Training Camp Takes: Time for the last chance to make an impression

ENGLEWOOD, Colo. — If this were a normal year, the Broncos would have spent Thursday in the Phoenix area. They would have hung out at the team hotel before catching a fleet of buses to State Farm Stadium to play the Arizona Cardinals. This would have continued the nearly-annual tradition of facing their fellow Mountain Time Zone rivals in a game with scant meaning and scores of empty seats.

Instead, the Broncos practiced for an hour and 45 minutes.

If this were a normal year, the Broncos would spend Friday starting the process of trimming the roster to 53. The dreaded, terse phone calls that include the phrases “come down to the facility” and “bring your iPad” would tell a slew of players that their dreams, at least in Denver, would have come to an end.

Instead, they will practice at Empower Field at Mile High, convening at 7:30 p.m. to provide the closest thing to a dress rehearsal in advance of Week 1 that they will receive.

That practice will have a “similar format” to the one the team conducted last Saturday afternoon at the stadium, Broncos coach Vic Fangio noted. That means the session will be unscripted, giving players and coaches a chance to adapt on the fly as they will in the game conditions that kick in on Sep. 14.

“It will be a similar format to what we did last week.” Fangio explained. “We put the ball at different spots on the field to start different periods, inter-mixed some kicking plays in there. It’s going to be very similar to that.”

Once the Broncos complete that practice, they will have approximately 16 hours to trim their roster to 53 players in advance of the 2 p.m. MDT deadline Saturday. So just like the preseason finale in other years, this game represents a last shot for players on the fringe to stake their claim to spots — both on the roster and the expanded practice squad.

This year, that practice squad will be 16 players, giving more opportunities for players to develop.

It was already set to expand to 12 players under terms of the new collective bargaining agreement. But with the COVID-19 pandemic and the need to have extra players on hand to cover game-day rosters in case players are forced to quarantine because of a positive test for the novel coronavirus, the NFL chose to expand it for one year.

Fangio would like to see the larger practice squad become a permanent addition.

“I’m hopeful that this stays forever. I’ve been saying it for a long time,” Fangio explained. “We don’t have minor leagues in the NFL like baseball and basketball does and hockey does. We need to have more people on the practice squad to try and develop them. It does help practice during the season, the more guys you have around. It keeps giving us a chance to develop players.”

If the Broncos opt to stock their practice squad with players on the current roster, they may have to say goodbye to as few as 11 players — assuming those the Broncos want to bring back pass through waivers between 2 p.m. MDT Saturday and 10 a.m. MDT on Sunday.

So for at least a few Broncos, a point that would have been an end in the next 48 hours will instead become a continued opportunity. And for a slew of players who get cut Saturday, last Saturday’s practice and Friday night’s work won’t be their only chances for full-speed work at Mile High.

INJURY AND AVAILABILITY NOTES

• ILB Todd Davis took part in individual drills and looked quick and smooth as he went through his pass-coverage dropbacks. Davis suffered a calf injury earlier in training camp but appears to be on track to play in Week 1.
• CB Kareem Jackson used a cupcake to lobby for a veteran rest day. It worked, and he watched practice without a helmet Thursday. “Kareem just begged me for a vet day, so I relented after he put a cupcake on my desk,” Fangio explained.
• OLB Bradley Chubb continued to watch from the sideline to rest his knee. He will not practice Friday.
• FB/TE Andrew Beck sat out Thursday with what Fangio termed “a little tightness in his back.” Beck will not practice Friday, but Fangio expects the versatile second-year veteran to be “ready to roll” next week.
• TE Albert Okwuebugnam did not practice Thursday due to what Fangio said was “a little hip problem, a tightness [or] pull-type thing.” The fourth-round pick will not take part in Friday night’s work.
• RG Graham Glasgow (ankle) and WR K.J. Hamler (hamstring) worked out with team strength-and-conditioning coaches Thursday. Fangio ruled Glasgow out for Friday’s practice.
• TE Troy Fumagalli watched practice from the sideline after undergoing an abdominal procedure Monday. He will not practice Friday. Fangio said Tuesday that he is expected to return “in a week or so.”

FAREWELL TO ISAAC YIADOM

A third-round pick in 2018, Yiadom spent most of the last three weeks competing to be the No. 3 cornerback. By Thursday, he was a New York Giant, joining that team in exchange for a seventh-round pick.

“It was a good opportunity to give Ike a fresh start back on the East Coast,” Fangio said.

Yiadom started eight games for the Broncos last year — Weeks 1-3 and then the final five games of the regular season. He lost the first-team job to De’Vante Bausby in the first half of Denver’s loss to the Green Bay Packers, then eventually got it back after Bausby suffered a neck injury and Davontae Harris and Duke Dawson had ups and downs in their periods of extensive work in October and November.

But Yiadom appeared to be behind in the competition for the No. 3 cornerback with Bausby and Harris this year. With third-round pick Michael Ojemudia returning to the practice field this week and undrafted rookie Essang Bassey getting some first-team repetitions in sub packages, as Fangio noted after practice Tuesday, Yiadom appeared to be on the outside of the 53-man roster with Saturday’s deadline bearing down.

Harris has stepped up in the last two weeks and serves as an example of how a change of scenery can revive a young player’s prospects, as he fell out of favor in Cincinnati last year. The Bengals cut him, the Broncos scooped him up, and he began to flourish.

Fangio hopes the same thing can happen to Yiadom in northern New Jersey.

“I’ll be his biggest cheerleader,” Fangio said. “I hope he makes us look bad and he’s a great player there. I’m cheering for him. It just didn’t work out here to the extent that he wanted it to — and we wanted it to. I’m hoping the new surroundings benefit him and his career.”

TALKING TUSZKA

It sounds like the most likely outcome for rookie outside linebacker Derrek Tuszka is for the 2020 season to effectively be a redshirt year, which would likely mean a ticket to the practice squad.

A seventh-round pick, Tuszka showed flashes during training camp, using his speed to log multiple hurries of Denver’s reserve quarterbacks during his repetitions of the first two weeks of camp. But Fangio said Thursday that the North Dakota State product “needs more seasoning” and must “get stronger” in order to stick for the long term.

“He needs to develop more physically — just all of that,” Fangio said. “He came from a — I don’t want to say a lesser level of play, [but] he’s out here now with NFL players — just everything. Nothing in particular but [with] everything, he was behind. It’s evident.”