In the late-January cold, P.J. Locke thought perhaps he’d made a terrible mistake.
The kind that can end a career or alter quality of life for years to come.
He was a couple of weeks past having lumbar fusion surgery on the L-4 and L-5 vertebrae in his spine, and struggling to do simple tasks.
The Broncos safety couldn’t stand up or sit down without help, couldn’t get in and out of the car, and even had to have his son grab the remote for him if he dropped it.
Doubt lingered.
What if the operation was for nothing?
Locke got concerned enough that he started to dabble in the real estate and construction business his dad built, the world he planned to jump into, but only once his playing days were finished.
“Man, I’m not going to lie. I was nervous for a long time before the procedure and after it as well,” Locke told The Denver Post recently. “For the first three weeks, I thought I made the wrong decision.”
It’s clear now where this story goes. The clouds parted. Locke started to feel better. And slowly, he worked from completing the simplest tasks to eventually finding himself in a better place physically and mentally than he’s been in a long time.
Certainly better than he was all of last season.
“Mentally, I was going through it last year,” Locke said. “I’m a very spiritual person, and I was just trying to ask God, like, ‘What’s going on?’ I was trying to find that breakthrough, make the splash plays I’m used to making. I had a support system that kept me going. My wife kept me going and kept me motivated. … Being an undrafted guy, I’ve been through those dark days, but I just felt like that breakthrough never came.”
The trouble started as far back as the spring of 2024.
Locke long had sporadic back issues, but found them manageable. In March 2024, he signed a two-year, $7 million deal — a blip in the NFL world but a life-changing moment for a player who had to scratch and claw for years to get a toehold.
Then OTAs began, and he started getting shooting pains down his right leg. His right quad felt, and eventually looked, noticeably weaker.
He decided he’d tell only the training staff. He didn’t tell coaches or his teammates how the pain kept progressing.
“He never complained one bit about it. I had no idea until after the season he was playing with a back like that,” defensive coordinator Vance Joseph told The Post. “That was a major, major deal, and he never complained. Obviously, he was sore some days, and I knew he was sore, but he never complained.”
Locke, though, eventually couldn’t stand and have a conversation for more than a few minutes. He sat at his locker for interviews during the season. He had to occasionally take a knee during walkthroughs, when there’s more standing around.
“It just got bad,” Locke said. “The nerve pain got terrible.”
He also broke his thumb in the middle of the year and played with a club for a few weeks. He was stepping into a full-time starting role for the first time in his career and leading a mostly young group.
“And on top of that, not feeling like P.J. on the field at all, it took a hard toll on me,” he said.
Locke had an MRI the day after Denver returned from its 31-7 Wild Card loss at Buffalo.
It showed the disc between his L-4 and L-5 had fully degenerated, Dr. Chad Prusmack, the Broncos’ primary neurological consultant, outlined in a video Locke posted on YouTube earlier this offseason. The vertebrae were bone on bone. One was shifted forward, and Locke said it was also fractured. When he ran, it pinched the nerve.
Surgery became the primary option.
Eventually, it became the breakthrough Locke had been looking for all along.
“I was told I could skip the surgery and get back and play, but you risk taking a bad hit and that vertebrae shifts forward and it could sever that nerve and then you’ve got a dead leg,” he said. “That was the determining factor for surgery. … But if I’d have gone out there and had a very strong (2024) season — a Pro Bowl, All-Pro-type season, and they’d have said the same thing, I would have been like, ‘I’m going back and playing.’ .
“… So I think in a way, spiritually, I think God was working in my favor.”
Locke had a spacer put in where the disc should have been. This led to him, as teammate Brandon Jones later laughed about, actually getting slightly taller. Then, around the spacer, the surgeon built a “cage” with metal and four screws.
After three weeks, Locke started to feel a little bit better, though he called the early stages of the rehab “boring as hell” because his team was worried that any jostling could interrupt the progress of the bone trying to fuse around the cage.
By the time he took a three-month bone scan, the bone was fully fused, well ahead of schedule. Locke called the moment “a home run hitter.”
He didn’t participate in OTAs but watched from the sideline, pain-free as he worked through escalating rehab.
By training camp, he was cleared to play. He hoped to get a big hit out of the way early in the padded portion of camp, but it never truly came until the preseason opener against San Francisco.
“When that happened, I kinda sat there for a second and I was like, ‘OK, I think I’m good,’” he said.
Joseph sees a more confident player this summer. Looking back on the 2024 season, knowing what Locke was going through, some of the late-season tape makes more sense.
“Especially the movements part in coverage because he was a great cover guy, but the back obviously hampered him,” Joseph said.
Locke’s in line for a different role this fall. The Broncos signed Talanoa Hufanga, who will start alongside Jones. That might be an agitator for some players.
After what Locke went through, he says he’s not bothered.
“I spent too much time worried about the rest of it, and that didn’t help me at all,” he said.
Lions defensive tackle Levi Onwuzurike had spinal fusion surgery, but it was a different operation, Locke said, making him the first player to attempt this specific route. Some doctors have expressed doubt he’ll be the same player.
“I’m doing the reverse psychology and saying, ‘Yeah, because I’m going to be better than I ever was,’” he said.
Locke smiles a lot as he talks about the coming season and how advanced he thinks Denver’s defense is at this point.
What he’s most happy about, however, is simply feeling like P.J. again
“I’ve got a free mind now,” he said. “I took the punches last year, and it didn’t completely knock me down. Now I’m ready to start swinging.”
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