It was a sight they hadn’t seen since training camp, a sight all too familiar to J.K. Dobbins, Marvin Mims Jr. and anyone in Denver’s locker room who’s ever received an earful of Malcolm Roach’s yapping. Which is everyone in Denver’s locker room.
On his fourth snap of Sunday’s matchup with the Giants, and his second game working back from a calf injury, Roach burst off the line and met the dual shoulders of New York center Austin Schlottman and guard Greg Van Roten. Without breaking stride, Roach swam over Schlottman, squeezed past Van Roten, and stuffed Giants rookie running back Cam Skattebo.
Denver’s reserve extraordinaire celebrated in typical Roach fashion: a few chest-pounds, a strut towards the end zone, a no-no-no wag of his finger.
The Broncos needed this. They needed the run-stuffs. Even more so, they needed the spirit.
“It’s much like anything in life, you don’t realize how much you miss ‘em until they gone,” defensive end John Franklin-Myers told The Denver Post.
“And I mean, (Roach)’s such a good player for us in the run and the pass, which he’s kinda underrated in. But that energy is just something that you just can’t make up.”
After a strained calf wiped out his first five weeks, Roach has returned with a fury to his beloved “Sixth Man of the Year” role in Denver’s defensive-line rotation. The 27-year-old has nine tackles in 62 snaps through two games, an absurd rate for an interior defensive lineman. His contributions in the trenches were needed against New York, getting in on a third-quarter split sack of Jaxson Dart and notching another fourth-quarter stop on Skattebo.
His contributions with his voice were needed, too, in a miraculous fourth-quarter comeback.
“As annoying as it is, every time we’re back on the sideline, like, Coach can’t even talk when Roach talk,” Franklin-Myers cracked. “It’s like, one of those, like, ‘Roach always talking.’”
“But without him, who knows what the energy and body language and everything for us is, in a game like that?”
In camp, the 290-pound Roach went head-to-head with Dobbins and got into the most entertaining fake beef of the preseason with the 182-pound Mims. He was refreshingly honest about this defensive line’s aim for a payday while making no fuss about the fact that he’s entering a contract year himself. After Sunday’s win over the Giants, Roach waxed poetic on the contributions of inside linebacker Justin Strnad — who Roach dubbed Stranogie — and talked up Dre Greenlaw. In between, there was a two-month gap of … emptiness at practices.
“It just ain’t the same without Roach,” rookie DL Sai’vion Jones told The Post on Thursday. “He brings the energy. Not only to the D-line, or the defense. He brings it to the entire team.”
Heads drooped and limbs felt sluggish on the sideline, Jones recounted, as the Broncos fell into a 19-0 deficit through three quarters against the Giants. Roach’s head stayed high. He picked up on the mood, Jones recalled. And he wouldn’t shut up about it.
You don’t need to look at the scoreboard, Jones recalled Roach saying. We keep playing our game. Be us.
“I know for me, I was feeling down,” Jones said. “And after I hear him talk, it’s like, ‘You know what? Roach right, man.’”
For weeks behind the scenes, Roach has been talking up a cycle of replacements in his rotation spot — Jones, Jordan Jackson and Eyioma Uwazurike — to stay ready. Behind the scenes on Sunday, Roach talked up the entire roster.
Maybe it wasn’t a huge part of the turnaround, Jones said. But it was a “good part.”
“There’s few guys that can actually do that and do it at a high level, and actually get guys going,” Franklin-Myers said. “He’s one of those guys.”
Want more Broncos news? Sign up for the Broncos Insider to get all our NFL analysis.