold Helmet Award kind of deal up in Seattle, and they were checking all the guys into the combine at the same time. So I was checking in to go to this banquet, and they grabbed me and checked me into the combine. I’m like, ‘alright’ just checking in,” Elway said. “Then I call my dad, and I say, ‘Dad, there’s a combine going on here!’ He says, ‘Go to the banquet tonight, and get up early the next morning and get a cab, and get to the airport.’ That’s what I did. I was up at 5:30.”

Imagine the uproar that would happen now, if Jameis Winston or Marcus Mariota were to call an early-morning Uber and hightail it out of downtown Indianapolis?

“Oh, they’d kill me. I’d be a coward,” Elway said.