England native Bobby Howfield, a pioneer soccer-style kicker in 1960s, keeps low profile as Broncos play in London

Bobby Howfield no longer pays any attention to the Broncos, his former team. He has lived the past two years at Brookdale Senior Living in Highlands Ranch and hasn’t watched a Denver game in person or on television this century.

But on Sunday, his son Ian Howfield will make sure his father, 88, is up at 7:30 a.m. and tuned in when the Broncos’ game against the New York Jets at Tottenham Hotspur Stadium in London kicks off.

“We’re definitely going down there and making sure we’ll watch it all together,’’ said Ian, who plans to drive with his wife Lisa from their home in Grand Junction.

So why is it important for Howfield to watch this game played in England? The soccer-style kicker 57 years ago became the first player to come directly from Great Britain to play pro football in the United States and suited up for the Broncos from 1968-70. And the game is between his two former teams.

Kicker Bobby Howfield, who played for the Denver Broncos from 1968-70, with an attempt from the hold of wide receiver Mike Haffner. (Photo courtesy of Denver Broncos)

Howfield is a native of Watford, which is outside of London. He was a soccer star in England’s Premier League who was found during a kicker tryout there and eventually made his debut with the Broncos during a season in which he turned 32.

The Broncos were in the AFL during Howfield’s first two seasons before entering the NFL in 1970. After that season, he was traded to the Jets, kicking for them from 1971-74.

“It was just a game for me, just a way to make a living. That’s it,’’ Howfield said at Brookdale about his football career.

Ian Howfield, also a former NFL kicker, said his father was diagnosed with dementia last year and has “good and bad days” with his memory. Howfield is in the Brookdale memory care program that is paid by the “NFL 88” plan for pension-vested players with diagnoses of dementia, ALS or Parkinson’s disease.

Howfield is grateful for the help from the league but hasn’t paid attention to any NFL games for several decades.

“I’m not interested,’’ Howfield said. “I don’t watch it anymore. … Once you get to the stage (of playing in the NFL), you didn’t want to be around it anymore.”

Nevertheless, Howfield is regarded as one of pioneers in an era long before all kickers in pro football would be sidewinders.

Bobby Howfield, left, walks down the hallway from his room with his son, Ian Michael Howfield, at a retirement home in Highlands Ranch on July 31. (Stephen Swofford, Denver Gazette)

In 1964, Pete Gogolak, a native of Hungary who moved to the United States in 1956, became the first soccer-style kicker with the Buffalo Bills in the AFL. He later jumped to the NFL with the New York Giants, kicking for them from 1966-74.

Gogolak soon was followed by some other soccer-style kickers, with his brother Charlie Gogolak, joining the Washington Redskins in 1966; Cyprus native Garo Yepremian first kicking for the Detroit Lions in 1966; and Norwegian Jan Stenerud joining the Kansas City Chiefs in 1967 and eventually making the Pro Football Hall of Fame.

With the success of these players, then-Chiefs coach Hank Stram went to England in 1968 to find possible kickers to come to the United States. Howfield said until then he had never heard of American football.

“My dad was sitting in a pub with a bunch of buddies and heard about it,’’ said Ian, 59, a graduate of Columbine High School who kicked in the NFL for the Houston Oilers in 1991 and later became a star in the Arena Football League. “They made a bet with him that he couldn’t make it, and my dad said, ‘All right, I’ll go.”’

Ian, born in 1966 in Watford, was 2 at the time. He is well versed in his father’s history. The bet apparently was for a pint of beer.

Bobby Howfield when he was a forward for Fulham in England’s Premier League from 1963-65. Howfield went on to be an NFL kicker from 1968-74, including spending 1968-70 with the Denver Broncos. (Photo courtesy of Ian Howfield)

The 5-foot-9, 180-pound Howfield already was a sports star at the time of the tryout. He had played pro soccer with a number of clubs in England, including spending time in the Premier League. He had stints with hometown Watford from 1957-59 and 1962-63 and scored 23 league goals for Aldershot in the 1961-62 season, which stood as a club record for many years.

