DENVER, CO – OCTOBER 22: Denver Broncos linebacker Baron Browning runs after Green Bay Packers running back Aaron Jones in second quarter at Empower Field at Mile High October 22, 2023. On Baron Browning’s first snap of the 2023 season, he showed in two ways why his return meant so much to the Broncos.
The Broncos think Browning is an immediate impact player, both in the way he can lift Denver’s front seven and in the way he strikes opposing players. Denver’s edge rushers, mostly young outside of Randy Gregory, had potential but not a ton of production. Bonitto struggled as a rookie. Cooper was a role player until injuries and a trade whittled the group down. Browning caught his eye immediately.
“I didn’t really have any expectations,” he said. “I was just trying to, really, get back into the flow of the game. I still am. I really only practiced two weeks. … It’s not so much the speed of the game, more it’s just about what I’m looking at. My eyes and my progressions and my pre-snap indicators that I key into before each snap.
By the time Week 1 arrived, he was working pass-rush moves against a tackling dummy 50 yards from where his position group did individual drills.He participated in a walk-through ahead of a Week 6 matchup with Kansas City the same day that Clark, signed in June in part as a response to Browning’s injury, dropped out “sick” asThose veterans may be gone, but in Browning the Broncos edge group has their actual leader back in action.
Much of what Denver’s defense does from here, in 2023 but also beyond, will depend on how this group develops. When they hit adversity, what are they going to do? When they get stonewalled by a tackle, how will they respond? When a team wants to run the ball right at them, can they bow up and stop it?
More than the promising early returns on his own performance, this is what Browning said he enjoyed most about being back on the field. His return, he said, “felt good, especially since I had been on the sideline the past couple of weeks and in training camp watching them. So it just felt good to be out there with my position group.”