Bronco notes: Locke returns with casted club on left hand

ENGLEWOOD, Colo. — Club it up, P.J. and go get ‘em.

The Broncos missed their starting safety the past two games – more so last week at Baltimore than the previous week against Carolina – but P.J. Locke is back now with a cast and a club-like wrap to protect his surgically repaired left thumb.

Locke suffered a dislocated “avulsion” fracture in the thumb during practice October 23.

“It honestly felt like a bit of a wrist sprain,’’ Locke told reporters from the lobby of Broncos’ headquarters Friday. “I had my glove on and I came off a play and my wrist was throbbing and ended up going back to practice and finished off the defensive period. And I was actually getting in tackling position on one play, and I didn’t think I had the best tackling feet and I kind of clapped (my hands) right after the play and it was like, “Ooh. Something’s wrong.”

He took the glove off and there it was. His thumb dislocated and out of sorts.

“We popped it back in place and everything,’’ Locke said. “Ended up getting an MRI and the MRI revealed more stuff and they told me I was going to possibly miss four weeks. I was (ticked) right there because goll’, it was something so simple as far as a routine play.”

So why is he only missing two games instead of four with a dislocated thumb?

“It was only two because they did a specific type of surgery that allowed me to come back in two,’’ he said.

Broncos head coach Sean Payton was concerned enough about the potentially poor playing surface conditions Sunday at Arrowhead Stadium that he had his team practice Friday in the snowy, soggy and cold conditions Friday at Broncos Park. It’s supposed to rain Saturday in the Kansas City area while the Kansas Jayhawks will play a home game Saturday afternoon at Arrowhead against 17th-ranked Iowa State.

The Broncos practiced inside the Pat Bowlen Fieldhouse on Wednesday and Thursday and conducted their walkthrough and team stretch beneath the roof again for the early part of practice Friday. But head groundskeeper Ryan Newman and his staff worked night and day to clear the snow, burn the ice with the underground coils and get the practice fields in shape for the individual and team portion of practice Friday.

“Full speed Friday,’’ Payton said. “It’s just for the most part, you would say a lot of these guys are breaking in a different shoe than they would normally be wearing. Field turf is easy, it’s the certain shoe. Most of the grass we play on, it’s a certain shoe. This one is different. Our owner would tell you, ‘You have to have the right tires to win,’ (Broncos’ owner) Lewis Hamilton. You have to have the right shoes on.

“It’s so important, and they‘re expecting more rain Saturday. There’s a game there Saturday. Fifty-eight degrees Sunday, clear, three percent chance of rain, 11 mph winds. We’ll have a good day, but that field will have seen better days.”

Four times this year, Broncos’ punter Riley Dixon has had a punt downed at the 1 yard line – the most through 9 weeks of the season since at least 2000 (which suggests no one thought to keep such a stat in the 20th century).

Statistics can be misleading for punters because no two punts are the same. Some punters have to deliver under punt-rush duress more than others.

But Dixon has been quite good in his ball placement this season. Besides having the most 1-yard-line placements, he has the fourth-most punts inside the 20 yard line with 20 (against just three touchbacks) and is second with 16 fair-catch punts.

Getting the punts downed at the 1 also requires skillful coverage work and the likes of Tremon Smith, JL Skinner and Justin Strnad have done the job there.

Broncos’ starting center Luke Wattenberg was listed as questionable but he looked good in practice Friday and appears ready for his rematch against Chiefs’ star defensive lineman Chris Jones. However, the team declared both Drew Sanders and Dellarin Turner-Yell out for the game against the Chiefs – not unexpected given the nature of their injuries.

Sanders had his first three practices this week since suffering a ruptured Achilles during offseason conditioning seven months ago. Turner-Yell completed his second week of practice since suffering a torn ACL in second-to-last game of the 2023 season.

Early in quarterback Patrick Mahomes’ career, the Chiefs’ tendency was to win high-scoring shootouts. The past year-and-a-half, head coach Andy Reid has revamped his team so it’s been winning lower-scoring defensive struggles with Mahomes’ pulling them out in the end.

Kind of like John Elway with Dan Reeves vs John Elway with Mike Shanahan, only the other way around.

“Let’s start with this: They’re playing really good defense,’’ Payton said. “Now Andy has done this a long time. So he knows how to win. That might vary week to week. Your roster changes, you have injuries and pieces come and go. So we as coaches kind of have to look at that. They’ve done a really good job at it.

“The heart of a champion—I say that. There’s a confidence level and there’s a belief that—I’ve been a part of that—where you just knew that you were in every game, or you had a chance. … I think it gets back to what you saw for years from the Patriots. It’s just that inner belief of, ‘Whatever we have to do.’ That’s what we’re pushing for, so we’ll be ready.”

The expectation is the Broncos will activate Wattenberg and inside linebacker Kwon Alexander on to their 53-man roster Saturday, which means two players will have to moved off.

Alexander has been elevated the past three consecutive games from the practice squad, starting two. For the Broncos to use him again, he has to be on the 53-man roster. Wattenberg is coming off a high ankle sprain that sidelined him the past four games.