The first original uniform designed specifically for the team was the creation of Bob Bowie of The Denver Post. Additionally, Bowie is credited with design of the Broncos’ 1962 logo as well as having provided numerous game program cover illustrations during the teams’ early years. According to Coach Jack Faulkner, Bowie’s involvement was solicited in an attempt to gain the press’ interest and attention in the team.
Faulkner also noted that the color selection for the uniform style was somewhat of an accident. A student of Paul Brown and a fan of the Cleveland Browns, Faulkner intended the jerseys to be “Texas Orange” a brownish color which, according to Brown, made the ball difficult to spot against the similar colored field of the ball carrier’s jersey. An undetermined mix-up somewhere in the order fulfillment process resulted in delivery of Wilson jerseys that were the much brighter “Tennessee Orange”.
(G. Mingo).
According to former team equipment manager Larry Elliott (1966-1982), jerseys from this period were manufactured by Wilson. The home jerseys were a solid Tennessee Orange with white triple sleeve stripes, numbers and letters. Road jerseys were a white mirror image of their home counterpart. Examination of an orange, home jersey from this era (circa 1962) revealed that the jerseys were constructed of Durene fabric and featured a V-neck collar, ¾-length sleeves and knit stripes which are imbedded into the sleeve. All numbering and lettering were sewn-on tackle twill with the orange home jerseys featuring a serif font numbering and the white road jerseys having sans serif numbering.
The new helmet was orange and included a bucking horse logo with a circular eye and white center stripe. The initial logo was blue to match the color of the stripes on the road jerseys, however by the October 14th game at Oakland, the helmets were refitted with white logos on the helmets. The reason for the change was the blue logo was difficult to see on the black and white televisions of the time so the switch was made to a white logo. This minor blip in the team’s helmet logos went on to spur major ‘discussions’ throughout the years. With a lack of color photographs, the blue logo appeared to be brown. An assumption was made, that gained a life of it’s own, that this original logo was brown as a tie to the teams original colors. This idea gained such momentum that reproduction helmets were created with a brown horse logo. However in 2016 our own Tom Jacobsen came across a bundle of color negatives from the era that once and for all put this argument to rest and confirmed that the original horse was in fact blue.
The pants were white and featured triple outseam stripes comprised of an orange center stripe bordered by thinner blue outer stripes. The 1962-’64 era uniforms were finished off with solid orange colored stockings.