Corey Nelson going on injured reserve, Jerrol Garcia-Williams up
The Denver Broncos will be without a key special teams player and defensive backup the rest of the season, as Corey Nelson will go on injured reserve…
In somewhat of a surprising development, the Denver Broncos are placing linebacker and special teamer Corey Nelson on season-ending injured reserve Friday.
Nelson had played just 43 defensive snaps this year in five games, but led the team with 115 special teams snaps.
He is being replaced on the active roster by practice squad linebacker Jerrol Garcia-Williams.
According to Mike Klis, the injury suffered by Nelson happened in practice on Thursday, along with a host of others.
Not exactly the way the Broncos wanted to enter the weekend, but here we are.
Nelson was also in a contract season, so it will be interesting to see how this affects his value with the Broncos and other teams moving forward in his NFL career. The former seventh round draft selection out of Oklahoma has proven to be one of John Elway’s best late-round gems.
As for Garcia-Williams, here’s a look at the latest potential linebacker find for the Broncos:
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Garcia-Williams played just 24 defensive snaps for the Broncos in the 2017 preseason, which doesn’t seem like nearly enough in a four-game stretch to have made a great impression, but the Broncos obviously saw things in practice that the rest of us did not see.
With Brandon Marshall also not 100 percent this week, it stands to reason that Garcia-Williams will at least have a role in this game against the Chargers on special teams.
The other backup linebacker on the Broncos is former undrafted player and another former practice squad alum, Zaire Anderson. Anderson made the active roster in 2016, and suffered a scary injury in the regular season finale. He will be counted on for a decent amount of snaps in this game behind Todd Davis and Marshall.