In spring 2021, AJ Smith arrived in Indianapolis, the mind in charge of duct-taping a semi-coherent offense together from a mess of spare parts.
This was The Spring League, a developmental football league that lasted five seasons and took in any and all comers trying to crack open a window in pro ball. Players were not paid salaries. Players were not in peak physical shape. The Indianapolis Conquerors, Smith remembered, once had a promising 300-pound offensive tackle report for practice at 440 pounds. There were no extensive workouts to join The Spring League, and Smith, the Conquerors’ offensive coordinator, had to scout what he was working with with with nothing but grainy film.
In that tape that spring, however, Smith saw some flashes in a 5-foot-10 lightning bug named Michael Bandy. He’d played for the Conquerors the year before. But Bandy, a former two-time All-American at the University of San Diego, hadn’t reported back to the team at the start of 2021.
“We need this guy back,” Smith recalled telling a staffer, back then. “I think he’s our best guy.”
One problem, Smith learned.
Bandy was playing rugby, out in Colorado.
“Call him now!” Smith barked.
Four years later, after a career at an FCS program and a slightly-legally-dubious Pro Day and a brief but serious career pivot to (yes) rugby, after being waived or released a total of nine times in the past three seasons, the 28-year-old Bandy darted into the end zone on Sunday for the first touchdown of his NFL career. He did it on the same kind of route that first endeared him to Smith in Indianapolis, the reason why Smith was so excited when Bandy first signed with the Broncos in 2023: a simple underneath crosser.
“I knew that in the NFL, if someone like a Sean Payton – if anyone that was in a spread system that incorporates underneath-option routes (got him) — he’s as good as anybody in the world running those,” Smith told The Denver Post. “And he’s gonna get open.”
The Broncos needed him in Sunday’s win over the Packers, with rookie wideout Pat Bryant out. In a show of faith, they elevated veteran Bandy from the practice squad over recent signee Elijah Moore. And Bandy delivered in the biggest regular-season matchup of his career, a wideout who has been waived by the Broncos for three straight years at final roster cuts in August and yet just keeps coming back. Speak of the Bandyman a few times, and he shall pop up on a practice field in Denver.
“You need to have somebody that believes in you,” Bandy’s agent Matt Mainiero told The Denver Post. “And we’ve just seen in past times dealing with (Sean) Payton that — if he’s got guys that he likes that work hard, and he believes in — then they get opportunities.”
This story — improbable as it is — begins in Colorado. A few years ago, longtime American rugby coach Mark Bullock and current Denver real estate agent Peter Pasque set about scouting and acquiring talent for a new rugby academy in Glendale, dubbed the Colorado XO and later rebranded to the American Raptors. Glendale Mayor Mike Dunafon, so passionate about the game that he orchestrated Glendale to become the first U.S. city to adopt rugby as its only official sport, wanted to help bring more talent to the U.S. national rugby team. So Pasque traveled to collegiate pro days across the country to try and convince football players on the brink to switch to rugby.
Bandy didn’t have a pro day, because he graduated at USD in 2020. His only showcase was an impromptu event hosted in Dallas by football scouting insider Neil Stratton. At this time of the COVID-19 pandemic, travelers from California were required to wait out a seven-day quarantine period in Texas, Bandy’s agent Matt Mainiero recalled. So Bandy flew from California to Las Vegas, left the airport, came back to the airport in Vegas, and flew to Dallas to circumvent lockdown regulations and attend Stratton’s showcase.
From there, he floated across Pasque and Bullock’s radars. And Bandy signed up, looking for a way to stay in shape while trying to land an NFL workout. Across three years in Glendale, Pasque estimated, they brought in roughly 100 former football players to try and find high-IQ athletes who could grasp rugby quick.
“Mike was probably the No. 1 person that we saw like that,” Pasque recalled.
So much so, in fact, that Bullock made him a captain and the team’s starting scrum half, a position in rugby similar to quarterback. The now-defunct Raptors have produced a few players who’ve made the U.S. national team. Bandy was “in that category,” Bullock said.
“I looked at him as, in this many years, he’d potentially be on the U.S. national team,” Bullock said.
“I think he would’ve made the national team,” Pasque said, “or the Olympics.”
Instead, Smith and the Conquerors called to bring Bandy back. They were playing on FOX, Conquerors staff tried to convince him.
If you don’t do this, they told Bandy, as Smith recalled, you may never play football again.
Bandy showed the Indianapolis Conquerors his rugby film to prove he was in shape. And Bandy’s only ever played football again.
He caught the attention of Chargers general manager Tom Tolesco that spring, catching 10 passes in 10 games in 2022. He’s been a mainstay in Denver ever since signing with the Broncos in 2023. And Sunday was the culmination of five long years, Bandy spiking the football and roaring without abandon as he pranced across the orange turf in the end zone at Empower Field.
“I’m as proud of him for doing those things,” said Bullock, who coached Bandy in rugby back in the day, “as I am of my own children.”
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