Broncos Make Trio of Roster Moves on Eve of Vegas Debut at Raiders

The Broncos had to hedge against a couple of touch-and-go injury situations as the team announced a trio of roster moves on Saturday.

The Denver Broncos are in Las Vegas to take on the Raiders. It'll be the Broncos' 61st road game vs. the Raiders but the first in their old divisional foe's new home of Las Vegas. 

The Broncos are still battling injuries to a few key players and have in the last two weeks, placed three different tight ends on injured reserve. With Shelby Harris in the COVID-19 protocol, by new NFL rule, the Broncos are allowed to 'elevate' a third practice squad player for gameday to take his place. 

The player tapped, officially, to replace Harris' COVID-19/Reserve designation is tight end Troy Fumagalli, it was announced on Saturday. The Broncos also 'elevated' offensive lineman Quinn Bailey and linebacker Josh Watson. 

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As practice squad elevations, this trio will be able to dress and participate in Sunday's game, but following gameday, the Broncos will have to send them back down to the practice squad. Or, the team could always sign them to the active roster. 

Each practice player can get 'elevated' twice without having to be exposed to the waiver wire following gameday. If 'elevated' that third time, the team has to place the player on waivers, where an outside team could put in a claim. 

COVID-19 replacement designations don't count against the two 'elevations' so in Fumagalli's case, if he gets sent back to the practice squad after Week 10, he'll still have those two 'protected' gamedays. 

Fumagalli was Denver's fifth-round pick back in 2018, and like the team's fifth-round tight end the year prior (Jake Butt), he had to red-shirt his entire rookie year. The Broncos got a full season's look at Fumagalli last year, and while he helped out at times on offense behind Noah Fant and Jeff Heuerman, it was a mostly replacement-level contribution. 

No surprise, considering that Fumagalli's year of inactivity prior but it wasn't enough to preclude the Broncos from taking tight end Albert Okwuegbunam in the fourth round of the 2020 draft. The Broncos replaced Heuerman with Nick Vannett earlier this year and with Butt finally healed up, along with the ex-first-rounder Fant, the rookie Okwuegbunam, and the Swiss Army Knife Andrew Beck, Fumagalli found himself on the outside looking in come final roster cut-downs. 

But the NFL can often be serendipitous. Fumagalli's path led him back to the team that drafted him and from here, you never know what the future could hold for him, especially with the aforementioned Butt, Okweugbunam, and Beck all on IR. 

Bailey's activation is an effort to bolster the depth at offensive tackle. Demar Dotson is banged up (groin) and questionable for Sunday's action, and his backup — Jake Rodgers — is too. Calvin Anderson will be tapped to start at right tackle if neither Dotson nor Rodgers are good to go, which left the Broncos without a viable backup tackle. 

Bailey can be that fail-safe, though the Broncos will hope against hope they won't have to turn to him. Watson factors in as a special teams contributor with third-phase maven Joe Jones ruled out of Week 10's action. 

Both Bailey and Watson are second-year players who joined the Broncos as college free agents following the 2019 draft. Watson has spent time on the active roster in the past while Bailey was activated for one game last year. 

Follow Chad on Twitter @ChadNJensen and @MileHighHuddle.