Broncos

John Elway spent sixteen seasons throwing for Denver without a championship to show for it, losing three Super Bowls before Mike Shanahan built a team around Terrell Davis that finally won two, in the 1997 and 1998 seasons, over the Green Bay Packers and the Atlanta Falcons.

Bob Howsam, a minor league baseball owner, put the franchise together in 1959 as a charter member of the American Football League. It was not a promising start: the Broncos were the only original AFL club that never reached the league championship game and never finished a season with a winning record across the whole ten years the AFL existed. The move into the NFL in 1970 changed little at first.

The losing habit followed them into three Super Bowl defeats through the late 1970s and 1980s. What turned around was the defense as much as the offense — the "Orange Crush" unit of the late 1970s gave the franchise its first identity, and the "No Fly Zone" secondary of the 2010s gave it another, carrying Peyton Manning to a third Super Bowl title in his final season, a 24–10 win over the Carolina Panthers.

Not every big lead has held. In the 2012 playoffs, Denver let a late advantage slip against the Baltimore Ravens and lost in overtime, a collapse still known locally as the Mile High Miracle. The Kansas City Chiefs remain the rivalry that matters most on the schedule.

Elway's number is the one people in Denver still measure the franchise against — the losses he carried for so long.