No way was John Buck­ley going to vio­late Com­mand­ment No. 4 on Mon­day night. Not on your life.

“’Remem­ber open­ing day and keep it holy,’” Buck­ley, a defense attor­ney bet­ter known around the park­ing lots at Empow­er Field as the Mile High Prophet, declared from the grassy beer gar­den at Breck­en­ridge Brew­ing Company’s Lit­tle­ton cam­pus. “Got to be there. Got to be.”

But how do you make do when you can’t be there in per­son? With Mile High ver­boten to any­body but Bron­cos friends and fam­i­ly, an evening at the beer gar­den was as close as many Den­ver fans could get to being there on Mon­day night.

More than 250 Bron­cos faith­ful packed 55 pic­nic tables, all social­ly dis­tanced. Or hud­dled, once night fell, around four large fire pits, ing Denver’s sea­son-open­ing con­test against Ten­nessee via two giant high-def tele­vi­sion screens.

“I like it,” opined Ken “Bron­cos Ken” Cas­tane­da, a Bron­cos sea­son tick­et-hold­er since 1995. “It’s awe­some to be around oth­er, like-mind­ed fans that want to see a good game and cheer their team on. There’s noth­ing like see­ing a game at the sta­di­um, you know, but we all have to make do this year, I guess.”

As mak­ing do goes, the invi­ta­tion-only event made for a pret­ty nice fall­back. Breck­en­ridge had 300 gift bags of swag — hats, koozies, key­chains — wait­ing for the guests. The assem­blage was treat­ed to chips, dip, braised chick­en tacos and shrimp tacos. A cou­ple of Bron­cos cheer­lead­ers showed up for pho­to ops. And the fans had some qual­i­ty face time with for­mer Bron­cos wide­out Mark Jack­son, one of the “Three Amigos.”

“The party’s a won­der­ful oppor­tu­ni­ty to be here with oth­er Bron­cos fans. It’s what we live for,” Buck­ley said. “But it’s not the same as being at the stadium.”

Although it did have some of those old, famil­iar beats. When Titans quar­ter­back Ryan Tannehill’s first quar­ter pass was bro­ken up by rook­ie cor­ner­back Michael Oje­mu­dia, the assem­bled shout­ed, in uni­son, that the throw was (all togeth­er now) “IN-COM-PLETE!”

“It’s such a bum­mer,” said Cather­ine “Bron­co Babe” High­land, cel­e­brat­ing her first Open­ing Week­end away from Mile High in 20 years. “But we’ll work with it, because we don’t want to get any­body sick. We don’t want to have any con­flicts at all.”

All three fans stopped by the Mile High park­ing lot Mon­day morn­ing, just because. Buck­ley said he’d run into some Titans fans, on their own pil­grim­age, kib­itz­ing near the sta­di­um ear­li­er in the day.

Dude feels their pas­sion. And their pain. He’s had air­fare and hotel for the Bron­cos’ first vis­it to the now-Las Vegas Raiders on Nov. 15 for more than eight months, pur­chas­es made pre-pandemic.

“I can get a refund, if I want,” Buck­ley said. “But I think I want to be in Vegas that day.”

He point­ed to a tiny vial of dirt rest­ing on his upper chest, dan­gling by a slim band around his neck.

“This is soil that I dug up from Mile High Sta­di­um,” Buck­ley explained. “I dug up two pounds of it three years ago and I took it to Vegas on the day they broke ground on the new sta­di­um and spread it out on the field. Because I want the Bron­cos to play on home soil in Vegas. And I want to be there for that first game.”

Well-played. If you can’t the Bron­cos on home soil, bring the Bron­cos home soil with you.

“I want­ed to put my own spe­cial Bron­cos bless­ing on Alle­giant Sta­di­um,” Buck­ley quipped.