The Denver Broncos held organized team activities last week as we got our first real look at the 2026 roster. We’ve already covered much of the bigger news events from the practices, but hidden away at the end of head coach Sean Payton’s press conference were a slew of questions related to preseason and joint practices.
Unlike previous seasons, Payton won’t be holding any joint practice session with another team.
“We’re not going to this year,” Payton said, “and there’s a reason why: because of the postseason and we pushed things back here. When you do have a joint practice, you miss maybe two days of installation. So this year we know we have the preseason games, but we’re not going to have a joint practice.”
I had wondered why it seemed like all of the offseason dates were pushed back a week or two in some cases and now I see why. He is more worried about installation and less worried about the physicality of a joint practice session. He was asked a follow-up on whether the joint practices were good opportunities to evaluate players and he responded crisply that games are also a good opportunity to evaluate players.
He was then asked if it was harder to evaluate players in preseason games over those joint practices and he brushed that off as well.
“I don’t really pay attention to that,” he said. “When we have a joint practice, we pay attention to the reps they get and then we try to manage that with the reps they get in the game the next couple days. We’ll do the same if we’re not [joint practicing], because obviously we haven’t had a joint practice every preseason week. We’ll manage their snap count.”
Frankly, I like this approach. The first six weeks is a real test for this team and getting every minute he can with this group to prepare them to come out starting the season hot is more important than a joint practice that often ends up more chippy and, apparently, less helpful on the installation side of things. So in that way, I’m fine with it and looking forward to seeing how the change in strategy plays out.
