Remembering Floyd Little, the first great Bronco

Floyd Little, 1942-2021.

“The Franchise,” forever.

The first Denver Broncos superstar succumbed to cancer on Friday, aged 78. Syracuse University, his alma mater and the school for which he served as special assistant to the director of athletics from 2011-16, confirmed Little’s passing in a tweet Saturday.

Little battled the disease as he played: with relentless tenacity and resolve despite the odds and obstacles in front of him.

A Pro Football Hall of Fame inductee in 2010, a five-time Pro Bowler, an All-Pro and the NFL’s 1971 rushing champion, Little was the first bona-fide superstar the Broncos ever had when he came west in 1967 as a first-round pick from Syracuse University.

In the Broncos’ first six seasons in the American FootbalL League, the team was a cash-strapped loser perceived to be in a backwater town where the prairie met the mountains. The Broncos were constantly fighting for their survival, at one point nearly relocating to Atlanta.

But the AFL merged with the established National Football League, and in 1967, the first common draft between the two leagues took place. The Broncos drafted Little, already a nationally-known household name, having earned first-team All-America status three times at Syracuse.

Little became the first Round 1 pick to sign with the Broncos. But at first, he was skeptical, as noted in this passage from “Tales from the Broncos Sideline”:

“I almost died,” Little recalled decades later. “It was not what I expected. I was halfway not happy about it because I had talked with the (New York) Jets and I had to get to the ninth pick in order to go with the Jets. I had also spoken with Jim Finks, who was on his way to Minnesota, and I also spoke with (Vince) Lombardi who had an interest in drafting me (for the Packers), but I told him I was already committed to go to the Jets. 

“The only way I got to Denver was because of our Sports Information Director at Syracuse, Val Pinchbeck. Lou Saban had decided to draft Gene Upshaw and then he asked Val what kind of guy Floyd Little is. Val told him that I was a good guy, but said he knew the Broncos were going to draft Upshaw. Saban said, ‘Well, we are going to draft Floyd Little.’ That is how I got to Denver.”

The call stunned him.

“When I got the call I was expecting a call from (Jets head coach) Weeb Eubank, but instead there was this guy with a real deep voice who said, ‘Hey, Floyd, Lou Saban with the Denver Broncos. We just drafted number one, what do you think about that?’

“I said, ‘Denver, where the hell is that?’ So, no, I was not happy.

That changed quickly.

“Then I came to visit in April sometime and the weather was absolutely gorgeous and I fell in love with Denver,” he recalled decades later. “Growing up on the East Coast I never really knew where Denver was other than the history and the (covered) wagons were traveling through on the way to the gold rush. But I didn’t know where Denver was. I wasn’t happy when I was drafted by Denver, but I was happy that I was (drafted) and it turned out very well.”

“Very well” is an understatement. He became the focal point of the Broncos, carrying the team on its back while being the franchise’s primary face and voice.

Denver fell head over heels for Little, a love affair that has never ebbed in the last 53 years. Little returned the favor.

“I played my whole career with the Broncos, thank God. I loved playing for the Broncos. I wouldn’t play for anybody else,” he said in 2019.

Of course, there was a moment where that was in jeopardy — 11 games into the 1968 season.

“We were playing Buffalo,” Little recalled in 2019 in an interview on Orange and Blue 760. “We had them right where we wanted them. He asked me to run out the clock … and he says, ‘Don’t fumble the ball.’ Don’t ever tell anybody not to fumble the ball, because it’s the first thing they do! But we were running left and right, and I stumbled over a piece of sod and fumbled the ball.”

Thirty seconds were left when the Bills recovered the fumble and returned it to the Denver 10-yard line. Bruce Alford kicked an 18-yard field goal one snap later, giving Buffalo a 32-31 lead.

Saban was livid.

“And the coach fired me,” Little recalled. “He’s yelling and screaming, ‘Get off the field! I don’t want you anymore! You’re fired! You can go on I-25 or I-70, I don’t care, but you’re getting out of here and you’re never playing for me again!’

“So, I heard it, and then I started off the field. But then, I changed my mind.”

After the ensuing kickoff, Denver’s offense trotted onto the field at its 31-yard line for one final shot.

“Then [fellow running back] Fran Lynch was in the huddle, and the referee said, ‘There’s 12 people now; somebody’s got to go,’ and I said, ‘Fran, you’re going to have to go, because I’m not going.’

“I said, ‘Marlin, you’ve got to help me; you’ve got to save my job.’ He said, ‘Sure, what do you want to do?’ I said, ‘Just throw the ball as far as you can throw it. Throw it in the South Stands if you can get it there, but I’ll get it. I don’t care where you throw it on the field, don’t worry about what I’m doing, I will get it.

“So he said, ‘OK.’ He threw a 59-yard pass and I went up and got it between all those defensive backs back there … I caught the ball, kind of like Odell Beckham Jr., a one-hander.'”

