Former NFL offensive lineman Chris Hinton was minding his own business when he went to the concession stand at Valor Stadium in Highlands Ranch in September 2016. He was there to watch his sons, Christopher Jr. and Myles, play under the lights in a game for Greater Atlanta Christian High against Valor Christian, a perennial Colorado powerhouse.

A man then began making small talk while Hinton was waiting to purchase his snacks. The stranger passed on what he thought was an interesting tidbit.

“We started talking about the teams, and he said, ‘Yeah, Chris Hinton, the guy who got traded for John Elway, his kids are on the team,”’ Hinton said.

Hinton paused and then said, ‘Yeah, I’m him.”

The man was embarrassed but Hinton assured him it was no big deal. Hinton played in the NFL from 1983-95 and made seven Pro Bowls. But he knows how he is remembered.

“I’ll always be known as the guy traded for John Elway,’’ Hinton said.

Hinton on April 26, 1983, had been selected by Denver as the No. 4 pick in the NFL draft out of Northwestern. He was with the Broncos for a mere six days.

On May 2, the Broncos shipped Hinton to the Baltimore Colts in a deal for Elway, the Stanford quarterback who had refused to play for a team that had gone 0-8-1 in the strike-shortened season of 1982. The trade also included the Colts receiving quarterback Mark Herrmann and Denver’s No. 1 draft pick in 1984, which turned out to be guard Ron Solt.

While 40 years have passed since the deal went down, Hinton, 61, remembers plenty about his short stint with the Broncos. He recalls being greeted by a big crowd at Denver’s Stapleton International Airport upon his arrival, being whisked to nice restaurants and to a store where he was given several pairs of cowboy boots. Then he remembers flying after the trade to Baltimore, where the only person to greet him at the airport was a Colts intern.

“People will always Google and see I was part of the trade and not what I accomplished in my career,’’ said Hinton, who lives in Chicago. “The older I get, the less I chuckle it off because there’s so much more to my legacy.”

Indeed there has been. While the legendary Elway led the Broncos to two Super Bowl wins as a quarterback and was inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame, it’s still not out of the question he one day could be joined in the Canton, Ohio, shrine by Hinton. Hinton was one of 25 senior semifinalists last year.

“To get a chance to get a guy like Elway, you can’t pass up a trade like that,’’ said Joe Collier, who was then Denver’s defensive coordinator. “But Chris was a hell of a player. There’s no question about that.”

Hinton played for the Colts from 1983-89, the final six seasons after the team moved to Indianapolis in 1984. He’s in their Ring of Honor. Hinton then had stints with the Atlanta Falcons from 1990-93 and the Minnesota Vikings from 1994-95. He made Pro Bowls at left tackle, right tackle and left guard and was named first-team All-Pro in 1993 at right guard.

“He had a great career,’’ said guard Mark Cooper, who was the Broncos’ second-round pick in 1983 and played with them from 1983-87. “He was a stud.”

And to think that a year before the 1983 draft, Hinton never had played on the offensive line. The athletic Hinton had come to Northwestern, in nearby Evanston, Ill., out of Chicago’s Wendall Phillips High School as a tight end. As a junior in 1981, he caught 19 passes for 265 yards for a dreadful team that went 0-11 and was outscored 505-82.

The following year, Dennis Green, entering his second season as Northwestern’s coach, called Hinton into his office.

“He said, ‘We’re going move you to offensive tackle,’’’ Hinton said about Green, who would later be his coach with the Vikings. “He said, ‘You could play in the NFL and be a high pick.’ But I didn’t really believe it at the time.”

Eventually, though, scouts began showing up at Northwestern practices and they liked what they saw from Hinton. And Hinton began to get more and more comfortable at left tackle on a team that at least went 3-8 in 1982 and ended the longest losing streak in Division I history at 34 games.

“At the beginning of the year, I would have been tickled pink to have been picked in the fourth round,’’ Hinton said. “But then I went to the Senior Bowl and things really took off.”

Hinton’s stock began to soar. And when then-NFL commissioner Pete Rozelle called the picks in New York to begin the draft, it was Elway going to Baltimore, Southern Methodist running back Eric Dickerson to the Los Angeles Rams, Penn State running back Curt Warner to Seattle and Hinton to Denver.

“It was a surprise because I didn’t have a lot of communication with the Broncos,’’ Hinton said. “After I got picked, I remember (then-Broncos coach Dan) Reeves calling me and the general manager (Hein Poulus), and the phone got passed around.”

At the time, it looked as if the Broncos had selected their left tackle of the future. Dave Studdard had been in line to play that spot in 1983, but when he learned of the Hinton pick he figured he might not be long for Denver.

