The Denver Broncos just concluded the second week of training camp under first-year head coach Nathaniel Hackett. Through 10 practices, we're beginning to see how things are coalescing for the Broncos and what it could mean for the future.
Broncos Country's faithful have turned out by the thousands to get a preview of this Russell Wilson-led team and, perhaps, a reminder of what it's like to have a bonafide franchise quarterback stalking the hallowed grounds at UCHealth Training Center.
Questions swirled around the Broncos as this team entered training camp with so many new faces and novel moving parts. Some of them have already been answered.
What have we learned from two intensive weeks of training camp at Broncos HQ? Here are the biggest takeaways.
To begin Week 2, the Broncos were dealt a serious blow by the injury bug when starting wideout Tim Patrick suffered a torn ACL during practice. That same day, depth running back, and special teams maven, Damarea Crockett also was lost for the season with a torn ACL.
Broncos fans quickly knee-jerked, urging the team to go off-roster to sign a known commodity at wide receiver. If the Broncos were a wideout-poor team, such a hue and cry would make sense. But when your top-3 wideouts, post-Patrick injury, are Courtland Sutton, Jerry Jeudy, and KJ Hamler — you're living with first-world football problems.
When a starter goes down, it creates a vacuum. And nature abhors a vacuum.
The hole created by Patrick's injury demands to be filled. Who will plug it? The answer is coming in stages, in bits and pieces, but this is often how NFL stars are born.
Alas, in football, it sometimes takes a calamity for a special player to emerge — one whose talent was always there but has been buried on the depth chart. In some instances, that's how legends are born, like in the case of Tom Brady, a sixth-round draft pick who became an all-time great by virtue of an unlucky (or lucky, depending on one's view) injury to the starter, Drew Bledsoe.
But I digress. Patrick was a starter. Someone has to step up and not only earn that job in the nominal sense, but justify it week in and week out.
Could it be Jeudy? Hamler? Rookie Montrell Washington? All will be known in due time.
But this may be how the dominoes had to fall in order for a former first-rounder like Jeudy to have the room and opportunity to grow and step into the limelight. The silver lining.
The same can be said for the running backs, edge rushers (Randy Gregory injury), and offensive tackles (Billy Turner and Tom Compton). It's horror vacui for the Broncos.
As is the case for most NFL training camps, the Broncos' defense got the better of the offense for the majority of the first week. However, Wilson and company began to battle back in Week 2, in the face of the adversity of Patrick's injury.
We're beginning to see Hackett's vision come to fruition and what all the talking points about "the players becoming the scheme" really meant. Hackett, with the help of Wilson, devised an offense that is now revealing itself in the summer heat.
We're seeing the offense take shape — perhaps not exactly a traditional run-first unit — but one that leans heavily on the rushing attack with great pride and relish. It's very reminiscent of the Mike Shanahan days of yore.
Get the defense moving laterally and find the cut-back lane to great success. Once the defense begins to settle in on run-game cues, take the top off with an expertly timed, and executed, deep shot.
Now the defense can't stack the box. With Wilson's deep-ball accuracy and aggressive mindset, the defense is damned if they do, damned if they don't.
Such is the beauty of a West Coast Offense being implemented with precision. The Broncos aren't quite there in terms of everything firing on all cylinders, but they're getting closer by the day.
Entering camp, the only written-in-pen offensive line starter was Garett Bolles at left tackle, although, it didn't take long to realize that center Lloyd Cushenberry III is also a name to be drafted in sharpie. Over the ensuing two weeks, though, we've seen two other players begin to cement a starting job on the Broncos' offensive line.
Although both guards have been pushed mercilessly by Netane Muti's excellent camp thus far, Dalton Risner and Quinn Meinerz appear to have the starting jobs close to sewn up next to Cushenberry. Risner has impressed coaches and Meinerz's 10-pound weight loss resulted in him being significantly faster off the snap, which is key in this wide zone rushing offense.
Muti will be a handy, trusty swing guard. He's taken to Hackett's scheme, and the demands of new O-line coach Butch Barry, like a duck to water, despite the misgivings of many in media that he would. Meanwhile, the Broncos' situation at right tackle remains clear as mud.
If Denver had to play a game tomorrow, Calvin Anderson would start at right tackle. He has run with the first team since Day 1 of camp with both Turner (knee) and Compton (back) licking their wounds on the PUP list.
Anderson as a starter, at right tackle, is a less-than-ideal solution for this team, though. It's unclear when the Broncos expect Turner to come off the PUP list but when he does, reading between the lines, it would appear as if the coaching staff has grandfathered him the starting right tackle job.
The wisdom of that will only be revealed in the final analysis. In the interim, Anderson has successfully staved off any competition from Cam Fleming, who was re-signed on Day 1 of camp when the team realized how far out Turner and Compton were from practicing.
