MILL VALLEY, Calif. — As Craig Morton sits in his favorite armchair, he turns to his left. There is a view out his balcony window of the San Francisco skyline, Alcatraz Island and the sparkling waters of San Francisco Bay.

“It’s the best view in the world,” he says.

The former star Broncos quarterback spends plenty of time in that armchair with no regrets.

“I’m an 82-year-old who does 82-year-old things,’’ Morton said.

But when Morton does walk around in Mill Valley, a picturesque community 7 miles north of the Golden Gate Bridge where he has lived the past 15 years with wife Kym, he is in less pain than he once was.

Morton played in the NFL from 1965-82, including 1977-82 with the Broncos. He was sacked 405 times and ran the ball 215 times in his 18 pro seasons. He estimates he was hit well over 1,000 times in his overall football career.

The hits took their toll. Morton has had serious back problems and issues with sepsis. He said in the past five or six years he twice had hospital stints of about two months.

“I am getting back to where I actually really can walk again,’’ Morton said. “I had back problems the last couple of years and had a number of procedures but it’s coming along now finally. I had an ablation.”

An ablation is a procedure doctors use to destroy abnormal tissue through various techniques with probes inserted through the skin. Morton now can walk without a cane, although he still uses one at times.

When the Broncos last October held their first reunion for the 1977 Orange Crush team that made it to Super Bowl XII, Morton was at times in a wheelchair. But Morton, named league MVP that season by the NFL Players Association, is happy to be feeling much better now.

“It’s wonderful compared to what he has gone through,’’ Morton’s sister, Sandy DaBranca, said of his condition.

From his favorite armchair and armed with his remote control, Morton is looking forward to football season. He closely follows California, his alma mater that opens the season Saturday at Oregon State. He watches the Broncos whenever he can, mostly following them on Red Zone.

When he attended last year’s reunion, Morton met then-rookie Bo Nix. He is looking forward to seeing what the quarterback will accomplish in his second season.

“He’s got a great presence, and he’s got great fundamentals,’’ Morton said of Nix. “We had at Cal, Jared Goff, who had that, and Aaron Rodgers, who certainly had that. Of all the quarterbacks in his (2024 draft) class, I would have taken him.”

Even over Washington’s Jayden Daniels, the only one of the other five quarterbacks taken in the 2024 first round with better rookie statistics than Nix?

“Jayden Daniels is phenomenal, but he’s going to get killed,’’ Morton said of the quarterback who ran 148 times for 891 yards as a rookie in addition to being sacked 47 times.

Morton knows all about getting beaten up but still managed to play until he was just shy of his 40th birthday. After being the No. 5 pick in the 1965 draft by the Dallas Cowboys, he played with them until midway through the 1974 season, when his wish to be traded was granted and he was shipped to the New York Giants.

Morton had started 42 of 56 regular-season games for the Cowboys from 1969-72 but was riding the bench after Roger Staubach had emerged as the clear-cut starter. Morton did lead Dallas to Super Bowl V in the 1970 season, a 16-13 loss to the Baltimore Colts. He watched from the bench the next year as the Cowboys won Super Bowl VI 24-3 over the Miami Dolphins and Staubach was named game MVP.

Morton’s 2.5-year stint with the woeful Giants was a disaster, one in which he calls a “hiccup.” But his career was resurrected after he was traded to Denver in 1977 and assigned No. 7.

The Broncos then went 12-2 and made the playoffs for the first time in their 18-year history as Morton threw for 1,929 yards and 14 touchdowns and finished tied for second in voting for the NFL’s official Associated Press MVP award. Broncomania overtook Denver that season.

“It was a magical season,’’ Morton said. “We weren’t expected to do anything with a new coach (in Red Miller) and a new quarterback. But we couldn’t lose, and the fans were amazing. You’d go into a restaurant, and they would literally stand up and clap in celebration (upon Morton’s entry).”

