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DENVER (AP) — The Denver Broncos got a taste Saturday of what their season opener will be like when they scrimmaged at an empty Empower Field with crowd noise piped in. "Yeah, it was really weird, without a doubt," quarterback Drew Lock said. "It sounds like there's fans here and you look up and there's no one behind anyone on the sideline." The Broncos cranked up the noise when their starting offensive and defensive units were squaring off, so there was one time when Lock had to cover the ear holes on his helmet to hear the play call, just l...
The NFL is preparing to return most of its employees to team headquarters in Midtown Manhattan later this month and staffers going back to the office will have to take saliva COVID-19 tests every two weeks. No more than half of the 780-member staff will be allowed to work on any given day at 345 Park Avenue, said Dasha Smith, the NFL's Chief People Officer. In a staff memo obtained by The Associated Press, NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell on Friday wrote, "With our players and clubs safely back in the workplace, we too must continue to advance...
ENGLEWOOD, Colo. (AP) — Right tackle Ja'Wuan James informed the Denver Broncos on Monday that he's opting out of the 2020 season over coronavirus concerns. The Broncos were counting on their headliner from last year's free agent class to bounce back from a balky right knee that limited him to just three appearances in 2019 after signing what was at the time the biggest contract ever for a left tackle, $51 million over four years. Elijah Wilkinson could be in line to fill in for James for a second straight season, although Wilkinson is still rec...
DENVER (AP) — Seasonal colds and the flu spread through NFL locker rooms just about every year, sending some players home sick while others slog through practices hoping they'll feel better by game day. Last December, the Patriots flew two airplanes to Houston to keep the healthy players apart from sick ones, which included seven starters. On the final weekend of the 2016 season, the Raiders were ravaged by a bug that swept through their entire roster and waylaid hopes of a deep playoff run. Now, teams have COVID-19 to worry about. Offseason w...
At least in one sense it's been an ideal offseason for Drew Lock. Broncos GM John Elway declared the second-year passer his established starter. Then, he went out and added old hands and fast feet in the kind of offensive makeover quarterbacks ordinarily can only dream about. "I'm super pumped about the guys we've added," Lock said Tuesday in a Zoom call from his parents' home in Lee's Summit, Missouri, where he's been staying and training during the coronavirus pandemic. Elway's two biggest free agent acquisitions were running back Melvin...
With their blazing speed on offense, the Kansas City Chiefs ran away from their AFC West brethren en route to their first Super Bowl title in half a century. So, explosiveness was a common theme on the draft boards of rival general managers John Elway in Denver, Tom Telesco in Los Angeles and Mike Mayock in Las Vegas. "Every move and signing we make we have to have them in mind," Chargers coach Anthony Lynn said of the Chiefs, who have ruled the division since 2016 and used a 21-0 burst over the final six minutes to beat San Francisco in the...
Tom Brady has been synonymous with the AFC championship for the last two decades. Thirteen times he played for the Lamar Hunt Trophy and nine times he won it, besting MVP Patrick Mahomes in overtime, upending Blake Bortles in a classic comeback, denying Andrew Luck and Philip Rivers trips to the Super Bowl, foiling Ben Roethlisberger twice and Kordell Stewart once, and splitting two games with Joe Flacco. Peyton Manning he bested once but three other times he lost to his rival in the conference title game. Sunday's showdown between the...
The NFL is looking for the next generation of youth football stars to help usher in its second century. The league launched a casting call Sunday asking parents and youth coaches of boys and girls ages 9-12 to submit videos of the kids’ best moves on the football field for a chance to attend Super Bowl 54 in Miami and to appear in a follow-up commercial to last year's epic star-studded banquet spot that kicked off the league's 100th season. In that spot, some of the game's greats from past and present fought over a golden football that t...
ENGLEWOOD, Colo. (AP) — Pat Bowlen's nomination for the Pro Football Hall of Fame is a jolt of good news for a franchise that's had little to cheer in the 30 months since winning Super Bowl 50. Peyton Manning retired. Gary Kubiak resigned. Paxton Lynch flopped. The Broncos have lost 18 times over the last two seasons and went 5-11 in coach Vance Joseph's first year in 2017. Last month, Bowlen's wife, Annabel, announced she has Alzheimer's, a disease which led her husband to give up control of the team four years ago, and earlier this month f...
ENGLEWOOD, Colo. (AP) — Sometimes at practice, a few honeybees will buzz around the Denver Broncos' Gatorade bottles. That wasn't always the case. But when the team more than doubled the landscape at its headquarters, Brooks Dodson, the club's director of sports turf and grounds, noticed something: Flowers weren't growing. It was time to draft a swarm of new players. "I just noticed there wasn't a lot of bees on our property," Dodson said. A friend in the same line of work in a Denver suburb mentioned that he had met a couple of beekeepers. So...
