Here’s what Mase expects from the 2020 Denver Broncos

By decision, circumstance and the simple passage of time, the Broncos will take the field Monday night with just one player left from Super Bowl 50: kicker Brandon McManus.

That serves as a reminder that this is a new team, untethered to the past.

It carries six rookies or second-year players on its first-team offense.

It won’t have any season-long captains; as was the case last year, Vic Fangio will choose them on a week-to-week basis.

That doesn’t mean leaders will not emerge. Which ones do will be one of the defining aspects of the 2020 Broncos — a team that represents a new generation in the club’s 61-season history, playing in environments the likes of which the NFL has never seen — stadiums with few or no fans.

Denver already knows it will play four games this season without fans in attendance, including the Week 1 opener at home. But even with canned noise and empty seats, it will still be football, crackling with emotion, intensity, speed and power.

What should we expect?

It starts with the players who will lead the way.

A NEW CORE WILL GUIDE THE WAY

The possibility exists that Von Miller has played his last snap as a Bronco, depending on how the team attacks his contract situation next year. It is also possible that he could be back in three months if all goes perfectly in his recovery from a dislocated peroneal tendon, and then return for his 11th season with the team next year.

Either way, Miller is the primary connective tissue to franchise linchpins like Peyton Manning and Champ Bailey. His performance and tenure gave him gravitas in the locker room. His young teammates watched and learned.

And one of the things they learned was this: Make everyone in the locker room welcome and let them know that they matter, whether they arrive with a massive contract, undrafted status or something in between.

Lock experienced this first-hand.

“I think one of the coolest things [Miller] did for me when I first came in was just talk to me,” he said Wednesday. “He came in and I was obviously wide-eyed when I saw Von for the first time.

“You hear about old vets — leave them alone and let them come up to you. I think the first time I came in the locker room, he came right up to me and started talking to me.”

And now that Lock is the quarterback, he reaches out to new teammates exactly like Miller does.

“I feel like being the quarterback of the offense, you try to do that to the rookies when they come in,” Lock said. “If Von wouldn’t have done that to me, I would have thought, ‘Maybe you let the rookies work their way in and then you talk to them.’

“When Von came up to me that first day right off the bat, it kind of set the tone for me going into this year on how to treat the rookies coming in this year. The more they can feel comfortable, the better they will go out and play.

“If that means me going out and having conversations with them before practice in the locker room or in the cafeteria, then that’s what it has to be to help them feel comfortable and welcome them to this team.”

This is as important as anything Lock does with his right arm. This isn’t to say that his production and statistics don’t matter. But if Lock continues to show leadership, his teammates’ confidence in him will grow — which will also have the ancillary benefit of improving his performance and the metrics by which it is measured.

A tenet of the leadership style shown by Lock, Dalton Risner, Phillip Lindsay and Justin Simmons and other members of the Broncos’ youthful core is that they don’t know a stranger. They learned by watching others; now they carry it forward. Simmons, for example, was one of the Broncos who helped cornerback Davontae Harris get up to speed last year, along with Chris Harris Jr. and Kareem Jackson. Now Davontae Harris could be poised for a significant role as the No. 3 cornerback, a job for which he is competing with rookie Michael Ojemudia.

Simmons also learned from Todd Davis, the seven-year veteran inside linebacker released by the Broncos last Friday.

“Todd was a great leader,” Simmons said Wednesday. “He was just one of those guys that I knew I could rely on if I happened to miss something or if I forgot a certain check. He’s one of those guys that you could just rely on to make checks or to kind of be on top of the areas that you may have missed.

“Losing someone like him — it’s kind of said all the time. I don’t mean to just say it and I’m not saying it just to say it, but there’s no replacing someone like Todd.”

But the best chance the Broncos have is in players who watched and learned from him — like Simmons in the secondary and Alexander Johnson, who lined up next to Davis last year and flourished.

Whether the Broncos succeed or fail will in part depend on which young leaders develop and how well they fare. Veteran imports are important here too; Jackson and Jurrell Casey will help guide the way.

But the future belongs to the young, homegrown players who comprise the heart of the offense and the spine of the defense.

THERE WILL LIKELY BE BUMPS

These will not just be a result of a new core growing into a prominent role, but of an offense adapting to coordinator Pat Shurmur’s new scheme and a defense facing life without Miller and Davis and dealing with the continued recovery of Bradley Chubb from a torn ACL.

“It’s going to be a slow build,” general manager John Elway said of his offense before training camp began.

Before Miller’s injury and Chubb’s recent setback, the Broncos’ early-season success equation was likely to rely on a potentially great defense — fueled by a hellacious pass rush — that could complement with a low-mistake offense to win games in the teens.

Lock’s aggressive on-field nature is well-known, but during training camp he made it clear that protecting the football — which goes hand-in-hand with trying to win games on the strength of a powerful defense — was the No. 1 priority.

“[I’m] kind of reminding myself, taking the shots when they’re there and fitting it into some windows if need be, [while] also understanding that taking care of the ball is the No. 1 thing for us,” he said. “If we can take care of the ball, we’ll be well off.”

But if the defense is merely good — and not great — it makes it harder to win games in this manner. That in turn can lead to more risks — and more mistakes, along with potential rewards.

This could lead to form that is tantalizing and frustrating, all at once. It is part and parcel of a young team learning its way.

But don’t expect the Broncos in September to be like the ones you’ll see in December. As 2019 showed in Denver, a team’s stretch form can look nothing like its early-season performance, if strides are taken and development abounds.

EXPECT A LATE RUN

The most benign quarter of the season — at least based on how the teams appear to be stacked today — is the final quarter:

• Dec. 13: at Carolina Panthers
• Dec. 19 or 20: Buffalo Bills
• Dec. 26 or 27: at Los Angeles Chargers
• Jan. 3: Las Vegas Raiders

Carolina could be the team most affected by the loss of OTAs and training-camp sessions due to the COVID-19 pandemic; with a new head coach and coordinators who worked in college last year, there is as much on-the-job learning for the people running the Panthers as their young players themselves. Only the Bills had a winning record in 2019. The Chargers might be playing rookie quarterback Justin Herbert by then if they appear headed to their sixth season out of the playoffs in the last seven. The Raiders are the same old Raiders until further notice, a team that has just one winning season in its last 17 campaigns.

The Broncos were at their best late last season, fueled by a combination of an improving defense that was at its best in high-leverage situations and the injection of energy sparked by Drew Lock’s mobility, arm talent and dynamic personality.

This year, late-season improvement could be fueled by a the youthful cadre of offensive skill-position performers. By that time, expect better chemistry and more consistency than you might see early on.

Whether that powers the Broncos over the finish line to their first playoff season since Manning’s retirement could depend on how well they withstand any early-to-mid-season turbulence. If the Broncos are at .500 through 12 games, they should be poised to sprint through the final quarter of the season to the finish line, giving the unspoken rebuilding process of recent years its first tangible result.

If that is where the Broncos end their season, they will know that they truly earned it. It will be an accomplishment fueled by adversity, adaptability and ascension of young players.

It will be a postseason trip that offers a taste of grander things to come.

FINAL PREDICTION:

9-7, No. 7 seed in the AFC playoffs