When the Bron­cos opened train­ing camp in August, they appeared com­mit­ted to Todd Davis and Alexan­der John­son as their start­ing inside line­back­ers, leav­ing Josey Jewell’s role unde­fined to observers … and to himself.

“I hon­est­ly had no idea,” he said in a phone inter­view with The Den­ver Post. “I was think­ing if they were going to keep Todd, I would hope­ful­ly split time with some­body on defense, and I was prob­a­bly going to play a lot of spe­cial teams.”

Things changed on Sept. 4, though.

Davis was released, open­ing the door for Jew­ell to be the starter along­side John­son. Enter­ing Sunday’s game at Atlanta, John­son leads the team with 56 tack­les and Jew­ell is next at 47, includ­ing 10 in the win over the Los Ange­les Charg­ers on Sunday.

Jew­ell has played all but 34 of the Bron­cos’ 486 defen­sive snaps and added two sacks and 4 1/2 run “stuffs.” Accord­ing to The Post’s game chart­ing, he has three missed tack­les and has allowed only one com­ple­tion over 20 yards in man coverage.

“Josey has been play­ing very well all sea­son,” coach Vic Fan­gio said. “I’ve been very, very pleased by his play. … I think he’s got­ten com­fort­able in the sys­tem — and he’s an instinc­tive play­er any­way — but it’s got­ten to this point now because he’s got a lot of play­ing time and (his improve­ment) is real­ly showing.”

As a rook­ie, Jew­ell got a chance because of Bran­don Marshall’s knee issues. Jew­ell start­ed nine games and made 59 tack­les in 359 snaps.

Jew­ell began last year as a starter, but sus­tained a ham­string injury in the Week 3 loss at Green Bay. John­son got a chance the next week and has nev­er looked back. When Jew­ell was healthy, he became a reserve.

Johnson’s play made him a no-doubt starter enter­ing this year and Jew­ell like­ly a no-doubt spe­cial teams core play­er. But Davis missed time because of a calf injury and Jewell’s train­ing camp play prompt­ed the Bron­cos to move on from Davis.

“Todd has done a lot for me and he’s a great play­er and very smart about the game and you nev­er want to see that hap­pen to any­body, but you want a chance to become a starter again,” Jew­ell said.

Jew­ell plays every defen­sive snap except when Fan­gio uses six-defen­sive back per­son­nel (Duke Daw­son), leav­ing John­son as the lone inside line­backer. When on the field, Jew­ell has earned Fangio’s trust.

“He real­ly quar­ter­backs the defense out there for us,” Fan­gio said.

Has Jew­ell The Line­backer always served as Jew­ell The Defen­sive Quarterback?

“In high school, it wasn’t much,” he said. “Prob­a­bly my sec­ond year (at Iowa) and ever since then, it’s kind of been like that. I slow­ly moved into it there and have slow­ly moved into it here. It def­i­nite­ly gives you con­fi­dence and peace of mind that you’re able to do it and change the calls when you need to.”

As the play-caller, it’s Fangio’s voice Jew­ell hears in his hel­met to relay the instruc­tions. Before becom­ing a defen­sive coor­di­na­tor and head coach, Fan­gio earned his NFL stripes as a line­back­ers coach.

“It’s awe­some,” Jew­ell said of work­ing with Fan­gio. “Very smart. Very intel­li­gent. He tells us a lot of keys dur­ing the week so we have plen­ty of things to look at. He knows what he’s doing.”

What Atlanta does is throw the foot­ball … a lot. The Fal­cons’ 292.4 pass­ing yards per game rank sec­ond in the league. The Bron­cos failed to han­dle the pros­per­i­ty pro­duced by two con­sec­u­tive wins last month and the task this week is focus­ing on the 2–6 Fal­cons instead of rev­el­ing in the come­back win over the Chargers.

“The biggest thing, and it sounds like a cliché or an easy answer, is just do you job and be detail ori­ent­ed,” Jew­ell said. “You go back and watch (Sunday’s) game and there were mul­ti­ple plays when us line­back­ers were out of our gap or weren’t in the right spot in cov­er­age. There are a lot of things to work on and we know we can be a lot bet­ter on defense, espe­cial­ly at line­backer and start­ing with me.”

Butt placed on IR. Out the last two games with a ham­string injury, tight end Jake Butt was placed on injured reserve Tues­day, mean­ing he will miss a min­i­mum of three weeks.