Miles
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- Mar 18, 2019
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Asked if Alworth was Bambi with a sledgehammer, Hadl said, "That is a pretty good description."
In addition to owning a spot among Broncos' opponent touchdown records that might never be touched, he once had 211 receiving yards against Denver, that coming in a 1965 game, and in 1963 he had an 85-yard touchdown catch against the Broncos that still is the seventh-longest ever against Denver.
Those records have been in the Broncos books for 50 years, but Denver was not the only team victimized by Alworth.
A 1978 inductee into the Pro Football Hall of Fame, he played for the (then) San Diego Chargers from 1962-70 and then with the Dallas Cowboys in 1971-72.
Chargers head coach and general manager Sid Gillman believed in keeping no player past the age of 30, so he traded the future Hall of Famer to Dallas, where he was on the Cowboys' Super Bowl XII championship team in 1971.
"A lot of us players wanted to keep Lance and were kind of surprised to see him traded," Hadl said, "but as great as Lance was you cannot argue with the great success Sid had."
Gillman is also in the Pro Football Hall of Fame, and Hadl, who himself tormented the Broncos as much as Alworth, was elected to the College Football Hall of Fame in 1994.
The career numbers for Alworth were 542 receptions for 10,266 yards and 85 touchdowns.
He was named All-American Football League seven times (six on the first team, once on the second team) and played in seven AFL All-Star games.
Alworth was the first great pro football receiver to ever wear number 19, the only one ever called "Bambi" and to this day stands in the Broncos' record books among top performances by an opposing player.