Slapped with a $100,000 fine this week by the NFL for not reg­u­lar­ly wear­ing his mask on the side­line, Bron­cos coach Vic Fan­gio said Wednes­day he sim­ply has to bet­ter train him­self about his mask posi­tion­ing. Fan­gio and fel­low coach­es Pete Car­roll (Seat­tle), Kyle Shana­han (San Fran­cis­co), Jon Gru­den (Las Vegas) and Sean Pay­ton (New Orleans) were fined and their orga­ni­za­tions were fined an addi­tion­al $250,000.

Fan­gio, Shana­han, Gru­den and Pay­ton are play-callers, which calls for impor­tant com­mu­ni­ca­tion, but the league office still dropped the hammer.

“Obvi­ous­ly, I’m going to have to do bet­ter with that,” Fan­gio said. “What hap­pens dur­ing the game is, obvi­ous­ly I’m call­ing the defens­es and I have to pull (the mask) down to com­mu­ni­cate (the call) so it can be sent into the play­ers. And when the offi­cials come talk to me, they pull their mask down (so) I pull my mask down to talk to them.

“All those times where I pull it down, I have to do a bet­ter job of get­ting it back up (above my face) more than I have been.”

The fines were levied even though Pay­ton and Gru­den have already con­tract­ed coro­n­avirus and recov­ered and all coach­es are test­ed on a near­ly dai­ly basis. Might the face shield Kansas City coach Andy Reid has worn dur­ing the first two games be an option for Fangio?

“I’m going to con­sid­er that,” Fan­gio said. “I was going to use it the first game of the sea­son, but late in the process, I decid­ed not to.”

Reid’s shield fogged up dur­ing the Chiefs’ Week 1 game, but he told reporters last week that an anti-fog spray was going to be applied to the shield. In Week 2, Car­oli­na coach Matt Rhule tried to shield in the first half, but ditched it for a mask after halftime.

Injury update. The Bron­cos prac­ticed with­out pads and not par­tic­i­pat­ing were quar­ter­back Drew Lock (right shoul­der), run­ning back Phillip Lind­say (toe), defen­sive end DeMar­cus Walk­er (calf), inside line­backer Mark Bar­ron (ham­string) and cor­ner­back Davon­tae Har­ris (ham­string). Accord­ing to the league’s trans­ac­tion wire, Walk­er and Bar­ron were placed on injured reserve so they will be out a min­i­mum of three weeks.

The Bron­cos have 49 play­ers on the roster.

Fan­gio said plac­ing Lock on injured reserve was “con­sid­ered … but there’s a chance he may not have to miss three games, but at the same point, he may have to miss four or five. Rather than elim­i­nate the pos­si­bil­i­ty of him com­ing back when he’s healthy enough, we kept him on the active roster.”

A plus of keep­ing Lock on the ros­ter is he’s allowed to be on the prac­tice field as a spec­ta­tor. Dur­ing the media view­ing peri­od, Lock (minus the sling he had on after Sunday’s game) stood behind the quar­ter­backs ing the drills.

List­ed as lim­it­ed were defen­sive end Jur­rell Casey, safe­ty Trey Mar­shall and receiv­er Jer­ry Jeudy (rib).

Jeudy absorbed a big hit from Pitts­burgh inside line­backer Devin Bush, but returned to the game.

“I felt like it wasn’t a real­ly big hit; it was more like he hit me in the right spot,” Jeudy said.

Dif­fer­ent role, same rou­tine. New start­ing quar­ter­back Jeff Driskel said his behind-the-scenes approach won’t change.

“This week will be no dif­fer­ent in my prepa­ra­tion except I’ll get the (first-team) reps in prac­tice,” he said. “It will be good to get in the hud­dle with the calls, call the plays for the guys and come Sun­day (against Tam­pa Bay), I expect to be ready to go.”

Foot­note. Out­side line­backer Antho­ny Chickil­lo, signed off New Orleans’ prac­tice squad last Fri­day, prac­ticed with the Bron­cos for the first time. … Fan­gio on pre­sumed new back-up quar­ter­back Blake Bor­tles: “He still has to go through the test­ing and the phys­i­cal (test­ing) process. He might be in here (Thurs­day).”