Pat Bowlen may no longer be roaming the hallways of the Broncos’ practice facility or watching his team at Sports Authority Field each week, but he’s never too far from his team.

Saturday morning at Denver’s City Park, Broncos president and CEO Joe Ellis, senior vice president of business development Mac Freeman and Ring of Famer Billy Thompson joined the Bowlen family for the annual Walk to End Alzheimer’s.

Team Super Bowlen raised nearly $36,000 before the start of the walk, the most of any participating group in the Denver race, and received about $20,000 more from Broncos players, who doubled their donation from 2015.

“Mr. B took a chance on me as a receiver coming out of (Georgia) Tech,” Broncos receiver Demaryius Thomas said earlier this week. “I’ve been here my whole career, thanks to him. Just to see what Alzheimer’s is doing, it kills me, because my grandmother died with it and a lot of other people in my family have it, as well.”

The walk, held in more than 600 communities across the country each year, is the world’s largest event to raise awareness and money for Alzheimer’s care and research, according to Alzheimer’s Association’s website. Not including the Broncos donation, Team Super Bowlen ranked 20th among all groups nationally in amount raised by Saturday morning.

Bowlen, who purchased the Broncos in 1984, stepped down from his day-to-day duties as owner in 2014 because of the progression of the disease.

“(The walk) is very important,” coach Gary Kubiak said. “Obviously (we) want to support the Bowlen family, Mr. B. Wish he was here with us on a daily basis, but we continue to support (him), and I know it’s very important to the family so we as a team will definitely do that.”