Mark Barron’s wait end­ed Mon­day around 9:15 a.m.

In the Den­ver area since late last week, Bar­ron need­ed to pass three COVID-19 tests before agree­ing to terms with the Bron­cos and par­tic­i­pat­ing in his first practice.

“For the rest of the day (after each test), I was doing noth­ing — sit­ting around is not pleas­ant, but it was nec­es­sary,” Bar­ron said.

Barron’s expe­ri­ence and skills could be nec­es­sary when the Bron­cos open the sea­son Sept. 14 against Tennessee.

Start­ing inside line­backer Todd Davis con­tin­ues to be out with a calf injury and has been replaced by Josey Jew­ell. Rook­ie Justin Str­nad, being groomed for a cov­er­age role, is out for the year fol­low­ing wrist surgery.

“(Gen­er­al man­ag­er) John (Elway) want­ed to be proac­tive with (Bar­ron),” coach Vic Fan­gio said after prac­tice. “He’s obvi­ous­ly been a good play­er in the league and we’ll see how he can fit in. He obvi­ous­ly has a lot to learn in a short peri­od of time.”

Bar­ron was on the mar­ket since March 16 when the Pitts­burgh Steel­ers cut him with one year remain­ing on his con­tract ($8.125 mil­lion salary). The Steel­ers are com­mit­ted to Devin Bush and Vince Williams at inside linebacker.

“They’re both good play­ers and some­body had to go and they had to save mon­ey some­where and it end­ed up being me,” Bar­ron said. “It was com­mu­ni­cat­ed to me that it wasn’t that my play wasn’t good enough.”

Bar­ron had 82 tack­les and three sacks for Pitts­burgh. He began his NFL career as a first-round safe­ty with Tam­pa Bay and was con­vert­ed to line­backer by the Rams.

“I have a lot of expe­ri­ence play­ing the cov­er­age role and cov­er­ing tight ends and line­back­ers,” he said. “If that’s what they need me to do, I def­i­nite­ly think I can get that job done.”