The Denver Broncos have been forced to deal with some of the worst injury luck in the NFL this season, as they’ve lost seven projected starters on offense, and six on defense (with two projected to return this week).
“It’s unbelievably unfortunate,” Nathaniel Hackett told the media on Friday, in regard to the injury situation. “We have great people here. We have the strength staff, the training room—everybody. We are evaluating everything, and we are looking at it. Those guys have worked, and we have all looked into what we can do and how we can prevent things. Obviously, when things happen out on the field, you can’t prevent those. We are looking at it all. We have them do so many different things from hydration tests to sleep monitoring to asking them surveys—as much as we can. Sometimes things happen, and for whatever reason, it’s happened a lot this year. It’s unfortunate, but it gives other guys opportunities to play.”
Although it’s promising to hear that the Broncos are leaving no stone unturned in their path to cure their injury bug, it’s frustrating that this has seemingly been a three-year-long trend, though it’s undeniably been dialed up this season.
Denver is currently playing with $56 million of their salary cap on injured reserve. That’s insane.
Injury situation keeps getting worse. Per source, Broncos lose starting ILB Jonas Griffith for extended period after aggravating foot injury in practice THU.
Broncos have NFL-most 15 current players (20 total) and $56M cap on IR.
No excuse but never seen so many injuries #9sports— Mike Klis (@mikeklis) November 18, 2022
That amount of attrition the Denver Broncos have endured has forced Hackett and Co. to coach with one hand tied behind their back.
“[The injuries] makes you have to change a lot of things up, especially when it happens in-game,” Hackett said” Those are the things you have to just figure out as many different ways, whether you have to get out of [certain] personnel or get other people up to speed in certain personnel. If it happens during the week, you can adjust a little bit earlier, like what happened with [WR] KJ [Hamler]. [When it’s] during the game, it’s a little bit different. That’s part of the game. Change is the norm. Things happen, and you have to be ready for that as a coach at all times.”
Hackett finds himself in a precarious situation.
The injuries the Denver Broncos are now suffering through are a legitimate excuse, but the offense didn’t look good under Hackett when it was healthy either. He now has to find some sort of spark, that convinces George Paton and ownership to keep him around, while being severely limited at every position group. Good luck.
