Broncos Clips
The Broncos have placed center Mike Deiter on season-ending injured reserve, Mike Klis of 9News reports.
Deiter, who joins defensive lineman Matt Henningsen (Achilles) on IR, injured his quad on Tuesday.
Deiter’s injury left Calvin Throckmorton and undrafted rookie Gavin Ortega at center with Luke Wattenberg and Alex Forsyth sidelined with injuries.
The Broncos signed center Lecitus Smith to take Deiter’s roster spot, per Klis.
Smith, 28, entered the NFL as a sixth-round pick of the Cardinals in 2022. He has also spent time with the Texans, Eagles, Packers, Patriots and Steelers.
He has appeared in 19 games, with four starts, including one start with the Packers last season in his only action of 2025.
The Broncos will play their starters 10-15 snaps in Friday night’s preseason opener against the Falcons. Those starters will not include quarterback Bo Nix.
The game is on the artificial turf at Mercedes-Benz Stadium, and Nix is returning from a fractured right ankle.
Nix will play in the second and third preseason games, coach Sean Payton said Wednesday.
“If we were playing a game — you guys have watched practice — he would [play],” Payton said, via video from Romi Bean of CBS News Colorado. “He wanted to play. He’ll play the next two weeks.
“I think that was probably something that was already decided maybe like a month ago. But if we were playing a game, I would say he would play. You’d have to ask him, but I would say [he’d be] 100 percent.”
Nix was injured in the Broncos’ divisional-round playoff victory over the Bills, and the AFC Championship Game was the first game he has missed for injury in his career.
With Nix watching from the sideline, Jarrett Stidham and Sam Ehlinger will handle the quarterback duties against the Falcons as they compete for the backup job.
After practicing briefly with the Lions in training camp, quarterback Teddy Bridgewater decided that it’s time to retire. Bridgewater had an NFL career that spanned more than a decade with eight different teams, but it was one five-week stretch that two of his coaches recalled most when asked about his retirement this week.
In 2019, Bridgewater was the backup quarterback with the Saints, and when Drew Brees missed five games, Bridgewater stepped in and led the Saints to a 5-0 record. At the time of Brees’ injury, the Saints were 1-1 and had just been blown out by the division rival Rams, and the season could have rapidly gone downhill. But Bridgewater made sure that didn’t happen.
Lions head coach Dan Campbell, who was assistant head coach on that Saints team, said one of the reasons he wanted Bridgewater as his backup quarterback in Detroit was that he knew how dependable Bridgewater could be in a pinch.
“I’ll never forget in 2019, when Drew got injured, we had just gone out to the Rams, got beat out there, Drew hurt his thumb and was out five weeks. Teddy stepped in and we won five in a row. That was Teddy,” Campbell said.
Broncos head coach Sean Payton, who was the Saints’ head coach at the time. reflected on how much Bridgewater meant to that Saints team.
“Our experience, my experience was fantastic,” Payton said. “We made a trade for him . . . He was a great asset. A really, really good teammate. He had some rare leadership skills. . . . He was important, he was on our team during a ton of wins. When Drew got hurt he went 5-0, and I think he’ll find his way back into coaching or some role with football. I’m proud of him, and the type of injury he had was significant, young in his career.”
A devastating knee injury during a preseason practice with the Vikings in 2016 changed the trajectory of Bridgewater’s career, and he never became the franchise quarterback he was expected to be in Minnesota, or anywhere else. But no one doubted his hard work, leadership and character, and he had all the traits that coaches love in a backup quarterback. Those coaches are expressing their appreciation for Bridgewater as he walks away from the NFL.
The Denver Broncos hope to build a new stadium by 2031. The project will entail many decisions.
One fairly important decision, from the perspective of the folks who attend the games, has yet to be considered.
PSLs. Personal Seat Licenses. The money-for-nothing charge that attaches to the ability to buy season tickets.
During a Tuesday press conference with reporters, owner and CEO Greg Penner addressed the PSL issue.
“Really, it’s the furthest thing from our minds right now,” Penner said. “We’re so focused on — we’ve had so many steps before that. . . . [Burnam Yards is] still a preferred site but it’s not finalized that we’re going to be in that location. Obviously, that’s where we really want to be.
“So really, we haven’t even gotten to PSLs yet. Our season ticket holders are vital to our organization and we’re going to keep them informed every step of the way once we get there.”
Plenty of teams use PSLs, which can become very expensive based on the quality of the seats. And, frankly, it’s more fair to fund the construction of a new stadium through the PSL process than to impose on taxpayers generally, since most of them will never attend a game and many of them don’t care about football.
That may sound sacrilegious to hard-core football fans, but it’s true.
Broncos coach Sean Payton wants to see what he can do to keep his team healthier.
Payton said at training camp on Monday that he’s concerned about the number of soft-tissue injuries his team has suffered so far in camp.
“We’ve got to get a handle on some of the soft-tissues,” Payton said, via the Denver Post. “We’ve had a couple either strains, hamstring or groins. We continue to fight through that.”
