With four regular-season home games played and four to go, the Broncos are being proactive — again — about the quality of the playing surface at Mile High Stadium.
The entire field is being ripped up and replaced, despite the absence of any complaints about the quality of the grass there.
For the fifth straight year, the Broncos are spending the money to ensure that the players will be performing on the highest-quality surface, emphasizing that “the Walton Penner Family Ownership Group’s commitment to player safety and a best-in-class playing surface throughout the season.”
At a time when the debate regarding real grass vs. fake grass continues, with the situation boiling down to whether the owners are willing to write the check to ensure the best and safest surfaces for players, the statement made by the Broncos makes their ownership look good and, in comparison, owners who cling to artificial turf look bad.
Beyond caring about player safety, having the best playing surface provides the best protection of the investment the owners have made in their rosters. Which would be a sensible position for any owner — especially the cheap ones.
Now that it has morphed into a matter of collective bargaining, those who choose to be pennywise have even more cover for their pound foolishness. Which makes it even more important that the NFL Players Association apply not general public pressure to the league but specific scrutiny to the owners who won’t ditch artificial turf for grass, or who won’t replace low-quality grass with high-quality grass.
It’s been a somewhat strange second year in Denver for veteran running back J.K. Dobbins. As coach Sean Payton tells it, however, everything is going as planned.
“He’s a huge part of what we’re doing,” Payton told reporters on Wednesday regarding whether the team is managing Dobbins’s workload. “So each week we look at — a lot of times who’s the back that’s in there with the hot hand. But he’s been fantastic. So to answer your question: No, that’s not a hot button topic with us here. It might be with you guys, but not with us. So we’re good. We’re good with the rotation.”
Payton is generally using a three-back rotation, with Dobbins joining R.J. Harvey and rookie Jonah Coleman. Still, with Harvey on injured reserve for Sunday’s showdown against the Chiefs, Dobbins got fewer chances than Coleman.
Coleman, who was on the field for 41 offensive plays, had 11 carries for 41 yards and four catches for 63. Dobbins played 13 snaps, getting seven carries for 13 yards and no targets in the passing game.
“Look, it’s always easy to work two [running backs] and it becomes more challenging when you’re trying to work three, but he’s doing a great job,” Payton said of Dobbins.
For the year, Dobbins has 94 carries for 306 yards in eight games, with eight catches for 27 yards. That’s 333 yards from scrimmage — an average of 41.6 per game.
In 10 games last year, before he suffered a season-ending foot injury during a Thursday night game against the Raiders, Dobbins was averaging nearly twice that amount, at 80.9 yards from scrimmage per game.
Through it all, the Broncos have been linked to a potential trade for Colts running back Jonathan Taylor. While the prospect of acquiring a workhorse would cut against Payton’s longstanding approach to use multiple running backs, Taylor’s arrival would surely result in even fewer chances for Dobbins.
Bryce Young was listed with a knee injury on the Panthers’ practice reports over the past four weeks. The quarterback was listed with an ankle injury Wednesday.
Young, though, was estimated as a full participant.
The Panthers did not practice Wednesday.
Outside linebacker Jaelan Phillips (hamstring), left guard Damien Lewis (knee), linebacker Bobby Okereke (foot) and rookie cornerback Will Lee III (hamstring) were listed as non-participants.
Phillips has missed the past two games, and Lewis missed last week’s game against the Packers.
Offensive linemen Corey Bullock (quad) and Torricelli Simpkins III (ankle) were limited.
Appearing Tuesday on 105.3 The Fan in Dallas, Cowboys owner and G.M. Jerry Jones made a clunky case for the absence of a correlation between coaching pay and wins.
When he makes his second weekly visit of the team’s flagship station, he should be asked this question: Would you want Andy Reid, Sean Payton, John Harbaugh, Sean McVay, or Kyle Shanahan to be the Cowboys’ head coach?
They’re the five highest-paid coaches in the league. And any team that doesn’t have an objectively great coach would absolutely want one of those five.
Because they win. In 2026, their combined record is 25-11-1. They have six Super Bowl trophies, and 11 Super Bowl appearances.
They’re highly compensated because they win. Which makes them worthy of high compensation.
It’s obvious. And it’s insulting to the intelligence of anyone with reasonable cognitive skills (which barely qualifies me to be insulted) for Jerry to insist that there’s “zero correlation” between coaching pay and wins.
So what’s really going on here? At one level, he’s being cheap when it comes to a budgetary line item that has no salary cap, or salary floor. At another level, he likely doesn’t want to have a true alpha whose W-2 would allow him to take over the team, and to minimize the outsized influence of anyone named Jones.
Whatever the case, Jones’s strategy to treat a coaching search like an exercise in wildcatting ignores the fact that he can afford to pay for a high-functioning oil well. But he doesn’t want to spend the money — and he doesn’t want to give the coach the power that comes from being highly paid.
Through it all, the Cowboys haven’t been to the NFC Championship since 1995. And there’s definitely a correlation between Jerry’s approach to hiring coaches and the continuation of “this ‘drought’ that people say we’re in.”
To no surprise, the top late-afternoon game from Week 8 of the 2026 NFL season generated very big numbers.
According to CBS, the Chiefs-Broncos game racked up 28.175 million viewers.
It was, per CBS, the most-watched Week 8 game on record.
The game was competitive and exciting until the very end, with the Broncos erasing a 24-13 fourth-quarter deficit before keeping the Chiefs from turning a first-and-goal from the four into a game-winning score, with the fourth-down play being the last one of the game.
It will undoubtedly be the most-watched Week 8 game, given the NFL’s decision to leave the game between the Eagles and Commanders in prime time, despite multiple viable flex options.