“It was my life back then,’’ Howfield said of his pro soccer career. “I loved the heck out of it but you enjoyed it and you moved on.”

With his powerful right leg, the 1968 kicking tryout in England went well for Howfield, who was by far the best of several hundred candidates who showed up. He pepped up after Ian told a story about how he almost drilled a man with a kick who was behind a goal post on a tower.

“I had to apologize to him,’’ Howfield said. “If he had come off that tower and dropped about 30 feet, he would have been dead.”

Stram opted to bring Howfield to Chiefs training camp in 1968 even though there was little chance he could beat out Stenerud. Howfield kicked for the Chiefs in the camp and during the preseason but didn’t make the opening-day roster.

Howfield was still in Kansas City when the Broncos arrived and fell to the Chiefs 34-2 in their second game of the regular season Sept. 22, 1968. Bob Humphreys, a straight-on kicker then in his second Denver season, had a rough day. He missed two field goals, both inside 30 yards, making him 1 of 5 on the season.

“After the game, my dad sneaked into the (Broncos) locker room and the equipment manager kicked him out,’’ Ian said. “But then he saw the equipment manager go to the bus and my dad sneaked back in and runs into the special teams coach, who remembered him from being in camp (with the Chiefs). He brought him right to (Broncos coach Lou Saban) and my father was on their plane ride home for a tryout.”

Kicker Bobby Howfield, who played for the Denver Broncos from 1968-70, with an attempt from the hold of wide receiver Mike Haffner. (Photo courtesy of Ian Howfield)

Howfield looked good in his tryout, which included him booming kickoffs, and the Broncos cut Humphreys and signed him. He made his debut Sept. 29, kicking a 27-yard field goal and making two extra points in Denver’s 20-17 home loss to the Boston Patriots.

Kicking for the Broncos from 1968-70, Howfield made 40 of 79 field goals at a time when many pro kickers converted only about 50% of their attempts. He had two boots of 51 yards and one of 53, which was impressive for those days.

“He had a really strong leg,’’ said Billy Van Heusen, a Broncos punter and wide receiver from 1968-76. “And he had a fun personality. He liked to tease people with his English accent.”

Yes, Howfield did.

“They used to look at me as an oddity, but you just let it slide,’’ Howfield said. “They used to look at me and listen to my accent.”

Al Denson, a Broncos wide receiver from 1964-70, didn’t deny many of the players were suspicious when Howfield became Denver’s first soccer-style kicker.

“We never had seen that stuff before,’’ Denson said. “We didn’t accept him right away and then once he won a couple of games kicking soccer style, we knew we had us a great kicker.”

Come 1971, the Jets were looking to replace Jim Turner with a longer-distance kicker after he had made just 2 of 13 attempts from 40 yards or longer in 1970. So Turner, despite having made a then-pro record 34 field goals in 1968 and concluding that season with three field goals in the Jets’ stunning 16-7 win over the Baltimore Colts in Super Bowl III, was shipped to the Broncos for Howfield.

“I had the distance,’’ Howfield said. “(Turner) didn’t have the distance. They knew that once I was kicking off they weren’t going to return that ball.”

New York Jets players celebrate by hoisting kicker Bobby Howfield after he made a 42-yard field goal on the final play for an 18-17 win over the New Orleans Saints on Dec. 3, 1972. Howfield made six field goals in seven attempts. (Photo courtesy of Ian Howfield)

But the trade worked out better for the Broncos than for the Jets. Turner spent nine seasons with Denver, through 1979, when he was one of the NFL’s last straight-on kickers. He made 65.1% of his Broncos field-goal attempts and was 3 of 13 on boots of 50 yards or more, including making a pair of 53-yarders in 1975 in Denver’s high elevation. He was named to the Broncos Ring of Fame in 1988.

Howfield played 3 1/2 seasons with the Jets, making a strong 66.7% of his field-goal attempts. But the Jets surprisingly didn’t utilize him for many long attempts. He was 0 of 2 on attempts of 50 yards or more, and his long for them was 44 yards.

