It starts with being healthy for Jared Veldheer, who spent his offseason taking mental repetitions while completing his recovery from a foot injury suffered last season.
"I broke a bone in the middle of my foot," he told Orange and Blue 760. "It sits right below the ankle. The navicular bone. Kind of right behind the arch, right underneath the ankle."
Although Veldheer's rehabilitation work was grueling, the injury was not the worst-case scenario for him.
"How I broke it was horizontally on the top of the bone, so it wasn't as severe as a lot of fractures are," he said. "So [the doctors] put two screws in it to hold it into place told me to stay off it for a while and then I got rehabbing."
So far, so good. Veldheer is expected to practice when the Broncos open training camp next week. Then, his focus can return to his on-field work at right tackle, a position that he handled last year for Arizona after spending the previous seven seasons at left tackle.
His transition saw some rough spots last year.
"It took a few games ... to really learn some tactical things that I needed to change that just weren't the same for me on the right as they were on the left," Veldheer said. "But with anything, if you have good resolve and you work hard at it, my body was suited for left, so I just had to put in some work to kind of have that same carryover on the right side."
Even though Veldheer could not practice, he stayed in the game. He absorbed Offensive Coordinator Bill Musgrave's offense and worked with left tackle Garett Bolles.
"He's worked with me every single day," Bolles said during OTAs. "He's always telling me to take breaths at the line and stay calm and collected. He's a great leader for me, learning from a guy like that and knowing that he's been there. He's taken thousands of snaps and [I know] that I can trust him and he can trust me, and we can work together."
And if Veldheer can build from his first season at right tackle, the Broncos should finally put a stop to the recent instability at the position.
"[Last season] just taught me to keep working through those issues," Veldheer said, "because you'll come out on the other side finding the answers."
The Broncos certainly hope Veldheer is the answer they need.
