After serv­ing as Phillip Lindsay’s back­up for most of the past two years, it appeared Royce Free­man was being phased out at run­ning back this offseason. 

Den­ver signed vet­er­an Melvin Gor­don to a two-year, $16 mil­lion deal in March, and before camp added undraft­ed rook­ie LeV­ante Bel­lamy as well as sec­ond-year pro Jere­my Cox via a futures con­tract. But Free­man didn’t blink in the face of more com­pe­ti­tion and opened the sea­son as the team’s No. 3 run­ning back. 

“I tell myself to con­trol what I can con­trol, and that’s my effort and how I come out in prac­tice. At the end of day, I’m not in con­trol of any­thing but that,” Free­man said. “That’s what I am focused on — not lis­ten­ing to a lot of noise, not lis­ten­ing to a lot of this or that. That’s what the mind­set has been and it helped me when I was in camp.”

Free­man was called upon dur­ing the Bron­cos’ Week 1 loss to the Titans on Mon­day night in place of Phillip Lind­say, who suf­fered a toe injury. Lind­say did not prac­tice on Wednes­day and his sta­tus for Denver’s Week 2 road open­er on Sun­day in Pitts­burgh is uncer­tain, which means Free­man could get more time. Bel­lamy and Cox have since been sent to the prac­tice squad. 

Free­man had one rush for no yards and caught one pass for 12 yards while play­ing six snaps against Ten­nessee. If he backs up Gor­don on Sun­day, head coach Vic Fan­gio expects the run game to “oper­ate the same,” as does quar­ter­back Drew Lock.

“(Free­man) is just a steady head for us,” Lock said. “You can throw him in there when­ev­er, and he’s going to know the game plan, the play­book, he’s going to be ready and he’s going to hit holes hard. He’s a very reli­able back, and it’s nice to have him, in case some­thing like what hap­pened to Phil hap­pens — Royce can come in, and no one’s wor­ried about it… He’s always there and always ready, which is big as a No. 3 back, and it’s what you need.”

Draft­ed in the third round (No. 71 over­all), Free­man has 263 career rush­es for 1,017 yards and eight touch­downs, includ­ing 132 rush­es, 496 yards and three scores last year. The 24-year-old for­mer Ore­gon star feels like he’s improved in all facets of his game since com­ing into the NFL.

“As far as pass pro­tec­tion, I feel like I grew there over the last cou­ple years, as well as in grow­ing with (the dif­fer­ent) offens­es that we’ve run,” Free­man said. “Also, I’m been work­ing on dif­fer­ent improve­ments once I get the ball — how to set up runs bet­ter, work­ing on the patience, work­ing on fin­ish­ing runs. Those things, they’ll come more with experience.”

In 2018, Free­man start­ed the first sev­en games of his career, but he’s start­ed just one game since and his role as a reserve is not like­ly to change with both Lind­say and Gor­don on the ros­ter. But Lindsay’s toe injury could give him an open­ing for more car­ries, and in the mean­time, Free­man plays on con­tin­u­ing to “take the men­tal reps” through­out prac­tice and on game day.

“You have to do that to learn from the oth­er play­ers, the oth­er backs, the dif­fer­ent sit­u­a­tions in front of you,” Free­man said. “In that way I’ve stayed ready, because when my num­ber is called, I’m expect­ed to go out there and (per­form). So that’s how I’ve treat­ed (my role), and it’s helped me grow and helped me prac­tice hard as if I’m going to get those types of reps in the game.”