The Denver Broncos are heading into their Thursday night matchup against the Los Angeles Chargers with a pretty healthy roster overall, but they will be missing a couple of key players, one on each side of the ball. On defense, specifically, the Broncos will have to play yet another game without second-year cornerback and breakout player Riley Moss, who has been fantastic this season.
Moss suffered a knee (MCL) injury against the Las Vegas Raiders a handful of weeks ago, and has missed the last two games for the Broncos. And that's with the bye week in between. The Broncos have been ramping Moss back up the last two weeks and he was limited in practice this week before the team got ready to take on the Chargers.
But, unfortunately, he will not be playing on Thursday night. It's likely we'll see him back in action for Week 17 when the Broncos take on the Cincinnati Bengals on the road.
Broncos injury report for Week 16: No Riley Moss, no Jaleel McLaughlin
In addition to not having Riley Moss on Thursday night, the Broncos will also not have running back Jaleel McLaughlin available. It's likely we will see practice squad running back Blake Watson activated for this game against the Chargers.
McLaughiln has the best game for a Broncos running back over the last month, which came a couple of weeks ago when he carried the ball 14 times for 86 yards against the Browns.
The Broncos haven't had a 100-yard rusher since Latavius Murray back in the 2022 season. They desperately need someone to step up and against the Chargers, it will be either Javonte Williams or Audric Estimé, in all likelihood.
As for the absence of Riley Moss, the Broncos' replacement plan has been a bit of trial and error. They tried replacing him with the veteran Levi Wallace, and that was an abject disaster against Cleveland where they allowed the recently benched Jameis Winston to throw for nearly 500 yards. After the bye week, the Broncos corrected course and put Kris Abrams-Draine and Damarri Mathis in the lineup, and they allowed just 161 passing yards against the Colts. That was the lowest total since they allowed 132 yards against the Buccaneers (shockingly) all the way back in Week 3.
Needless to say, the Broncos' defensive backfield was its more dominant self on Sunday, allowing a couple of big plays to Anthony Richardson and the Colts, but not much outside of that. They are going to need to be on their game against the Chargers.