Nathaniel Hackett says he lost his voice over very sloppy Broncos practice

The Denver Broncos had a vey light training camp.

That has been well documented, with plenty of people questioning whether or not “Camp Hackett” will be tough enough for them to be ready to go in Week 1.

So it’s a big deal when the Broncos have a full, padded practice. That was the case on Wednesday, but things did not go well. The media is still allowed to observe practice, and several UCHealth Training Center regulars noted as much. A day after the bad practice, Broncos head coach Nathaniel Hackett was asked if it was too sloppy.

“I would say that’s being nice. I lost my voice again. In the end, we’ve got a standard and they didn’t live up to that yesterday. They owned up to it. They understood it. It wasn’t just one guy, but that kind of stuff is unacceptable. You’ve just got to continually keep your focus,” Hackett said.

It’s concerning, without a doubt, considering how unprepared the Broncos looked on Saturday against the Bills. Buffalo scored touchdowns on their first six drives of the game on their way to a 42-15 beatdown of the Broncos. Yes, a lot of starters didn’t play, but the guys who were in there weren’t ready to go.

Hackett changed his practice schedule this week to more simulate a game week. He said that could be part of the reason the Broncos were so sloppy on Wednesday, but isn’t making excuses. Hackett noted the team will watch the tape and move on. He isn’t going to lose sleep over it, but rather use it as a teaching moment.

“As a coach you always want great practices all the time, but you can’t always get that. I mean I look back at my entire career. There’s always times your upset, you wish things would’ve gone better. The key coaching point is that they learn from it and we can correct it and move on,” Hackett said.

We’ll see if the Broncos do learn from it. Most of the starters won’t play on Saturday night in the preseason finale against the Vikings, but the players who do will be battling for their NFL lives.

Considering the trend of “sloppy” recently, both in games and in practice, let’s hope the game vs. Minnesota looks like much better football.

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