Howfield did have some very good moments. In a Dec. 3, 1972, home game against New Orleans, he made six field goals (in seven attempts), including a 42-yarder on the final play that gave the Jets an 18-17 win. His teammates swarmed him after the boot.

“That was the game that made me fall in love with football,’’ Ian said. “He makes the game-winner and the team surrounds him and then you see this little guy from underneath the pile run out and leave the stadium.”

Ian, who had moved to the United States on a permanent basis in 1966 when he was 3, was 6 at that time. And he was having the time of his life.

In 1974, a New York radio station had a promotion to see if Ian, then 8, could kick a 20-yard field goal after a Jets practice.

“They were live on the air and I hit the crossbar and it went in,’’ Ian said. “I got high-fives from everybody on the Jets. The first one out there to give me a high-five was Joe Willie (Namath).”

Bobby Howfield, holding the two boys, at the 1973 New York Jets’ Thanksgiving dinner with his family. (Photo courtesy of Ian Howfield) 

Namath, the legendary quarterback known as “Broadway Joe,” was the most famous sports figure then in New York and was all over television nationally on commercials. Ian developed a good relationship with him.

“I followed him around,’’ Ian said. “He was my hero. I would hand him his knee brace when he got out of the Jacuzzi. My dad would say, ‘Is Ian bugging you?’ And he would say, ‘No, he’s good.”

Howfield’s Jets tenure ended when he missed four extra points in the first seven games of 1974, and he was released in favor of Pat Leahy. After that, Ian said, Oakland Raiders coach John Madden called the house at one point, wanting to sign Howfield but he declined because he sought more money.

Howfield settled in Denver after his NFL career, saying it was a good place to “relax.” He had stints working in the insurance business and owning a dry-cleaning business and coached soccer for a few years at Mullen High School. He also had great success playing in amateur soccer leagues, with Ian saying he put much younger players “to shame” well into his 60s and played the game until was 83.

Bobby Howfield talks with his son, Ian Michael Howfield, about his time as a placekicker for the Denver Broncos in the late ’60s as they relax at a retirement home in Highlands Ranch on July 31, 2025. (Stephen Swofford, The Denver Gazette)

Ian also was an adept soccer player. He starred at Columbine High but said he wasn’t allowed to also kick for the football team since rules did not permit a student to play two different sports at the same time in the school year.

Ian earned a soccer scholarship in 1984 to small-college Midwestern State in Wichita Falls, Texas, but after two years there got the bug to follow in his father’s footsteps as a kicker. Midwestern State didn’t have a football team but Ian got the opportunity to walk on at Tennessee. After two years at Tennessee without getting into a game, he opted to turn pro.

Ian had NFL tryouts with Miami in 1988, Seattle in 1989 and the Broncos in 1990 without making a team. His Miami stint included the Dolphins traveling to play a preseason game against San Francisco at the original Wembley Stadium in London, which opened in 1923 and stood for 80 years.

“My dad never made it to Wembley,’’ Ian said of the legendary soccer venue. “He was playing for Fulham (in a tournament in the early 1960s) and he broke his leg in the semifinal and never got to play in the final at Wembley.”

With Ian returning to his native land and in position to be the first Howfield to play at Wembley, he was interviewed by many newspapers and television stations prior to the game. But Dolphins coach Don Shula elected in the game to use only Fuad Reveiz, the team’s incumbent kicker who would end beating out Ian.

“I got all this press and never got on the field,’’ said a disappointed Ian Howfield.

Ian finally made the NFL with the Oilers in 1991. And the Howfields remain the only father-son combination of kickers in NFL history.

“I was happy for him,’’ the father said of his son’s accomplishment.

Ian’s journey really hit home when the Oilers played the Jets on Oct. 13, 1991. The Jets’ kicker was Leahy, who had beaten out Howfield in 1974 and was in his 18th and final NFL season.

“Have you ever heard of any kind of story like that where you’re playing against someone who took your dad’s job?’’ Ian said. “He was such a nice guy. He looked at me and said, ‘I hope that my kids get to kick against you.”’

