Joint practices have become common practice in the NFL.
Sean Payton wants no part of them this summer.
The Broncos head coach on Thursday said his team will not practice against any of its three preseason opponents in August.
Instead, the Broncos will travel to Atlanta and host Green Bay and Minnesota without seeing any additional work against those teams.
Payton said the decision to skip whatap become a training camp staple around the NFL in recent years stems from Denver’s long postseason run in January.
The Broncos were the last team to start their voluntary offseason program by two weeks when they began lifting and running May 4. They cut out a week of OTAs, too.
All of that, Payton said, means Denver needs a relatively uninterrupted training camp.
“When you do have a joint practice, you miss maybe two days of installation,” he explained. “So this year we know we have the preseason games, but we’re not going to have a joint practice.”
Payton is among the coaches who still plays his starters in preseason games. Many around the league now prefer to let their top guys get work in the more controlled joint practice environment, then play only backups in preseason games.
Payton, though, said he doesn’t pay attention to other teams’ workloads or care when, for example, Green Bay played all of its starters during joint practice work but then held out its top players for a preseason game in Denver two summers ago.
“When we have a joint practice, we pay attention to the reps that we get and the reps they get in the game the next couple days,” he said. “We’ll do the same if we’re not. Obviously we haven’t had a joint practice every preseason week. So we’ll manage their snap counts.”
Doesn’t he think that joint practices are good for evaluating players?
“So are the games,” Payton said. “We play them in the games.”
Jonah Elliss is (mostly) an outside linebacker after all
The Jonah Elliss inside linebacker experiment did not go very far.
Or, at least, it hasn’t so far.
Elliss spent Thursday’s practice working with the Broncos outside linebackers and Payton indicated thatap mostly where he’ll stay.
“Thatap where his home will be initially,” Payton said. “There may be some packages where he’s inside and we have some flex. But he’s doing too well outside.”
Payton earlier this year said Elliss would get time playing inside and teammates including Nik Bonitto and Alex Singleton talked about believing Elliss could make the transition smoothly.
Instead, he’ll mostly be an outside linebacker along with Bonitto, Jonathon Cooper, Dondrea Tillman, Que Robinson, Drew Sanders and others.
Broncos will attempt to ‘Go the Distance’
Safety Talanoa Hufanga stepped to the podium Thursday to speak with reporters after practice. He did so wearing a cutoff navy t-shirt that “G.T.D.” in white block lettering.
What does that mean?
“Itap our strength staff, they come up with a slogan during the offseason,” Hufanga said. “This year itap ‘Go the Distance.’ Just being able to finish. We didn’t go the distance last year, so we’ve got to make sure we get that this time.”
Hufanga took his share of responsibility for Denver coming up short last year, saying he needed to do better taking the football away. The safety played high-level football in his first year for the Broncos, but he dropped several potential interceptions, too.
“I got back on the JUGS (machine),” Hufanga said. “The reason I couldn’t get on the JUGS last year — and this is an excuse, I’ll be honest — was I was coming off my wrist surgery. A lot of it was just coming off of wearing a club during the game. That was really uncomfortable and really hard to learn again. My hand-eye coordination was really not great. But that is an excuse. I own up to it and I have to be better.”
Hufanga said he had plenty of chances that were anything but difficult.
“I don’t know I dropped all of them because some of them were gimmes,” he said. “I’m being real with you, man, they dropped right in my lap and I didn’t come out with them.”
