ENGLEWOOD, Colo. --The Broncos will bring their familiar, orange home jerseys with them to the Super Bowl, but those jerseys will travel out East with one key modification: they'll include a recognizable Super Bowl XLVIII patch.
The patches were sewn onto the jerseys on Tuesday at Hilda's Fine Tailoring, a Centennial-based tailoring establishment run by Hilda Mayr, who has mended and worked on the Broncos' jerseys since 1999.
Mayr noted that the patches, which are pre-fused onto the jersey, only took about five minutes each to sew – a measure to ensure that the patches stay on during the game.
"Each patch is fused on first – on the left side, the left chest. Then, once it's fused on, we just tack it on a little bit all around," she said, before chuckling, "Because it could come off and we don't want that in the Super Bowl."
Because the patches are pre-fused, Mayr noted that sewing them on is mostly an easy process, although the top part of the design – which features the Vince Lombardi Trophy rising above a graphic of MetLife Stadium and the New York skyline – is the trickiest section. The Super Bowl patches are far from her most labor-intensive projects involving tending to Broncos jerseys, however.
Mayr noted that she receives the jerseys each Tuesday after a game to perform repairs, which take between three-to-six hours.
"Sometimes when it's a rough game, we have a lot of repairs," she said.
And when asked which player's jersey requires the most mending, Mayr paid a bit of a compliment to the job the offensive line has done with protecting quarterback Peyton Manning.
"Not Peyton," she said.
