Ask Aric: How is the Broncos' matchup in New England impacted by its postponement?

[Miles]

Will the early bye week affect the Broncos? - Jayven S.


Well, it's certainly going to impact the team in some way. There are clearly disadvantages when you're forced to play 12 games in a row, like the Broncos will have to do now that their bye week was changed to Week 5. I will say, though, that there's a way to look at this move as a positive for Denver. The Broncos will have to play fewer games without players like Lock, Bouye and Fant because of the adjusted bye week. That doesn't mean they're guaranteed to play this weekend, but it is one fewer game that they'll miss on the schedule. Lots of teams like to use their bye week later in the season to recover from being a bit beat up. Well, the Broncos have been beat up for several weeks now, so perhaps it's nice that they will have gone 17 days between their Oct. 1 game against the Jets and their Oct. 18 game in New England. We may not know until Weeks 13 or 14 how this truly impacts the Broncos, but right now, I think it's perhaps not as harmful to Denver's chances as it may appear.


Will Stephon GiImore play? Not having the reigning NFL DPOY should be very helpful to the Bronco's offense. — William L.


Patriots head coach Bill Belichick hasn't offered specifics on any of the players on the Patriots' Reserve/COVID-19 list, but NFL Network's Mike Giardi reported early this week that Gilmore is likely to return in Week 6. Gilmore, according to Giardi's report, has remained asymptomatic, and under the league's protocols, a player can be approved to be activated off a team's Reserve/COVID-19 list if he is asymptomatic for 10 days. Even if that player is still receiving positive tests, he is technically eligible to be cleared and return. If Gilmore does play, that's obviously an immense challenge for the Broncos' offense. During Gilmore's Defensive Player of the Year campaign in 2019, he intercepted six passes, broke up 20 total, scored a pair of touchdowns and made 53 tackles. Put simply, he's as good a playmaker as there is in the NFL on the back end of the defense.


Who is the game day back-up QB? Do they have any QB experience, or are they just going to hand off the ball? - John B.


John, when Drew Lock went down against the Steelers, CBS announced that Royce Freeman would serve as the emergency quarterback if Jeff Driskel was injured. It seems unlikely that the Broncos would ever go into a game with three active quarterbacks, so I'd assume Freeman is the emergency quarterback moving forward. According to some brief research, Freeman didn't play quarterback at Imperial (Calif.) High School, so I'd expect the Broncos would transition to a run-heavy approach that resembled a Wildcat-style offense. Freeman has shown off his arm before, though. As a freshman at Oregon, he threw a touchdown pass to Marcus Mariota. Not bad for a 6-foot, 238-pound running back, huh?