Tuesday the Broncos held a walkthrough before boarding a plane to Minnesota, but Head Coach Vic Fangio with a little bit of news before his team left town, announcing that Drew Lock would start the team's first pre-season game, Saturday in Minneapolis, "we’ll start with Drew. Drew will start it off, and Teddy (Bridgewater) will come in, then we’ll flip it the next week," he said.
He was also asked how do you weigh games against practices against his own team, compared to joint practices? "Ultimately the decision will be a total examination of everything from the start of training camp to the day we make the decision," Fangio said. "Obviously I think games, these practices we have coming up [will be important]. We had a really good practice the other day where it was upscale a little bit. They all factor in. There is no grading scale, but ultimately, we’ve got to go by what we see. We’re keeping track of things statistically, more deep stats than what you guys would do, and they’ll be there for the information.”
Before Saturday's game at U.S. Bank Stadium, the Broncos and Vikings will hold 2 joint practices Wednesday and Thursday. Thus, there's a lot of planning between the 2 head coaches Fangio and Mike Zimmer, and there's a need to ensure there won't be any extra-curricular activities, aka fights, and the Broncos will continue to reiterate the importance to focus on playing, not fighting. "Yeah, we will," Fangio said. "We already have, [and] we will continue [to]. What we’ve done with some of these that I’ve done—a couple of years ago I had to sit down and kind of count out how many of these I’ve done, and it was about 40. We’ve done this before. But about a half-hour before practice starts tomorrow, we’re going to have a big group of their players and a big group of our players, we’ll meet in a room and each of us explain to each other what we’re looking for here."
Tight End Noah Fant said Sunday that while he's looking forward to the practices, he gets good work every day against his own defense including secondary which Pro Football Focus rated as the best in football, "It’ll be good," Fant said. "We get really good work from our defense, so that’s been great. It’ll be good to go against somebody else. We’re excited. I think the [Minnesota] Vikings are a good team, so it’ll be good to get a couple practices in with them and then play them in a preseason game."
On the other side of the ball, Safety Kareem Jackson is certainly looking forward to hitting somebody else, "Just us getting a chance to see some different competition," he said. "Seeing a different offense, seeing the different speeds, different receivers, tight ends, the O-lineman. I think all that stuff matters for us. I know it does for me. Being able to see something different other than what we’ve been seeing day-in and day-out, definitely kind of helps the mental aspect of your game. It won’t be a lot of tackling in those two days of practice, but it just helps you in a mental preparation standpoint."