Von Miller knows he can still get better. (Photo: Brandon Krisztal/KOANewsRadio)
Day 12 of Broncos Training Camp began with a bit of a fire drill, or in this case a lightning drill, as lightning alarms sounded, forcing the team to begin practice indoors, and sending the fans home for the day.
About 45 minutes into practice the team went outside for the remainder of the day.
The highlight of the day was undoubtedly the presence of Emmanuel Sanders in full team drills for the first time all year. In fact, on the first play of 1st Team Offense vs. 1st Team Defense, we saw him sneak behind Chris Harris Jr. on a go route up the right sideline, but he was unable to reel Joe Flacco’s pass into his arms.
Shortly after his full-team work, Sanders exited practice early, before returning with just his football pants on a sweatshirt and sneakers. The 10th-year wideout was all smiles as he and his boss, John Elway walked across the field together to watch the rest of practice.
Vic Fangio unveiled his plan for the QB rotation on Thursday in the team’s first pre-season game of the year, The Hall of Fame Game vs. Atlanta in Canton, Ohio.
As expected, the reps will go the way they’ve gone most of camp, and the way they are represented of the depth chart.
The NFL makes every team put out a depth chart before the first pre-season game, then update it every week until the end of the season.
Even though it’s only his first season as a head Coach, Fangio clearly shares the same sentiment every other coach in the history of the NFL seems to share about the first depth chart of the year.
A few more things stood out from Monday’s practice
Connor McGovern almost backed up his best practice of Training Camp, with another clean session, but then late in the day in one of the last team periods, he snapped the ball directly into Flacco’s ankle.
Brett Rypien, who’s currently 4th on the meaningless depth chart, took a few periods as the 2nd Team QB against the 1st Team Defense. Unlike last week, where he completed 3 of 4 passes and looked the part, Monday was a little rougher, he was sacked somewhere between 5 and 6 times, but because this is training camp he gets to still finish the play and throw the ball, but that didn’t go much better, and following one would-be Bradley Chubb sack the ball just slipped forward out of his hands like something you might see at a high school practice where the ball is too big for a QBs hand.
Von Miller met the media after practice. Miller has 98 sacks in his first 8 seasons. It’s no secret that he’d love to catch and pass Bruce Smith who holds the all-time mark with 200. It’s worth noting that heading into the season he turned 30, also his Smith’s 9th the Hall of Famer only had 92 sacks. Despite his success through his first 8 years, Miller knows he can get better.
Tuesday is the Broncos final full-practice until Sunday. Even thought 70-75 players will play on Thursday, the bulk of the starters will not. Thus, the likes of Miller, Flacco, Harris and the rest of the sure-fire starters, will go 5 days between practices. Considering the Broncos started training camp well before any team in the league, the extra rest can’t be the worst thing, especially for the veteran players.
One player likely to play a little bit on Thursday is Tim Patrick. The 2nd-year Wide Receiver has looked like a favorite target of Flacco through the first 10 practices. I caught up with him Saturday after the team’s practice at Broncos Stadium at Mile High.
On Saturday, Fangio let us know that Phillip Lindsay missed practice at the Stadium because his chiropractic session didn’t go great, according to his head Coach.
“Phillip was getting a chiropractic treatment and the guy overdid it,” Fangio said. “So to hell with chiropractors, let’s just play football.”
Monday, after Lindsay returned to practice, Fangio doubled-down when asked if the Pro Bowl Running back got past his chiropractic issues, “I guess he did, but he will not be going to anymore.”