At first, they held him out for precautionary purposes.
Then they thought it would be a week or two.
Then he missed the entire preseason.
Now it’s reached the point where the Broncos can’t be sure. The truth is, they don’t know when Ben Hamilton will return to his job at left guard.
Hamilton sustained a helmet-to-helmet hit early in training camp and since hasn’t been able to work out without feeling nauseous. He recently traveled to Pittsburgh to see a concussion specialist, who told him to rest for two weeks.
Not that he’ll be in the lineup after that. Far from it. He’ll be re-evaluated then and no one knows if he’ll be any better.
And so it is that the Broncos will go into the season without one of their most reliable offensive linemen. Hamilton, a fixture at left guard since his early days in Denver, has been replaced in the lineup by Chris Myers, who will make his first NFL start Sunday at Buffalo.
Makes you wonder, doesn’t it? Makes you wonder about all those concussions suffered by NFL players in the ’60s and ’70s. The ones that were called “dings to the head.” The ones that often caused a player to miss a few plays, not several weeks.
