As his surgeon reached for his drawer to pull out a reflex hammer, P.J. Locke sat on a doctor’s office in mid-February, visibly nervous.
“Your favorite test,” Dr. Chad Prusmack, a neurological consultant for the Broncos, told Locke. “Relax.”
He tapped Locke’s left leg. He tapped Locke’s right leg. They twitched. Prusmack grinned up at the Broncos safety, giving him a fist-bump. And Locke clapped, beaming, the career-altering stitches on his lower back vindicated.
“It work again!” Locke cracked. “That (expletive) was dead, last time.”
On Jan. 13, 2025 — exactly one day after Locke roamed for 76 snaps in the Broncos’ wild-card loss to the Bills — the 28-year-old safety visited Prusmack’s office for an MRI. As , imaging revealed that one of the discs in Locke’s spine was “completely degenerated.”
“He has bone on bone,” Prusmack pointed, looking at a scan from January. “There’s supposed to be a disc in between these.”
The result, as written in the video’s description: Locke underwent offseason spinal fusion surgery, a procedure done . It’s a massive development for the Broncos’ secondary depth, as Locke was seen at minicamp not participating in team periods — the reason now revealed.
Locke, however, is expected to be a full participant come the Broncos’ training camp in late July, a source familiar with the situation told The Denver Post.
He was a vital piece of the Broncos’ secondary in 2024, the fifth-year defensive back playing the second-most snaps of any player on the defense save now-departed linebacker Cody Barton. Locke, though, struggled in that season-ending loss to the Bills, beat on a crucial and controversial touchdown grab from Buffalo receiver Tyler Johnson.
Quietly, as detailed in a conversation between Prusmack and Locke in the video, the Broncos safety was dealing with pain in his right hip before the surgery. And Locke hinted that a pre-surgery reflex test was a “determining answer” for him to get the operation.
“Even the little bit of pain I do have from certain movements,” Locke said, “it ain’t nothing compared to what I was dealing with during the season.”
In the video, Locke is seen throughout various stages of his rehab, in one section grinding through mobility exercises in a pool.
“I just feel like I’m kicking and I ain’t really moving,” Locke told the camera, before an exercise floating on a board and propelling himself using his legs. “So, I don’t know, it’s like I gotta intentionally tell myself, man, to keep kicking, because my legs just wanna die out.”
The surgery, isn’t a career black mark. A 2016 study by Wolters Kluwer Health revealed that a majority of NFL players who’d undergone spinal-fusion surgery for herniated discs returned to play, with . And Lions defensive lineman Levi Onwuzurike after missing the 2022 season due to spinal-fusion surgery.
Locke enters training camp, coming off his own operation, looking for a pathway to snaps in a crowded safeties room after the Broncos’ signing of Talanoa Hufanga.
“I feel like, man, it’s just been a miracle,” Locke said in the video, of his recovery. “I feel like it’s been a breakthrough that I’ve been praying for.”
