Super Bowl Champion, Former Denver Broncos Star Ronnie Hillman Dead At 31

The hits keep coming for an NFL community that’s experienced tremendous loss in 2022. This time, it’s the death of former Denver Broncos star running back Ronnie Hillman, who succumbed to cancer on Wednesday at 31, an age when some other NFL stars are still on the field.

Hillman was drafted at age 20 by the Broncos in 2012, out of San Diego State University, where he put up eye-popping numbers: 3,243 yards and 36 touchdowns in only two seasons there. He was barely old enough to legally drink when he took his first NFL snap, but his youth didn’t prove a limitation in the grown-man world of professional football. He put up his best season in 2015, when the Broncos won Super Bowl 50, posting a team-high 863 rushing yards, 24 catches out of the backfield and seven touchdowns.

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At the time it seemed like Hillman’s star was only rising, but it turns that would be his penultimate season on the gridiron. Hillman would only play in eight games in 2016 for the Minnesota Vikings and the then-Diego Chargers.

CBS Sports reported that Hillman was only diagnosed in August with a rare cancer called renal medullary carcinoma, a disease that affects sickling of the red blood cells and attacks kidneys. Earlier this week, his former Broncos teammate Orlando Franklin took to twitter to ask for prayers for his friend.

The list of current and former NFL players to pass away in 2022 is long, ranging from Hall of Famer Franco Harris, who died Wednesday morning at age 72, to former Steelers and Washington Commanders quarterback Dwayne Haskins, who was killed in a tragic accident in April at age 24.

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