ENGLEWOOD, Colo. -- Through the early part of free agency, the Denver Broncos have seen six players who started at least one game for the team in the last two seasons leave and signed a handful of players to try to cover the losses.
They also hope they did the math correctly and that four compensatory draft picks are headed their way on Monday to give the Broncos at least a 10-player draft class. At the moment they have 73 players under contract for the coming season – 34 on offense, 34 on defense and five specialists.
Here's the third of a three-day look at the current depth chart; tracking the departures and the signings to see where work still needs to be done.
Today: Special teams
Kickers: When the Broncos released kicker Matt Prater following Prater’s four-game suspension for violating the league’s substance abuse policy, they tipped a domino that ended up costing them a roster spot.
And that roster spot is still in play.
It started when they traded a conditional draft pick to the New York Giants -- it ended up being a seventh-round pick -- for Brandon McManus to replace Prater.
The Broncos believed McManus had shown the potential in his time with the Giants to be a strong-legged, strong-willed, reliable kicker who could handle field goals as well as kickoff duties. And that assessment may ultimately prove true down the road, but McManus missed four times in regular-season games after his arrival, the coaching staff quickly lost confidence in him, passing up field opportunities they wouldn't have before his arrival, and the Broncos signed Connor Barth to replace him.
But Barth could not kick off, at least not with the touchback consistency the Broncos wanted, so McManus was re-signed shortly after his release to handle kickoffs the remainder of the season.
They got the consistency they wanted on field goal attempts – Barth had two five-field goal games last season – and McManus routinely put kickoffs out of play. McManus’ 64 touchbacks were second in the league and touchback percentage (70.3) was fourth.
And now they must decide if they want to keep using three roster spots on kickers/punters moving forward.
Punters: To this point, the Broncos’ most significant move of the offseason in the kicking game has been to take a chance on a player well off the radar for some. When they signed Karl Schmitz, an NFL rookie who last played in college in 2008 at Jacksonville University, the Broncos signaled they’re willing to look near and far for a chance to go from three kickers to two.
Schmitz, who can punt, kick off and kick field goals, or at least has done all three at former Jacksonville Jaguars kicker Mike Hollis’ kicking academy, is a power leg the Broncos have deemed worthy of a look.
Where he fits, if at all, is still to be determined when the Broncos can actually get on the field for work next month. But with the Broncos' two-man look at kicker last season to go with punter Britton Colquitt’s 2014 season having been not quite as good as 2013, to go with a $3.75 million salary-cap figure for ’15, the Broncos are now willing to take a look at a long-shot prospect with potential.
Returners: Consider this job open for business on all fronts, but especially at punt returner with a kick returner at least penciled in at the moment for the new coaching staff.
Omar Bolden showed he can certainly provide some impact as a kickoff returner, or at least he could when he was finally given a chance in '14. Last season as the Broncos used several players in the job early on -- mostly wide receiver Andre Caldwell -- Bolden didn’t have a kickoff return in a game until the Broncos’ Nov. 2 loss at New England and he wasn't the go-to option until the 11th game of the season.
Yet of the four kickoff returns the Broncos had of at least 40 yards in '14 Bolden had three of them. He had the team's two longest kickoff returns of the season -- 77 and 76 yards -- in the Broncos’ last two games of the regular season.
At punt returner, however, the Broncos need far more than they got at most any point last season. In games the Broncos had at least one punt return (non-touchback, fair catch or punt out of bounds) this past season, they had fewer than 10 yards worth of punt returns six times, including the playoff loss to the Indianapolis Colts.
For the year they were tied for 20th in the league with 7.2 yards per punt return and were one of just four teams in the league that didn’t have a punt return longer than 22 yards for the season (Indianapolis, Chicago and Houston were the others). And they're still on the hunt for potential candidates for the job.
Coverage: Whenever the Broncos look to defensive players in particular on this year’s draft board, special teams will be a huge priority as the team transitions to new special teams coordinator Joe DeCamillis.
DeCamillis has promised fast units across the board, or at least units that play fast. And as some injuries hit last season, especially at linebacker, that affected how the Broncos had to construct the game-day roster. The Broncos were at a speed deficiency at times in their coverage units or didn't always tackle as well as they needed to. The Broncos did sign linebacker Reggie Walker this past week.
Walker is a quality depth player on defense, with the potential to play, at least some, of the four linebacker spots in the 3-4 scheme, but he is a productive special teams player who should quickly have an impact there.