Sitting in the assisted living wing at Hilltop Reserve Senior Living in Denver, iconic do-everything former player Gene Mingo is trying to remember details from the first game he played for the Broncos.

To help with matters, Mingo is shown on a cellphone some video highlights of Denver’s Sept. 9, 1960 road game against the Boston Patriots. It was the first game in the history of the American Football League, then a fledgling eight-team outfit trying to challenge the NFL.

The Broncos were leading 7-3 in the third quarter when the Patriots punted the ball to Mingo at his own 24. He went streaking down the right sideline for a 76-yard touchdown return to put Denver ahead 13-3.

Mingo comes alive while watching the play.

“It was quite a feat,’’ said Mingo, 87, who was a running back, returner and a kicker for the Broncos. “I remember the runback that I made, yeah. It was down the right sideline in front of our bench. The blocking was perfect.”

The extra-point attempt by Mingo wasn’t. No footage of it can be found on YouTube, but that’s just fine with him.

“I missed it,’’ he said. “It should have been easy.”

No big deal. The Broncos held on for a 13-10 win in the game played before 21,597 at Boston University’s Nickerson Field.

Flash forward more than 65 years and the Broncos and the Patriots will meet again in Sunday’s AFC Championship Game at Empower Field at Mile High. The teams sure have come a long way since they were in the AFL from 1960-69 and joined the NFL in 1970.

The home team on that Friday night game way back then became the New England Patriots in 1971, and they have won six Super Bowls since the 2001 season. The Broncos have won three Super Bowls since the 1997 season.

“I’m amazed,’’ Mingo said of how far things have come since 1960.

Asked about his memory, Mingo said, “It’s lost.”

But when he is spurred on, he still can provide some details of his impressive career.

Mingo, an Akron, Ohio native who joined the Navy after high school rather than attend college, played in the AFL and NFL from 1960-70, including 1960-64 with Denver. Mingo, the first Black kicker in pro football history, was inducted into the Broncos Ring of Fame in 2014.

Mingo will watch Sunday’s game on television at Hilltop, and he is excited about it.

“I think the Broncos should take this game,’’ he said. “I’m looking forward to it. I love the Broncos.”

Mingo is one of just six players still alive from the Broncos’ first season of 1960, with all having played in that historic first game. The others are guard Willie Smith, running back Henry Bell, defensive tackle Hal Smith, defensive back Frank Bernardi and running back Bob Stransky, the latter two having once starred at the University of Colorado.

Hal Smith played just the first three games in 1960 for the Broncos and then joined the Patriots for the rest of the year. He is one of nine Patriots players still alive from that season.

However, just four of them appeared in that opener: defensive back Chuck Shonta, halfback Walt Livingston, tackle George McGee and wide receiver Mike Long. Shonta had the biggest impact, returning an interception 52 yards.

While Mingo will watch Sunday’s game in Denver, Bernardi, 92, will tune in 25 miles north at Legend of Broomfield, an assisted living facility. Bernardi played in just six games in 1960 for the Broncos, his final pro season, but did start the first game in team history.

Bernardi said his memory is not good and he remembers few details about that game. But he does recall how he ended up joining the Broncos.

Bernardi, after being a fourth-round pick by the Chicago Cardinals in 1955, played sparingly for them in three seasons. Then, having a bad knee, he was released and didn’t play pro ball for two seasons.

“I wrote the Broncos a letter,’’ Bernardi said. “I’m grateful they signed me. They gave me an opportunity to play and an opportunity in the business world.”

Bernardi, originally from the Chicago area, has remained in the Denver area since his Broncos stint. He was a longtime broker for Hornblower & Weeks.

Bernardi remembers the struggles that faced the Broncos and the rest of the AFL when the league started.

“Of course, the NFL was dominant,’’ Bernardi said. “People were saying, ‘Who are the Denver Broncos? Who are the Boston Patriots?”’

The Broncos were Denver’s second major-league team following the original Denver Nuggets, who went 11-50 in the NBA in 1949-50 before disbanding. But they weren’t exactly regarded as a major-league outfit at first.

“The Denver Post and the (now-defunct) Rocky Mountain News didn’t even send writers to the first game,’’ said Broncos historian Jim Saccomano, 77, who was a longtime public relations director for the team. “They just had something in the paper the next day that read, ‘Special to the Denver Post’ and ‘Special to the Rocky Mountain News.’’’

The Patriots had crushed the Broncos 43-6 in the first preseason game for both teams in Providence, R.I., so it was expected the home team would win the opener easily. Denver’s starting quarterback was Frank Tripucka, who was then 32 and had originally joined the Broncos as an assistant coach after having been a journeyman player in the NFL and Canadian Football League.

But once head coach Frank Filchock saw what he had on the roster at quarterback, Tripucka was handed a uniform. With the Broncos being one of the cheapest teams in the league and desperately trying to cut costs, they wore second-hand uniforms purchased from the Copper Bowl, a defunct college all-star game in Tucson, Ariz., that were brown and mustard yellow. They donned clownish vertically striped socks.

“From having talked to players from back then, they didn’t even really have a playbook,’’ said Saccomano, who followed the first season as an 11-year-old growing up in Denver and later would write many articles on the early days of the Broncos. “Frank Tripucka was literally drawing plays in the dirt.”

That worked at times in the Broncos’ first game. After Gino Cappelletti had given the Patriots a 3-0 lead on a 35-yard field goal in the first quarter, Tripucka in the second quarter hit halfback Al Carmichael on the right side with a short pass. Carmichael cut across the grain and streaked down the left sideline for a 59-yard touchdown reception. Mingo made the extra point for a 7-3 Denver lead.