Payton said he doesn’t want to blame the heat but does want to look at how the team can make sure the players are adequately taken care of, and taking care of themselves, before and during practice.
“You always try to look at your pre-practice routine,” Payton said. “Your hydration, obviously. And it’s incumbent on the player. It’s hard for anyone to know your soft tissue. I’m always looking at maybe what we did leading up to the period when a guy had a strain.”
The players who have had to miss time in training camp because of soft-tissue injuries include three of the Broncos’ most important offensive playmakers, running back J.K. Dobbins and wide receivers Jaylen Waddle and Marvin Mims Jr.
Sean Payton said the Broncos will play some starters against the Falcons on Friday night. He has not decided whether Bo Nix will be one of those to see action in the team’s preseason opener.
“We haven’t gone through the role yet,” Payton said, via Chris Tomasson of The Denver Gazette. “I’ll let you know when we go through the roles.”
The game is on the artificial turf at Mercedes-Benz Stadium, which could keep Nix out until the second week of the preseason. Nix is ready, though.
He has not played since the Broncos’ divisional-round playoff victory over the Bills when he fractured his right ankle. The AFC Championship Game was the first game Nix has missed for injury in his career.
“I’m excited,” Nix said of playing in the preseason. “I think preseason’s always a great time to get back out there and get your feet wet a little bit and see defenses in a live situation before the first [regular-season] game.”
Nix said he has “no idea” whether he will play Friday.
Regardless, the Broncos are expected to use both Jarrett Stidham and Sam Ehlinger against the Falcons as they compete for the backup job.
Teddy Bridgewater returned to the NFL after announcing his retirement at the end of the 2023 season, but he was back in uniform before the end of the 2024 season.
Bridgewater said on Monday that his second retirement is going to be a lasting one. Bridgewater stepped away from the Lions this weekend and they placed him on the reserve/retired list on Sunday.
“This time it’s official,” Bridgewater wrote in a post to his Instagram account.
Bridgewater went on to recall his comeback from a 2016 knee injury that he described as “gruesome” and created doubt about his ability to play football again. Bridgewater returned to the Vikings before the end of the 2017 season and played for most of the next decade, but he wrote “this wheel of mine can no longer deal with something as simple as standing around on a turf field.”
The Vikings selected Bridgewater in the first round in 2014 and he went on to play for the Saints, Panther, Broncos, Lions and Buccaneers. He returned to the Lions as a free agent this offseason, but the newly signed Josh Dobbs is now set to back up Jared Goff in Detroit.
Broncos running back J.K. Dobbins went to the locker room during Monday’s practice, but head coach Sean Payton isn’t concerned about a long-term absence.
Payton said at his press conference that Dobbins is dealing with a soft tissue injury and that the team is being cautious with him as a result.
“I think he’s going to be fine,” Payton said. “We’re just being smart with it.”
Payton spoke more generally about a run of soft tissue injuries in camp this summer and said the team has to “get a handle” on what they can do better to avoid them. Payton mentioned pre-practice conditioning as one of the areas they’re looking at in hopes of cutting down the absences from practice.
The Broncos have gotten one of their defensive players back on the field.
Denver announced on Monday that linebacker Jordan Turner passed his physical and has been taken off the non-football injury list.
Turner, 24, entered the league last year as an undrafted free agent. He appeared in seven games for the Broncos, mainly playing special teams.
He finished his rookie season with seven total tackles and one QB hit.
The Broncos have only one kicker on their 90-man roster: Wil Lutz, who missed Saturday’s practice to attend former teammate Drew Brees’ induction into the Pro Football Hall of Fame. And that’s how they found out that they have another kicker on their roster: Brandon Jones, a safety who can kick in a pinch.
Jones went 3-for-4 on field goals at practice on Saturday and said afterward that he became the Broncos’ backup kicker after what started as a joke with special teams coordinator Darren Rizzi.
“I didn’t kick in high school or college, I just have some history in playing soccer,” Jones said. “I don’t know how I even got to kick. I think I just was joking with Riz like, ‘Yo, I can kick if you ever need an emergency-kicker-type of situation.’ Then he called my bluff and put me to the test one day, I think it was some time last year, and I made an extra point.”
The longest of Jones’ field goals at practice on Saturday was 41 yards. He said he once made a 50-yard field goal while working with Lutz.
Broncos fans at training camp were chanting Jones’ name as he showed off his kicking skills, which he said was a thrill, but he doesn’t know if he could handle the pressure of the Broncos needing him to make a game-winner.
“If we’re winning by a lot, no big deal. Hopefully, I don’t think it would ever come down to a game-time thing where I would need to make it to win. If it comes down to that, just pray for me, that’s all I can say,” Jones said.
Jones knows he’s not good enough to play Major League Soccer, but he said he would love to try out for an MLS team when he retires from the NFL, just for the challenge of it.
“Played some club soccer, stopped in high school because I was like, ‘Let’s be real, I’m a football player,’” Jones said.
He showed on Saturday that he’s a football player who can play two positions.
