Once again, he can be called Captain Rod.
The Broncos’ team captains didn’t feel right about their fraternity without Rod Smith. So the four players who were voted captains by teammates last week – Tom Nalen, John Lynch, Champ Bailey and Jay Cutler – approached Broncos coach Mike Shanahan about adding Smith to their group.
During a team meeting Wednesday, Shanahan announced Smith was the fifth captain. A sixth will be rotated each week from special teams.
“Sympathy vote,” said Smith, the Broncos’ record holder in nearly every receiving category. “No, it’s much appreciated. The biggest thing is, I didn’t have a vote.”
Smith, 37, is trying to recover from hip surgery that will sideline him at least through the Broncos’ bye in Week 6.
Hamilton update
It seems like the news on left guard Ben Hamilton gets worse before it gets better.
The latest is doctors have advised Hamilton to stay away from the team’s Dove Valley complex this week.
Hamilton has been out since the early days of training camp because of a concussion. The latest development means Hamilton is certain to miss the team’s third game against Jacksonville and is out indefinitely.
In other injury matters, defensive back Domonique Foxworth (ankle) and tight end Stephen Alexander (calf) didn’t practice Wednesday.
Warren on Warren
When the Raiders acquired defensive tackle Gerard Warren from the Broncos last month for what turned out to be a fifth-round draft pick, Oakland defensive tackle Warren Sapp wondered why. Sapp said he didn’t see Warren making their defensive line rotation.
“When he came in I thought he had a daunting chance to make this ballclub,” Sapp said during a conference call Wednesday with Denver media. “But the big fella came in and started doing what he’s doing and we’re going to use him. He’s definitely part of our six.”
Young and less young
Not to suggest there’s a sizeable age gap between rookie Raiders coach Lane Kiffin and Colorado State coach Sonny Lubick, but former Fresno State coach Jim Sweeney was the high school coach for one and in his final years a college coach for the other.
It was through the Sweeney connection that Lubick, 70, gave Kiffin, 32, his first coaching job as the Rams’ assistant offensive line coach in 1999.
Kiffin was 24 then, old enough to take one of Lubick’s characteristics with him now that he is the NFL’s youngest head coach.
“His ability to relate to the players and tell them exactly how it was,” Kiffin said Wednesday of Lubick. “That’s a great trait to have. You bring in players … whether it was good or bad, he told them how it was, as opposed to trying to trick them into motivation and trying to tell them something to make them feel better. He was real honest with the players, and it’s not what they want to hear sometimes, but they respect that.”
Plummer update
It’s a blow to Tampa Bay’s chances of adding a fifth quarterback, but Jake Plummer officially has begun the next phase of his life. The former Broncos quarterback married former Broncos cheerleader Kollette Klassen in Idaho on Aug. 26.
Although Plummer notified the league office in March of his intention to retire, his rights officially belong to Tampa Bay, after he was traded by the Broncos for a conditional draft pick.
Staff writer Mike Klis can be reached at 303-954-1055 or mklis@denverpost.com.
