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Denver Broncos: 5 players who could be crushed by short preseason

By Sayre Bedinger

Juwann Winfree, Denver Broncos (Photo by Justin Edmonds/Getty Images)
Juwann Winfree, Denver Broncos (Photo by Justin Edmonds/Getty Images) /
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Kendall Hinton, Denver Broncos
SYRACUSE, NEW YORK – NOVEMBER 30: Alton Robinson #94 of the Syracuse Orange tackles Kendall Hinton #2 of the Wake Forest Demon Deacons during the first half of an NCAA football game at the Carrier Dome on November 30, 2019 in Syracuse, New York. (Photo by Bryan M. Bennett/Getty Images) /

A shortened preseason could be detrimental to a lot of Denver Broncos players.

Even though the NFL allows the Denver Broncos and all 31 other teams to carry 90 players on their roster throughout the course of the offseason, there are few NFL teams that would probably realistically keep that many guys on their team even if they could.

Reps are harder to come by the more players you have on the roster, and right now the NFL doesn’t have a perfect system in place for developing younger or less experienced guys who maybe only have a short window to make an impression on an NFL coaching staff before entering a grueling workout circuit, provided their agents can get them tryouts throughout the season.

Having a 90-man roster in the NFL is just as much about giving guys a shot to impress as it is a necessity for offseason activities.

With the news coming down that the NFL would be slashing preseason games from four to two, many players are going to be wrongfully robbed of an opportunity to not only impress the Broncos’ coaching staff but the front office and coaching staffs on other teams as well.

This new issue is not unique to the Broncos, by any means. Every team is going to have dozens of players who will be negatively impacted by this unfortunate new reality, even though many NFL fans have been clamoring for the preseason to be cut by at least a game for a number of years now.

Preseason is a tool for tune-ups for the top units and auditions for the back-end roster guys. It’s not meant to be the NFL’s primary source of entertainment in a given season, but it’s of critical importance nonetheless.

If Brandon McManus is right and the league has one or fewer preseason games instead of just two, a lot of players are going to be out of jobs without any on-field opportunity to prove themselves.

There are a lot more players than just five on the Broncos, specifically, who are impacted by this new reality. I want to take a look at five guys, specifically, who needed the on-field work in 2020 to prove themselves in preseason action.

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