Despite the obvious and persistent questions at quarterback, the Broncos are in position to be better than most national pundits believe.
This is true even if neither Drew Lock nor Teddy Bridgewater blossom into viable long-term options at QB — but it’s only true if the Broncos can grasp onto any advantage at the margins that they can find.
That could start with reaching the threshold of having 85 percent of players vaccinated — a level that the NFL has considered making the threshold for going back to relaxed protocols regarding social distancing in the team facility, gathering for meetings and eating out on road trips, among factors that would ensure a return to something resembling pre-COVID-19 normalcy.
Gone would be daily swabs up the nostrils, face masks (the kind that aren’t attached to football helmets), road trips spent almost entirely in hotel rooms and holding team meetings in the Pat Bowlen Fieldhouse or other areas where players and coaches can be distanced.
“They don’t have to daily test. Then some of the guys, like myself, when we travel to a city, Von [Miller] and I will go have dinner or Kareem [Jackson] and some of our teammates,” said the Broncos’ NFL Players Association representative, kicker Brandon McManus. “It’s nice team bonding instead of having the hotel food.”
Last week, Broncos coach Vic Fangio said that he expected “69 or 70″ players to have received both doses of the COVID-19 vaccine in time to be considered fully vaccinated by the time training camp begins, based on verbal commitments that had been made. That’s good, but it’s likely not good enough; 70 fully vaccinated players on a 90-man roster would put the Broncos at a 77.8-percent vaccination rate.
McManus has assumed a leadership role in facilitating the flow of information to Broncos players to try and get that percentage up a few points.
“My job is to educate them, I’d say, of the benefits of doing it for themselves,” he said last week. “I’m not a doctor, so we’ve had some doctors and immunology doctors come in here on Zoom and tell the players the benefits of that side. I’m here to tell them the benefits of what happens if you are vaccinated, the advantages that they can have personally with daily testing.”
As seen in recent comments from players like Washington’s Montez Sweat and Carolina’s Sam Darnold, information sometimes isn’t enough.
“At the end of the day it comes down to a personal decision,” McManus said. “That’s why the league is never able to force us to do it, but there are some advantages personally and some team-wise as well, which you can do with the amount of people in certain rooms, meeting-wise and stuff.”
And for a team that needs every edge it can find, in a league where games and seasons can turn on factors like drop rate, field position following punts and kickoffs, percentage of fumbles recovered and missed-tackle rate, reaching the 85-percent level could be the difference between a trip to the postseason and yet another joyless January.
