Sometimes when two teams get together for a game, connections can be kind of hard to find.
Other times, there seem like too many to count.
Such is the case for the Denver Broncos and the San Francisco 49ers, even going all the way back to how they began.
Denver fans are familiar with the Broncos beginnings as members of the American Football League, the only American pro sports league that was successful enough that each team made it into the National Football League.
But the 49ers had similar beginnings as members of the All-America Football Conference, a pro league that competed with the NFL from 1946-49. Eventually, the AAFC folded, but when it did, three franchises were taken into the NFL: the Baltimore Colts, the Cleveland Browns and the San Francisco 49ers.
The Broncos and 49ers had similar early records. That is, they were both crummy.
People now think of the Joe Montana-led 49ers, winning those championships in the 1980s — but that was after three decades of futility.
The most notable fact about the 49ers in the 1950s and 1960s was that they had the “Million Dollar Backfield.” This was before salaries of today were in that range, and that was the nickname given to their combination of quarterback, fullback and two halfbacks. All four members of that backfield are in the Pro Football Hall of Fame: quarterback Y.A. Tittle, fullback Joe “The Jet” Perry, and halfbacks John Henry Johnson and Hugh “The King” McElhenney.
Once upon a time, when fellow and future Hall of Famer Steve Sabol directed NFL Films, their cafeteria had a corner framed by life-sized photos of McElhenney and singer Elvis Presley. It was called — you guessed it — The King’s Corner.
The 49ers became ultra-successful in the 1980s, and in 1983, the Broncos acquired John Elway, signaling the start of a similar trajectory and a rivalry that followed going into the 1990s.
The Broncos and 49ers played each other in preseason regularly, starting at the University of Denver’s Hilltop Stadium in 1968….
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