Stokley: Downside of Broncos bye is players lose ‘routine’

The Denver Broncos return to work Monday after a much-needed rest with the Week 11 bye, hopefully healed from the battering of more than 100 days without a break from football.

Head coach Gary Kubiak said on Tuesday, as the team shipped out for its week off, that his number one goal with the bye week was to evaluate the previous 10 weeks and to refresh the players for a six-week haul to end the regular season

“I think we all have to stay locked in. It’s human nature. I want them to get away from football a little bit. They need to. It’s been a long haul here and we have a big haul coming up,” Kubiak said.

“I think when you’re in this business, no one quits watching what is going on or what’s happening. We know who we’re playing. Guys are getting a head start on that today. We’ve had some good meetings. Now, I want to get their bodies and minds fresh.”

But despite the evaluation and rejuvenation, a bye week can bring, 104.3 The Fan’s Brandon Stokley said this week that he believes in some cases the break can actually be a detriment.

“It’s not always great, and the longer you get away the more you get out of your routine. And football players, you’re in a routine,” Stokley said. “… You get out of that routine, you get away from football, and you kind of lose that edge a little bit of what you had. And it’s hard to get that going again.”

Stokley pointed to a period in training camp when the Broncos, after a day off, had perhaps its worst practice of the preseason.

“We saw one of the worst practices of all of training camp that day when they got back from the day off. It just takes them a lot longer to get going,” Stokley said.

However, the bye week hasn’t slowed Denver down most of the time over the past 20 seasons, as they’ve won 15 of those games coming back from the week off.

Follow digital content producer Johnny Hart on Twitter: @JohnnyHart7.