Brandon Marshall threaded the last button on his freshly pressed dress shirt and turned toward a reporter inside the visiting locker room at Hard Rock Stadium in Miami. The Broncos’ linebacker felt compelled to ask a nagging question, even if he didn’t really want to hear the answer.
“When was the last time the Broncos lost eight in a row?” Marshall inquired last Sunday, minutes after Denver hit that mark with a 35-9 loss to the Dolphins.
“1967,” the reporter replied.
Marshall simultaneously raised his eyebrows and slowly shook his head. This was one connection to the history of the franchise the Super Bowl 50 champion never thought he’d touch.
From his home 2,500 miles away, in Las Vegas, Floyd Little could feel Marshall’s pain. The 75-year-old Little, one of five Broncos to be enshrined in the Pro Football Hall of Fame, was a rookie — and a captain — on the 1967 Denver team that lost nine games in a row, the longest same-season losing streak in franchise history. It’s a mark the 2017 Broncos will tie if they lose to the Jets at home Sunday.
Little has a message for these Broncos. It’s the same one he shared with his teammates 50 years ago to help them break their own streak.
“You have to keep fighting,” he said in a telephone interview. “At the end of the day, you have to say to yourself in the locker room, ‘I did what I can do.’ You can’t say, ‘I wish I had …’ or ‘I should have …’ Those two things, as a player, should never be said. You have to do it.”
The Broncos were a far different franchise in 1967. As an original member of the American Football League, Denver was still three years from joining the NFL during the 1970 merger of the two leagues. The team enjoyed little success during its AFL days, compiling a 39-97-4 record from 1960 to 1969.
But the 1967 season, despite a 3-11 record, may have been a turning point for the franchise — the start of a building process that would lead the Broncos, 10 years later, to their first of eight Super Bowl appearances. Lou Saban, who had previously led Buffalo to back-to-back AFL titles, was hired as Denver’s new coach and general manager. Saban drafted Little with the sixth overall pick in the 1967 AFL-NFL draft, and the three-time All-American running back at Syracuse became the first No.1 pick by the Broncos to sign with the franchise. Previous top picks, like Dick Butkus in 1965, had opted to sign with NFL teams.
Low expectations in ’67
Unlike the 2017 Broncos, a team full of players who helped win a Super Bowl, Little’s team didn’t enter the ’67 season with any high hopes. Denver had never had a winning record. And Little was one of 26 rookies on the roster.
“They voted for me to lead them, and I think it’s because my name was easy to spell,” Little said. “I was a mature rookie. I was no 20-year-old kid. I was 24 years old, not used to losing. Shoot, I came from a military (high) school where we won 33 in a row. Losing was kind of challenging for me.”
The 1967 team tasted success early. On Aug. 5, Denver became the first AFL team to defeat an NFL team when it beat the Lions, 13-7, in front of a preseason crowd of 20,000 at the University of Denver. Exhibition games back then weren’t the glorified practices they’ve become since, so the victory was a real feather in the cap of the young franchise. And the Broncos carried the success into their regular-season opener. Goldie Sellers intercepted a fourth-quarter pass and returned it for a touchdown to give the Broncos a 26-21 victory over the visiting Boston Patriots at Bears Stadium, the minor-league home of the Denver Bears that would eventually become renovated and renamed as Mile High Stadium.
Reality then hit like a brick. The Broncos lost 51-0 at Oakland, totaling a stunning minus-5 yards of total offense.
“From here on out,” Saban said after that game, “it’s just a case of a lot of work.”
Inefficient quarterback play is one of the strongest parallels between the two losing streaks. Like the 2017 team, the ’67 Broncos used three different quarterbacks. Steve Tensi, like Trevor Siemian, was in his third year. He found chemistry with his top target, Pro Bowl wide receiver Al Denson, but completed just 40.3 percent of his passes while throwing 16 touchdowns and 17 interceptions. Siemian in ’17 has completed 58.9 percent of his passes with 11 touchdowns and 13 interceptions.
But the ’67 team had even more head-scratching roster turnover than this season’s version.
“They had four different kickers during that season,” said Tom Mackie, a Broncos fan since 1970 who has become an unofficial historian of the franchise and helped market Little’s candidacy for the Hall of Fame. “When was the last time you saw four different kickers on one team?”
Finally, a breakthrough
Still, the fight the Broncos displayed while piling up losses kept fans coming back. They Broncos lost four games during the nine-game skid by four points or fewer.
“We had 8, 9, 10,000 fans greeting us at the airport after a loss many, many times,” said Little, who earned his Hall of Fame nod in 2010. “They were there to say, ‘Hey, we’re with you. We’ll get them next week.’ It was always great to see. It was uplifting. It’s how I think fans should be.”
Little knew a breakthrough was coming, and if there was one play that personified Denver’s determination during its losing streak it was his 13-yard touchdown run at Buffalo on Nov. 19. He took a pitch from Tensi and burst to his left. As he cut up the field, Little broke three tackles and dragged the last Bills defender into the end zone for a 7-0 lead. Denver expanded the lead to 21-7, then held off a Buffalo rally for a 21-20 victory.
“It was a great celebration,” Little said. “It was incredible. It was like we knew we could do it. We just had to keep the pedal to medal. We knew we had given it everything we had.”
Mackie believes the 1967 season was the first building block of the later Super Bowl success the franchise has enjoyed since. Little was a franchise player upon whom fans, like Mackie himself as a young boy growing up across the country in Delaware, could rest their hopes.
“He was the reason why the fans remained so strong,” Mackie said. “There’s a great story about when the Broncos finally won the Super Bowl in ’97. Floyd was there celebrating with the current players and John Elway sought him out. He had finally won a Super Bowl after 15 years, and he went up to Floyd and congratulated him for helping to be a main cog of building that foundation in Denver.”
Little sat in a luxury box at Sports Authority Field when the Broncos hosted the Bengals on Nov. 19. He was there to see the Broncos’ newest gold-jacket member, Terrell Davis, receive his Hall of Fame ring. The Broncos lost their sixth consecutive game that day, but Little came away impressed by the crowd. It’s that support, he said, the 2017 Broncos must lean on to fight their way out of one of the darkest stretches in team history.
“I would say to them, ‘Guys, it’s all about us now,” Little said, imagining himself in the locker room Sunday giving a pregame speech. “‘We’re having a bad run. It’s going to end today. This is the last time we’ll be sitting around saying, we’ll get them next week. We’re getting them this week.’ ”
