On Sept. 15, 2024, the Broncos brought legendary wide receiver Lionel Taylor back to Denver to see his Ring of Fame pillar for the first time. He called the visit “fantastic.”

On Saturday night at Empower Field at Mile High, the Broncos plan to remember Taylor during a preseason game against Arizona. Taylor died Aug. 6 at his home in Rio Rancho, N.M., at the age of 89 and the family revealed his passing Wednesday.

“That’s one of the greatest Broncos that ever lived and for him to be gone that is a loss to the Broncos family,’’ wide receiver Al Denson told The Denver Gazette after being informed of his former Broncos teammate’s death.

Taylor played for the Broncos from 1960-66, and in 1961 became the first player in pro football history to have a 100-catch season. He caught exactly 100 for 1,176 yards for the Broncos, who were then in the AFL, and all AFL statistics were absorbed by the NFL when the leagues merged in 1970.

Taylor, who would have turned 90 on Friday, broke into the NFL with the Chicago Bears as a linebacker in 1959 before joining the Broncos for their first season the following year. In his seven Denver seasons, he caught 543 passes for 6,872 yards and 44 touchdowns, and was a charter inductee to the Broncos Ring of Fame in 1984. He finished his career with the Houston Oilers from 1967-68, bringing his pro totals to 567 receptions for 7,195 yards and 45 touchdowns.

Taylor later was a pioneer in coaching, serving as the NFL’s first Black coordinator when he was the Los Angeles Rams offensive coordinator from 1980-81. Overall, he spent 14 seasons as an NFL assistant, which included also being Pittsburgh’s wide receivers coach from 1970-76, when he won two Super Bowl rings.

“He was a great player and he was a great coach,’’ said Taylor’s grandson, Lionel Lapham, 44. “It was an honor to be named after him. I remember him as a man who was always straight with you.”

Lapham said Taylor was in very poor health when admitted Dec. 20, 2024, to Presbyterian Rust Medical Center in Rio Rancho, which is outside of Albuquerque. He spent 69 days in the hospital with a urinary tract infection while also having heart issues and kidney failure. In a Dec. 30, 2024, interview with The Denver Gazette, Taylor said he was doing “not good.”

However, Lapham said Taylor’s health eventually got much better. In an interview with The Denver Gazette in May, Taylor said he was “hanging in there.”

“In December, three doctors wanted to put him in hospice care then but we didn’t, and he lived seven months after that,’’ Lapham said. “He just put up a fight.”

Lapham said Taylor was back in the hospital for six days in July with a staph infection, left briefly and then was in the hospital for two more weeks. He said he then went into hospice care for 15 days before dying at his home last week.

“His body just gave out,’’ Lapham said.

Lapham said Taylor will be cremated next week and the family expects to have a public service for him, likely later this month in the Albuquerque area.

Taylor was born Aug. 15, 1935 in Kansas City, Mo., but mostly grew up in rural West Virginia. He starred at New Mexico Highlands before entering the pro ranks.

Taylor joined the Broncos in the third game of their inaugural 1960 season and made an immediate impact. He had 76 or more catches in each of his first six seasons with Denver, and four times had more than 1,000 yards receiving.

“He was a great competitor and he helped me out a lot as a rookie when I got there,’’ said Denson, who played for the Broncos from 1964-70 and was Taylor’s teammate his first three seasons. “He was instrumental in helping me become an All-Pro at the position. He was a wonderful person. He worked at 100%. Every day, he was the first one there and the last one there.”

Wide receiver Eric Crabtree, who played for the Broncos from 1966-68, was a rookie during Taylor’s final Denver season of 1966.

“Everybody respected Lionel,’’ Crabtree said. “When he said something, everybody listened. One thing he used to always say was, ‘If you can touch it, you can catch it.’ He kind of instilled that in us.”

Crabtree called Taylor’s statistics with the Broncos very impressive since teams didn’t throw as much then as they do now and the regular season was 14 games, three fewer than now.

“You look back at his statistics, and you wonder, ‘How did he do it?'” Crabtree said.

The 6-foot-2, 215-pound Taylor wasn’t fast but was known for his excellent hands and route running. When he was a Steelers assistant, he helped develop future Hall of Fame receivers Lynn Swann and John Stallworth.

Taylor spent five years with the Rams as wide receivers coach, with the last two also being offensive coordinator. In a 2023 interview with The Denver Gazette, Taylor shrugged off being regarded as a pioneer nine years before Art Shell became the NFL’s first modern Black head coach with the Los Angeles Raiders in 1989.

“We all need role models in life, and fortunately there was a Lionel Taylor there that I could look at it and say, ‘Yeah this is possible,’’’ Hall of Fame coach Tony Dungy, the first Black head coach to win a Super Bowl with Indianapolis in the 2006 season, told NFL Films last year.

Taylor’s coaching career lasted through 1998. He also was a head coach at Texas Southern and with the London Monarchs of the World League of American Football and an assistant with the Cleveland Browns and at Oregon State.

In the 2023 interview with The Denver Gazette, Taylor said he never had seen his Ring of Fame pillar at Empower Field. Although Taylor was enshrined in 1984, pillars of inductees weren’t put up until 2013.

In 2024, the Broncos brought Taylor to Denver to see his pillar and to be honored during a game against the Steelers. The visit was chronicled by NFL Films.

“That guy looks good,’’ Taylor told The Denver Gazette while looking then at his pillar. “He makes me look a lot better than I am.”

Taylor was accompanied on the visit by his wife of 67 years, Lorencita Taylor. He is survived by Lorencita, 87, and daughters Bunny Taylor of Rio Rancho and Loretta Taylor of Bothell, Wash.

Lorencita Taylor, Bunny Taylor and Lapham were with the legendary receiver when he died. Lapham is planning to be in Denver on Saturday when the Broncos have a remembrance of his grandfather.