Denver Broncos Built a Legacy Through Highs and Lows

by Leo Wilson, age 12

Bob Howsam, a successful minor league baseball player, founded the Denver Broncos. Bob founded the team on August 14, 1959, in the AFL (American Football League), a competing league to the NFL (National Football League). The team was often made fun of for the way their uniforms looked. When Bob started the team, they had a severely limited budget, so he had to dress them in whatever he could find.

The uniforms Bob had to settle for consisted of vertically-striped socks with brown padded pants, a yellow jersey, and a brown helmet with their jersey number on it. Two years later, Bob hired a new head coach named JackFaulknerr. When he became head coach, the first thing he did was burn the socks in a public ceremony.

The Broncos’ fans’ experiences might have been bad, but that does not mean the team was bad. For example, on August 5th, 1967, during the annual AFL vs. NFL championship game, a precursor to the Super Bowl, the Broncos became the first AFL team to beat an NFL team, defeating the Detroit Lions 13-7. Before the 1968 season, the city purchased the University of Colorado Bears' stadium and renamed it Mile High Stadium. The city expanded the stadium to a capacity of 51,706, then raised it to 75,100 in the 1977 season.

In the 1997 season, the Denver Broncos made it to the Super Bowl for the first time, and they won against the Green Bay Packers 31-24. The next season, the Denver Broncos returned to the Super Bowl and beat the Atlanta Falcons 34-19. What made these wins so remarkable is that only five other teams had been able to win back-to-back Super Bowl championship titles.

In 2012, the Denver Broncos signed future Hall of Famer Peyton Manning. In 2016, Manning retired, and in his four seasons with the Broncos, he appeared in two Super Bowls, winning one against the Carolina Panthers, 24-10.

The Denver Broncos were on a hot streak in the 25-26 season, winning 14 regular-season games and losing 3, becoming the AFC West champions, beating the back-to-back Super Bowl champion Kansas City Chiefs 22-19. Although the Broncos were the favorites to go to the Super Bowl in 2026, in the first playoff game, on one of the last plays of overtime, Bo Nix went for a quarterback sneak, and a Buffalo Bills player tackled him, breaking his ankle. Nix did not tell anyone and played the rest of the game with a broken ankle. The Broncos won that game, but Nix needed surgery and could not play the next playoff game, in which the Broncos lost to the Patriots 10-7. The Patriots went on to the Super Bowl, where they lost to the Seattle Seahawks.

The Broncos are the only AFC West team that has not changed its location or name since the team was founded. Another fact is that the Broncos have the 16th-most wins (532) and the 16th-most titles (3). Finally, the Broncos are 11th-best in NFL history, with 532/475/10 and a win percentage of .528.

In all the years the Denver Broncos have been a team, they have been at the highest of highs and the lowest of lows, but the Broncos will never play a game without any fans in the stands.

[Sources: StatMuse; Pro Football Hall of Fame]