Having 4-of-5 starting O-line jobs resolved two weeks into camp is good for offensive chemistry.
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In the last few years, the Broncos have entered the regular season with a relatively deep and experienced cornerback depth chart, only to see it erode due to the injury bug. While we have no way of predicting whether injury misfortune will befall this team again at cornerback this season, the group is definitely shaping up as one of the Broncos' strengths.
The caveat: one key corner is already injured. Free-agent addition K'Waun Williams has been nursing a knee injury, though an MRI revealed no hidden damage, thankfully.
It is a little conspicuous, considering that Williams was signed to replace Bryce Callahan in the slot, the latter of whom was an excellent player for the Broncos — when he was healthy. Unfortunately, Callahan's healthy streaks were few and far between, which is why he's now playing for the Los Angeles Chargers.
However, No. 1 cornerback Patrick Surtain II has looked like a budding superstar in camp. He was a big reason why it took a few days for the Broncos' offense to pop and exact its pound of flesh in the summer heat.
Ronald Darby, the eighth-year vet, has looked solid, although, staving off injury will be a key to the Broncos getting a good return on investment out of him in his second season with the club. Behind that starting trio (Surtain/Williams/Darby), the Broncos have a fierce competition brewing.
It features 2020 third-rounder Michael Ojemudia and 2022 fourth-rounder Damarri Mathis at the top. Both players are poised to make the Broncos' 53-man roster but their respective path to a job will continue to be contested by Bless Austin, Ja'Quan McMillian, and seventh-rounder Faion Hicks.
If the Broncos were setting off on a hunt, they'd be loaded for bear at the cornerback position. All this team needs is a little luck by way of the injury bug.
The Broncos seem to be on the path to vindication, somewhat, in their controversial decision to move Baron Browning from inside to outside linebacker. Browning has begun to pick up steam as a high-impact player on the edge, though he's yet to leap-frog Malik Reed, who's had the No. 2 slot opposite of Bradley Chubb locked down with Gregory on the PUP list.
Browning has triggered some 'oohs and ahhs' by onlookers with his explosion off the ball, twitchiness, and ability to bend around the corner. He'll need to develop a full kit full of pass-rushing tools in order to make his position switch complete, but the early returns, according to Coach Hackett, have been "unbelievable."
Meanwhile, it's been a little slow going for rookie second-rounder Nik Bonitto. Like most rookie pass rushers making the jump to the pros, the former Oklahoma stand-out has been mired in the mental slog of the NFL's cerebral demands.
But when Bonitto flashes, it's oh-so-bright. He, too, has a unique explosiveness and twitchiness that will eventually come to the surface with more regularity once he assimilates the mental rigors of the NFL game.
Turns out, there's more to rushing the passer at the next level than simply chasing the ball. Bonitto is a cog in a machine made up of 10 other components that have to operate in unison and symbiotically on a snap-by-snap basis.
If even one of those 11 cogs goes off-script, it can spell ruin for the entire machine, and Bonitto is going through the process of learning that. Just how he navigates that trial-and-error learning curve will determine how quickly the Broncos get a return on their 2022 draft investment.
So far, though, the Broncos are happy with what they're getting from their top-four pass rushers (not counting Gregory). Gregory isn't expected to return to the field until literally Week 1 when the Broncos take on the Seattle Seahawks on Monday Night Football.
While we're on the subject, the top of the Broncos' defensive line depth chart is looking good. Dre'Mont Jones has impressed as a pass rusher, while free-agent acquisition, D.J. Jones, made an early habit of blowing up running plays by the offense.
Mike Purcell, whom many tapped as a likely cap casualty, seems to have already made himself indispensable to the Broncos' new coaching staff. Behind those three, though, it's hard to say what the Broncos have on the D-line.
Things are coming together for the Broncos. Seeing Hackett's fresh-faced approach in action has been interesting.
As a head coach, Hackett couldn't be more different than his predecessor, Vic Fangio. Hackett has brought music back into the equation, which has served to enhance his messaging and philosophies, helping to juice the blast of enthusiasm and excitement that was injected into the Broncos' locker room with his hiring as head coach and the arrival of Wilson.
Next week, the Broncos will host the Dallas Cowboys for a couple of joint-practice sessions ahead of the teams' preseason debut on Saturday. With tempers beginning to flare at Broncos camp, the arrival of the Cowboys this week couldn't have come at a more opportune time.
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Chad Jensen is the Founder of Mile High Huddle and creator of the wildly popular Mile High Huddle Podcast. Chad has been on the Denver Broncos beat since 2012 and co-hosts the Mile High Huddle Show on 98.1 FM in Denver.