Three weeks later, though, Ian Howfield’s NFL career would be over.

Ian entered a Nov. 3 game at Washington having made 11 of 15 field goals on the season. One of the misses was a 45-yard attempt the previous week against Cincinnati when the Oilers replaced holders midway through the game, with punter Greg Mongomery taking over for wide receiver Frank Miotke. The Oilers then cut Miotke before the Washington game.

While Ian said he had good chemistry with Miotke, he said he never meshed well with Montgomery. In the game at Washington, the 7-1 Oilers had a great chance to knock the 8-0 Redskins from the unbeaten ranks.

But with Montgomery holding the laces to the left rather than straight ahead, the kicker missed a 33-yard field goal wide left with 1 second left in regulation and the score tied 13-13. The Redskins, who would go on that season to win the Super Bowl, eventually won 16-13 in overtime. And Ian was cut the next day.

“When you do something like that, you feel like a huge disappointment,’’ he said of the miss in one of the most-hyped games of the 1991 season. “You feel like you disappointed your teammates and your family and your fans.”

Ian Howfield makes a field goal for the Houston Oilers against the New England Patriots on Sept. 22, 1991, at Foxboro (Mass.) Stadium. (Photo courtesy of Ian Howfield)

Despite being 13 of 18 on the season on field goals and 25 of 29 on extra points, Ian wasn’t that surprised by his release since “being a free agent, I had a short lease.” Ian then gave an emotional interview to the media in which he started crying. He regrets that, saying he should have simply “snuck out the back and left.”

Ian had tryouts with Philadelphia in 1992 and Tampa Bay in 1993 but never again made an NFL roster. The missed kick against Washington continued to be brought up.

“It seems like that kick was following me wherever I went,’’ he said.

Ian did find great success in the Arena Football League, which had goal posts that were 9 feet wide by 15 feet high compared to NFL dimensions of 18.5 feet by 10 feet. He became one of the league’s most successful kickers ever, making about two-thirds of his kicks at a time when converting about half was considered excellent.

Ian initially played Arena Football from 1993-97 before he sustained serious injuries in a 1997 auto accident. His car was stuck by a truck in Las Vegas, and he needed surgery to have two of his lower vertebrae fused and to have cartilage replaced in the knee on his right kicking leg.

Ian eventually received $3.8 million in a lawsuit filed against the trucking company and after years of rehabilitation returned to Arena Football in 2003, when his Tampa Bay Storm won the league championship. He also played in 2004 before retiring just shy of 38.

“I really enjoyed it,’’ Ian said of Arena Football. “They respected me in that league. … My dad thought I was too good for that league and was kind of bitter for it.”

Ian said his one regret as a player was not focusing on being a kicker earlier in life. He said by initially playing soccer and never having been a kicker in a high school or college game, he had to take the “hard road.”

Ian went on to become very successful while living in Las Vegas in radio and television sales, including spending five years as a national sales manager for CBS before retiring in 2022. Wife Lisa Howfield was president of a group that managed nine television stations in the West. She also retired in 2022.

In 2023, the Howfields moved from Las Vegas to Grand Junction. And about once a month, they drive to meet Bobby Howfield at Brookdale, where he keeps a low profile.

Kicker Bobby Howfield, who played for the New York Jets from 1971-74, running with the ball against the Baltimore Colts. Howfield also played for the Denver Broncos from 1968-70. (Photo courtesy of Ian Howfield)

Sue Crawford, executive director at Brookdale, doesn’t believe any of the other 50 or so residents there know Howfield once played pro football.

“He just plays it down,’’ Crawford said. “He’s very quiet and enjoys his time by himself. He’s not one who’s going to sit down and share stories and toot his own horn.”

Crawford said around 10 residents gather to watch on television whenever the Broncos play, and Howfield never has been among them.

That will change Sunday.

Bobby Howfield, left, and his son, Ian Michael Howfield, talk with a reporter about Bobby’s time as a place kicker for the Denver Broncos in the late 1960s as they relax at a retirement home in Highlands Ranch on July 31, 2025. (Stephen Swofford, The Denver Gazette)