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The Denver Broncos took the field for their first day in full pads on Sunday, but they were missing almost all of their stars.

The good news for Broncos Country is it wasn’t injuries or an outbreak of food poisoning that kept them out, just simply a rest day for the players. Players who Gary Kubiak said “have a lot of plays under their belt in their career,” adding the point of emphasis today was to “get the team better from a young standpoint, and that’s what we did today.”

Demaryius Thomas, Matt Paradis, Virgil Green, Emmanuel Sanders, Brandon Marshall, T.J. Ward, Chris Harris Jr, Darian Stewart, Sylvester Williams and Derek Wolfe all had the day off for the team.

BSN Denver was on hand for the practice, here’s what we saw:

Pax is back

After a long stretch of days—dating all the way back to OTAs—where Paxton Lynch looked a bit in over his head, on Sunday Paxton Lynch had probably his best day of practice in a Broncos uniform.

It may have started yesterday when Lynch hit undrafted rookie Kalif Raymond (more on Raymond later) for a 39-yard touchdown on the last play of the live period. Paxton ran down, celebrated with Raymond and showed that boyish excitement we hadn’t seen weeks.

Lynch rode that momentum into Sunday when he once again put on display the reason the Broncos jumped up to get him in the draft. The rookie QB was absolutely money on his deep ball, hitting three perfectly thrown bombs to his receivers down the field. For the first time since the very first day of OTAs, Lynch looked like he was simply out there playing football, having fun with it.

“He’s just getting better every day,” said head coach Gary Kubiak after practice. “Every day we’re out here he tends to make some big plays and do some good things. He struggles at times but you’re just seeing a guy getting more and more confident, that’s part of being a young player.”

As for the other quarterbacks, Trevor Siemian was mostly invisible, not doing anything spectacular or anything terrible. Mark Sanchez started the day kind of cold, his worst moment coming when undrafted rookie out of Georgia Southern, Antonio Glover, gloved a pass intended for Jordan Norwood, but as the day progressed so did Sanchez.

Late in the practice Sanchez was at his best, first finding Bennie Fowler on a marvelously thrown ball out of a bootleg to his non-dominant side, with Fowler making a great diving catch. On the very next play, Sanchez found Cody Latimer deep, who smoked Bradley Roby up the sideline for a touchdown.

Everybody Loves Raymond

Each day it seems there’s a player  who turns the heads of the media, making many look down at their rosters and saying, “Who is that?” On Sunday, it was No. 19 that had folks looking for a name to attach to the tiny blur of a receiver.

Raymond is listed at 5-foot-9, meaning he was wearing three-inch heels when the team measured him for his bio. For a small guy, though, Raymond is a fierce competitor.

The undrafted rookie out of Holy Cross began his head-turning party early in the practice during one-on-one work when his quickness continually left defenders in the dust, drawing a loud “Ohhhh” from the crowd when he put Lorenzo Doss in a spin cycle on one particular route.

Later in practice, Kalif continued his big day when he found himself on the receiving end of two of the aforementioned deep balls from Paxton Lynch.

“This is my dream, anything I can do to get on that field,” He said after practice. “Receiver, returner, sniper, gunner, anything they need me to do. I’ll go out there and snap the ball if they want me to… This is the organization I want to play for.”

Raymond isn’t just saying that, either. He’s been the first guy on the field every day, putting in work non-stop.

“I want to be the first guy in and the last guy out,” he explained. “At the same time, I want to be as loose as possible. If I’m going to go 110-percent, I have to be out here warmed up and ready to go. If I can catch 100 punts, I want to get 100 punts.”

If he can sharpen up those return skills and continue to make plays from the slot on offense, he could be a surprise addition to a position group that Gary Kubiak says might be the strongest on the team.

Miller time returns

Did you notice there was one name missing from the star veterans who got the day off? That’s right, as Gary Kubiak works Von Miller back into the routine, he was out there with the young guys getting his work in. Miller certainly wasn’t moping about it, either, jumping around, dancing, firing up the crowd in warmups and running around with a notable pace in drills.

“I know he looked like he wore a couple people out,” Kubiak said. “We put a tackle at tight end to try and make it an even match, but it still didn’t work out.”

Miller was in on four plays during the live period; he blew up three of them before being taken out. He had made his point.

Earlier this offseason D.J. Williams told the BSN Broncos Podcast that Von wouldn’t skip a beat and that some guys just have it. It appears D.J. was right.

Notes

• It wasn’t just Raymond who had a great day for the receivers; the entire corps had a great day with DT and Emmanuel sitting out.
• Zaire Anderson had a huge hit on Ronnie Hillman in the backfield that actually ended up taking Hillman out of practice, “He got bent back a little bit,” Kubiak said.
• A bit of a scary moment took place when Sam Brenner laid face-down on the ground for a few minutes before eventually being carted off. Kubiak said later that he would be evaluated for a concussion.
• We saw the first little scuffle of camp when James Ferentz and Corey Nelson had to be held back by teammates. After another skirmish involving more players later, Kubiak called the whole team together, “I tried to calm them down and told them we still have a long way to go so refocus, and they did.”