Studdard at the time was on a Broncos fan tour that featured seven players making the rounds through the Front Range and beyond, including stops in Wyoming, Montana and South Dakota.

“When I was on the Broncos tour, I saw the news and I said, ‘I guess I better be looking for a new job,’’’ said Studdard, who played for the Broncos from 1979-87. “I knew he was a hell of a good player.”

Meanwhile, Hinton headed from the Northwestern campus to the Chicago airport for the flight to Denver.

“The plane had problems and they kind of aborted the takeoff,’’ Hinton said. “I guess that was a sign.’’

The plane eventually departed and Hinton arrived in Denver. He was met by a hero’s welcome.

“There were a decent amount of people at the gate,’’ he said. “I was signing autographs at the airport. The television stations were there. It was overwhelming.’’

There was a press conference in which Hinton was introduced. He met members of the coaching staff during his several days in Denver.

Hinton went to a dinner with other Broncos’ draft picks. He was shown around the city.

“Coach Reeves had a local boot place bring out a bunch of cowboy boots for me to try on, and I ended up with several pairs,’’ Hinton said.

By the time he made the trip back to Illinois, Hinton had been loaded down with all sorts of Broncos gear, including T-shirts, sweatshirts and bumper stickers.

Unbeknownst to Hinton, the Broncos were frantically trying to land Elway. He had played baseball in the New York Yankees’ organization and he had threatened to continue to play in 1983 and be eligible to reenter the draft the next year. So he had plenty of leverage.

Hinton had returned to classes at Northwestern and was living in a single dorm room. On the night of May 2, he went to a different dorm because deep dish pizza was being served.

“Literally, the pay phone rings in the lobby and somebody answered, and then he said, ‘Is Chris Hinton here?’’’ Hinton said. “I said, ‘Yeah.’ It was my agent (Dick Lynn) and he had tracked me down. He said, ‘Go to somebody’s room and call me back.’

“So I called him back and he said, ‘You’re about to be traded.’ I was stunned. I mean, you could have knocked me over with a feather. I had brought back a duffle bag full of Broncos stuff to my dorm room and the whole hallway had Broncos bumper stickers on every door. I mean, for that to happen, it was a shock.’’

While there was much hoopla when Elway arrived in Denver, there wasn’t any when Hinton showed up in Baltimore shortly after the trade.

“When I got there, I‘m like, ‘Where are all the fans?’’’ he said. “There was nobody there to greet me at the airport. It just an intern who came to pick me up.”

While shocked by the trade, Hinton said it didn’t take long to get over any disappointment.

“After it sunk it, it flashed back in my mind that a year earlier I literally wasn’t even considered an NFL player,’’ he said. “So to be picked fourth, even though I was traded, I had so much to be thankful for.”

At least two things, though, eventually irked Hinton. In 1984, he got a surprise one day after opening his mailbox.

“The Broncos sent me a 1099 form for the cowboy boots because they were treating it like income,’’ said Hinton, who said he had gotten about four or five pairs of boots valued between $200 to $300 apiece. “So I had to pay taxes on them.”

Then in 2013, the ESPN “30 for 30” episode “From Elway to Marino” came out. It dealt with six quarterbacks having been taken in the first round of the 1983 NFL draft, including fellow legends Dan Marino and Jim Kelly, and went into detail on Elway’s trade to the Broncos.

Hinton then was living in the Atlanta area and running a wine store that he since has sold. He watched with interest as Reeves, who died in 2022, provided an interview for the episode.

“Coach Reeves, when he called me after the trade, he said, ‘You know, I’m sorry it happened this way. We drafted you to be a Bronco and we had this opportunity we couldn’t pass up,’’’ Hinton said. “And then when I watched the ’30 for 30’ he was like, ‘We knew that the Colts really liked Hinton and he was part of the reason we drafted him, basically as trade bait.’ OK, so he didn’t tell me the truth.”

As for his NFL career, Hinton has few complaints even though he mostly played on losing teams and got into just four playoff games.

“I would say I was one of the top five offensive linemen to play during my generation,’’ Hinton said.

Hinton was selected to four Pro Bowls in which Elway also participated. He played in Elway’s charity golf tournament in Denver a few years after the two were drafted, and he said they joked about having been traded for one another.

“His wife at the time, Janet, she said to me then, ‘I don’t know what to say, I’m sorry or thank you,’’’ Hinton said.

Hinton played games in Denver just twice during his career, but he might be back for one this season. While Myles is a rising senior offensive lineman at Michigan, Christopher Jr. is a second-year defensive tackle with the Los Angeles Chargers. The AFC West rivals will make their annual trip to Denver in 2023, and Hinton plans to attend the game if his son is in line to play.

So Hinton just might take a stroll during that game to the concession stand. And he just might hear again about what unfolded 40 years ago.