The Broncos defeated the Pittsburgh Steelers 34-21 in a divisional playoff and the Oakland Raiders 20-17 in the AFC championship game to advance to the Super Bowl. The win over the Raiders was memorable for Morton having spent the week leading up to the game in the hospital with a hip pointer.

“Red came (to the hospital) with the game plan on Wednesday, and I was like, ‘OK, there’s no way I could play.’ I couldn’t get out of bed,’’ Morton said. “My whole left leg was just full of blood. It was black.”

Morton, though, did make it to Mile High Stadium for the game on Sunday.

“I sat there naked in the locker room before the game and made sure everybody (on the team) could see my leg,’’ Morton said. “I wanted to make sure they kept those guys off me because if I landed on it again, it would have exploded. I would have been right back in the hospital.”

The Broncos’ pass protectors stepped up. While being sacked just once, Morton completed 10 of 20 passes for 224 yards and two touchdowns.

“When we got back to the locker room, I remember I went into the shower and I was so overcome with emotion that I started crying,’’ Morton said.

Two weeks later, though, Morton had a disastrous outing in Denver’s 27-10 loss to the Cowboys in the Super Bowl. He completed just 4 of 15 passes for 39 yards with four interceptions, was sacked twice, and was benched in the third quarter in favor of Norris Weese.

“Nobody will ever play as bad of a game,’’ Morton said. “It had to be the worst game ever played. They just beat the hell out of us. We had no blocking schemes to protect against those guys.”

Morton said his performance in that game still bothers him even though he has been told many times that the Broncos wouldn’t have made it that far without him.

“That’s the retort from everybody,’’ said Morton, who also had a tough outing in the Cowboys’ Super Bowl loss to the Colts, completing 12 of 26 passes for 127 yards with one touchdown and three interceptions. “Going to the Super Bowl is wonderful, but the results weren’t (there in the two games he started).”

Morton remained the Broncos’ starting quarterback for the next four seasons, including throwing in 1981 for a career-high 3,195 yards at age 38. But his Broncos lost both playoff games he played in after the magical 1977 season, and in 1982 Morton was benched in favor of Steve DeBerg.

Morton retired after that season and the Broncos in May 1983 acquired quarterback John Elway the week after he had been taken by the Colts with the No. 1 pick in the NFL draft. Elway had worn 7 at Stanford and wanted to continue with that number on the Broncos.

“Edgar Kaiser was the owner then,’’ Morton said. “He called me and asked if I would mind if Elway wore No. 7. I told him, ‘He has the ability to take No. 7 to the Hall of Fame, so give it to him.’ It didn’t bother me.”

Elway indeed went on to make the Pro Football Hall of Fame and plenty of No. 7 jerseys remain on display at Broncos games. As for an original Morton No. 7 jersey, the former quarterback doesn’t have one at his home.

“I gave all my stuff away,’’ Morton said.

Morton does still have the shoulder pads he once wore with the Cowboys, including in Super Bowl V, and he still has his NFLPA MVP trophy from 1977. He did have one last No. 7 jersey until he gave it away in 2009.

Morton’s daughter McKenna Foppert, though, ended up getting it back. Morton had been asked by former San Francisco Giants pitcher Kirk Rueter if he could have a jersey to put on display at his home in Illinois and the former quarterback complied. Rueter had once been teammates on the Giants with pitcher Jessie Foppert, who was then McKenna’s husband.

“I didn’t know it was my dad’s last jersey, but dad gave it away to (Rueter),’’ McKenna said. “Once I found out it was his last jersey, I wrote him a handwritten letter, and he sent it back to me.”

McKenna had that No. 7 jersey on display at her home in the Bay Area for years, although it currently is in storage while she is in the process of moving. She said that her father having, so few items left from his football career shows who he is.

“He is the most humble person you’ll ever meet in your life,’’ she said. “He’s very modest and he’s very giving.”

Morton chuckled when his daughter said that. He said he doesn’t need football mementos around to clutter up the house.

One thing he’s not about to give up, though, is the world’s best view from his balcony.