So happy he could cry, Randy Gradishar gently rubbed the aching shoulders on which the Orange Crush was built, one slobber-knocking tackle at a time. “That’s my cost of playing football for the Broncos,” Gradishar told me Wednesday, a smile as warm as the Colorado sun brightening every crag and crease on his 71-year-old face. Four long decades after he made the last of his 2,049 bone-crushing tackles, but only five weeks removed from surgery No.