Sean Payton says Broncos are mostly healthy, ‘one of the cleaner report dates’ he can recall

One of the most important things in football, if not all professional sports, is the health of a team. While the team that wins the championship of any league is usually the most talented and cohesive group of players, healthy always plays a role, as many teams who fall short just don’t have enough bodies to compete at the highest level.

In the NFL, teams see injuries start happening as soon as training camp kicks off just due to the nature of the sport. The Denver Broncos saw that firsthand in 2022 and 2023 when wide receiver Tim Patrick suffered a season-ending injury in camp in back-to-back years. This offseason, they signed a pair of players in Talanoa Hufanga and Drew Greenlaw who have dealt with serious injuries in recent years, but head coach Sean Payton had good news for Broncos fans after day two of camp.

“This is one of the cleaner report dates that I can recall, relative to really one player that’s still got some work to do,” Payton said after Wednesday’s practice.

“This was one of the cleaner report dates I can recall,” Broncos head coach Sean Payton said. But he did note there will be rest days for veterans and guys coming off injuries. “It’s us looking ahead over the next four weeks and getting ahead of the practice schedule.” pic.twitter.com/mMHNHV5uxK

— Will Petersen (@PetersenWill) July 23, 2025

Remember, Payton is heading into his 18th season as an NFL head coach, so he’s seen a lot of unfavorable injury reports at the start of training camp. The fact that he’s saying this as the Broncos get work underway should be a great signs for fans of the orange and blue.

While he said that the Broncos are in good health to start camp, that doesn’t mean that everything is all butterflies and rainbows. Hufanga has fought an ACL tear and a wrist ligament injury over the last two seasons, Greenlaw suffered a quad injury back in the spring after he missed most of the 2024 season due to an Achilles rupture, and P.J. Locke is attempting make an ultra-rare comeback from a spinal fusion. Payton said that the team will be mangling those guys’ injuries going forward.

“Look, these players we’re discussing, whether it’s Dre or any of these guys coming back off of injury, we’re going to monitor the snaps, we’re going to have a calendar where some days they’re not going to practice … It’s three groups, all the time. It’s the recently-injured, it’s the injury history and then it’s the veteran group of players that we’ll put together a little bit of a load management program. I don’t want to call it that, but it’s us looking ahead over the next four weeks and getting ahead of the practice schedule,” Payton said.

The Broncos head coach also shared on Wednesday that Bo Nix spent some time this offseason working out with an NFL legend and that the team is doing its due diligence to handle all of the necessary contract negations with different players as training camp kicks into full swing.

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