A Brief History of the Denver Broncos

When it comes to National Football League franchises with great fan support, year in and year out the Denver Broncos are routinely at or near the top of the list.  The Denver Broncos currently play their home games at INVESCO Field at Mile High and the vision of the stadium filled with orange clad fans is known around the country.  The Denver Broncos play an important role in the life of the city of Denver and have since the franchise came into existence.

Currently, Denver is represented in all four of the major professional sports leagues with the Broncos from the NFL, the Colorado Rockies from Major League Baseball, the Denver Nuggets from the National Basketball Association and the Colorado Avalanche from the National Hockey League.  At the time of the Broncos founding in the old American Football League, there were no other major sports teams in the Denver area, for that matter there were few professional sports options in the entire Rocky Mountain region.

The Broncos were one of the original eight teams belonging to the AFL when the league was founded in 1960.  Despite notable accomplishments like winning the first AFL game ever (over the Boston Patriots) and being the first AFL team to defeat an NFL team (beating the Detroit Lions in a 1967 preseason game), the team's first decade in professional football was not a very successful one.  The Broncos compiled a losing record in nine of their ten seasons during the 1960s, and the only non-losing record they put up was a 7-7 mark in 1962.

When the 1970s came around, the Broncos like the rest of the remaining AFL franchises joined the NFL as part of the AFL-NFL merger.  The team continued to finish their seasons at or near the bottom of their division.  It wasn't until the mid-to-late 1970s that the Broncos climbed to the upper echelons of the league when behind what came to be known as the Orange Crush Defense they made an appearance in the Super Bowl.  That team was coached by Red Miller and quarterbacked by Craig Morton.  Some of the other notable players on the team included Haven Moses, Otis Armstrong, Lonnie Perrin, Rob Lytle, Jack Dolbin, Rick Upchurch, Riley Odoms, Billy Thompson, Randy Gradishar, Tom Jackson, and Louis Wright.  The Broncos continued to be one of the more successful franchises in the league to end the decade and begin the next one.

In 1981, the Broncos welcomed a new head coach that would make a huge impact on the franchise and the rest of the league, Dan Reeves.  A few years later they would finally add an All Pro level quarterback when they traded for a rookie out of Stanford named John Elway.  Behind John Elway and a host of other talent, the Broncos would appear in three Super Bowls before the end of the 1980s, unfortunately they wouldn't emerge from any of those games victorious.

John Elway continued to play at a high level into the 1990s, and under new head coach Mike Shanahan would lead the Broncos back to the Super Bowl, this time winning back-to-back championships following the 1997 and 1998 seasons.  During this time a number of great players wore the honored Denver Broncos jerseys including Terrell Davis, Shannon Sharpe, Rod Smith, Gary Zimmerman, Dennis Smith, Steve Atwater and more.  As the new millennium rolled around, Shanahan would continue on as the head coach without his Hall of Fame quarterback John Elway.  The Broncos would go through Brian Griese and Jake Plummer at the position before drafting and developing Jay Cutler out of Vanderbilt University.

A few notable accomplishments by the Denver Broncos:

• In 13 seasons, from 1986-1998, the Broncos won their conference five times.
• The Denver Broncos ranked first in the NFL in yardage gained on four different occasions, including a three consecutive years from 2002 to 2004.
• The Broncos have ranked first in the NFL in points only one time, that was 1997, the first year they won the Super Bowl.
• The Broncos have made the playoffs at least fifty percent of the time during three decades; the 1980s, 1990s, and 2000s.

With where the Denver Broncos are currently in relation to the other teams in the National Football League, it is hard to imagine a time when they would consistently finish seasons at or near the bottom of the league, but that is exactly how the franchise began its existence.  The nearly three decades of success the team has experienced since those early days can be main attributed to the stability at the head coaching position.  Between 1981 and 2008, a time span of 28 years, the Broncos have had three different head coaches.  This combination of rock solid leadership, combined with a long period of play with a sure Hall of Famer at quarterback, built the Denver Broncos into what the current roster strives to continue to be, one of the most formidable football teams in the NFL.