Little came down at the Buffalo 5-yard line with 10 seconds remaining. Bobby Howfield kicked the game-winning, 12-yard field goal on the following snap.

Little finished that game with 236 yards from scrimmage — 71 on 27 carries and 165 on four receptions. It was the kind of game that showed the diversity of Little’s skill set; even when the rushing yards were difficult, he was an effective passing target, evidenced by the 215 passes he hauled in during his career.

But as he left the field, Saban’s “You’re fired!” echoed through Little’s mind.

“We won the game, I’m walking off the field and going to the locker room to pack my stuff because I’ve been fired,” Little said, “and the coach calls me over to the side and says, ‘I’m going to give you one more week.'”

That “one more week” became seven glorious seasons.

But over the years, the wear and tear took its toll on Little. He didn’t miss a game in his final six campaigns, but by 1974, Otis Armstrong was the team’s primary ballcarrier, leading the league in rushing that season. A year later, Little announced that the 1975 campaign would be his final season as a pro.

Still, Little endured long enough to see the Broncos finally break through for their first winning seasons in 1973 and 1974. Little began 1975 hoping that he would be part of another Broncos first: a playoff appearance.

As that season progressed, optimism for a breakthrough faded. By the time the Philadelphia Eagles arrived for the Broncos’ home finale on Dec. 14, Denver was eliminated from postseason consideration, sitting at just 5-7. A midseason tailspin in which they lost five of six games doomed them.

As written in “Tales From the Broncos Sideline,” here’s what happened next.

The hapless Eagles had managed to tie the game at 10-apiece in the third quarter. Conditions were brutal; it was 18 degrees, and 15,000 ticket-holders had not bothered to show up. Frustration set in from the sideline to the last row of the south stands.

At this point, Little seized control. Following the game-tying field goal, the Broncos assumed possession at their 34-yard-line with 1:45 left in the third quarter, and Little spoke up.

“Everybody get somebody; I’m going to take it the distance.”

Quarterback Steve Ramsey called a swing pass. Little caught it at the Denver 42 and moved as if fired from a cannon, darting through Philadelphia defenders as though they were traffic cones. For one moment, this was the Little of the early 1970s, and he didn’t stop until reaching the end zone with a 66-yard catch-and-run to give the Broncos the lead for good.

“Honest to God, it was kind of like Babe Ruth (calling his shot),” said Ramsey.

And Little was not done. Offensive coordinator Max Coley called Little’s number 10 more times on passes and handoffs. On the first play after the two-minute warning, Little sprinted untouched off right tackle into the end zone for the game-clinching touchdown. 

Little’s curtain call for the home fans was a masterpiece: two touchdowns and 150 yards from scrimmage.  He was carried off the field by jubilant, grateful fans who stormed out of the stands to fete their conquering hero. Later, he left Mile High Stadium in a limousine, which Charley Johnson and his teammates had arranged to take Little and his wife to a party organized in his honor.

“If I could have drawn it up, it couldn’t have been any better,” Little said.

As Eagles coach Mike McCormack said after Little’s last big day, “I would like to have 43 Floyd Littles.”

But there was only one. And the Broncos were fortunate enough to have him. He was “The Franchise” because he made the franchise in a way that no one else could have. Everything that happened in the decades to follow — the Orange Crush, Super Bowls, John Elway, even Pat Bowlen’s long and distinguished stewardship — happened at least in part because Little conferred a legitimacy upon the Broncos that had not existed before.

His 2010 Pro Football Hall of Fame induction was an appropriate honor, even if it should have come many years earlier. Little dove into his Hall of Fame status in the final decade of his life, traveling the world as an ambassador of the Hall of Fame and the sport itself. Almost any time the Hall called, Little answered — not unlike when he answered the Broncos’ call for those nine years in orange and blue.

“I met the Pope. I met Benjamin Netenyahu. Just the idea of being a Pro Football Hall of Famer has really opened up the whole world for me,” he said in 2019. “It’s been unbelievable. I can’t even think about all the years I wasn’t in. I can only really enjoy the time that I’m in.”

No one enjoyed it more. He wore his gold Hall of Fame jacket at every opportunity — “even on the airplane,” he said.

“For me, since I got inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame, life has been totally different. It’s a whole different place in the world, that you are one of the 312 best players in the history of the game. I’m Number 257. And for me, it’s special. I’m a Hall of Famer. I’m one of the few players that played the game that has a gold jacket. I don’t even think about the times that I wasn’t in, how challenging it was, how I was passed over … I was mad about that.

“The greatest sports fraternity in the world is the Pro Football Hall of Fame,” Little said. “It’s something that you can’t imagine until you’re in.

“I tell everybody, ‘If you’re not feeling good, and you’re home, and you’re sneezing, go to the closet, put on that gold jacket and stand in the mirror. Everything changes when you put on that gold jacket.'”

Great Broncos have followed and will continue to do so in the decades to come.

But Little is forever “The Franchise.”