But later in the second quarter, Carmichael suffered an injury that would decrease his role for the rest of the game. So, Filchock told Mingo at halftime he would replace Carmichael in the second half returning punts and kickoffs, while also having an increased role carrying the ball from scrimmage.

“I was nervous,’’ Mingo said.

Nevertheless, Mingo finished the game with eight carries for 66 yards and had the long punt return and a 24-yard kickoff return. Denver’s other offensive stars were Tripucka, who completed 10 of 15 passes for 180 yards, and Carmichael, who despite his injury, finished with nine carries for 24 yards and six receptions for 130 yards. On defense, defensive back Goose Gonsoulin had two interceptions.

After Mingo’s missed extra point, the Patriots cut the deficit to 13-10 later in the third quarter on a 10-yard touchdown pass from Butch Songin to Jim Colclough. But the Broncos held on for what was considered at the time a big upset.

“Any win by the Broncos back then was an upset,’’ Saccomono said of a franchise that didn’t have its first winning record until its 14th season in 1973.

The Broncos finished 1960 with a 4-9-1 record but the Patriots actually weren’t much better at 5-9. The Patriots were coached then by Lou Saban, who would become Denver’s coach from 1967-71, and their top defensive assistant was Joe Collier, who would later become a legendary Broncos defensive coordinator from 1969-88.

The Patriots had a better decade in the AFL than the Broncos but were hardly a dominant outfit. They won just one division title, claiming the East in 1963 with a 7-6-1 record before being walloped 51-10 in the AFL title game by the San Diego Chargers.

And in their first AFL season, the Patriots rivaled the Broncos for being a downtrodden franchise.

“It was on the cheap end, from the locker rooms to the uniforms and everything,’’ said defensive tackle Art Hauser, who had played in the NFL from 1954-59 before getting into eight games with the Patriots in 1960, but not the opener. “Everything was screwed up. It was chaos. On the schedule, we played (five) straight Friday nights (because the Patriots did not want to compete with college football on Saturdays and the NFL on Sundays).”

Hauser, 96, would spend 1961 with Denver before retiring and is the oldest living player in Broncos history. He will watch Sunday’s game between two of his former teams at his home in Cincinnati. He figures “everybody will be fired up” in Denver.

From the 1960 Broncos, Tripucka, who played with them from 1960-63 and had his No. 18 uniform retired, was inducted into the Ring of Fame in 1986. Gonsoulin, who played for the Broncos from 1960-66, was a charter inductee in 1984, along with wide receiver Lionel Taylor, who played for them from 1960-66. But Taylor, who died last August at age 89, didn’t join the team in 1960 until the third game.

Meanwhile, Mingo was overcome with emotion when he learned in 2014 he would be inducted into the Ring of Fame.

“When we voted him into the Ring of Fame, I was with (then-team president) Joe Ellis when he made the call to Gene to tell him,’’ Saccomano said. “He was so overcome with happiness and was crying so much that Joe asked him if he needed to call (for an) emergency or something. Gene said, ‘I’m fine,’ but he kept crying. It meant a lot to him.”

It sure did. A dozen years later, Mingo still gets a bit emotional when asked about his induction.

“I’m in the Ring of Fame,’’ said Mingo, who was a longtime drug and alcohol counselor in Denver following his retirement as a player in 1970 after also having stints with Oakland, Miami, Washington and Pittsburgh. “I wish I had done more, but I did what I could.”

Although his Broncos tenure only lasted five seasons, Mingo did plenty. Having been the first Black pro kicker means a lot to him.

“I’m proud,’’ he said. “It was quite an accomplishment.”

Mingo, using the old-fashioned straight-on kicking style with his toe and scoring touchdowns, led the AFL in scoring with 123 points in 1960 and 137 in 1962. He was an AFL All-Star in 1962, when he led the league with 27 field goals. Lining up at a variety of positions, he made for the Broncos the following plays of 50 yards or more: a field goal, a pass, a run, a reception and a punt return.

“I could do a lot of things on the football field,’’ Mingo said.

Yes, he could.

“He was an excellent player,’’ Bernardi said. “He was fast and had maneuverability. You can be fast but if you go in a straight line, they’ll kill you. But he was fast and had maneuverability.”

Going fast in a straight line, though, didn’t hamper Mingo on his 76-yard punt return against the Patriots. At Broncos Park, the team’s practice facility in Englewood, there is a display that pays tribute to that first game.

Behind glass, there is one of the few surviving vertically striped socks, with nearly all of them having been burned at a public ceremony in 1962. There is a game program from Sept. 9, 1960, that cost 50 cents at the time. There are newspaper articles, including an account of the game in which Mingo was quoted as saying about the punt return, “About three guys grabbed me, but I just ran past them.”

Due to being in the Ring of Fame, Mingo’s name will be on display for all to see Sunday on the facade at Empower Field. Mingo is hopeful the CBS broadcast of the game will mention the teams having played in the first AFL game.

Mingo plans to watch the game with other residents at Hilltop Reserve Senior Living. He figures to be wearing a lot of orange.

“All the residents know about him (having played for the Broncos),’’ said Aussailik Ryan, a wellness nurse. “He only wears Broncos clothes. That’s all he wears.”

If anyone Sunday wants to ask Mingo about his famous punt return, he can seek to talk about it. If he needs a reminder, a highlight of the play is not hard to find on YouTube.