As his surgeon reached for his drawer to pull out a reflex hammer, P.J. Locke sat on a doctor’s office in mid-February, visibly nervous.
“Your favorite test,” Dr. Chad Prusmack, a neurological consultant for the Broncos, told Locke. “Relax.”
He tapped Locke’s left leg. He tapped Locke’s right leg. They twitched. Prusmack grinned up at the Broncos safety, giving him a fist-bump. And Locke clapped, beaming, the career-altering stitches on his lower back vindicated.
“It work again!” Locke cracked. “That (expletive) was dead, last time.”
On Jan. 13, 2025 — exactly one day after Locke roamed for 76 snaps in the Broncos’ wild-card loss to the Bills — the 28-year-old safety visited Prusmack’s office for an MRI. As detailed by Prusmack in a 14-minute YouTube video released Tuesday on Locke’s YouTube channel, imaging revealed that one of the discs in Locke’s spine was “completely degenerated.”
“He has bone on bone,” Prusmack pointed, looking at a scan from January. “There’s supposed to be a disc in between these.”
The result, as written in the video’s description: Locke underwent offseason spinal fusion surgery, a procedure done to connect two vertebrae in the back. It’s a massive development for the Broncos’ secondary depth, as Locke was seen at minicamp not participating in team periods — the reason now revealed.
Locke, however, is expected to be a full participant come the Broncos’ training camp in late July, a source familiar with the situation told The Denver Post.
He was a vital piece of the Broncos’ secondary in 2024, the fifth-year defensive back playing the second-most snaps of any player on the defense save now-departed linebacker Cody Barton. Locke, though, struggled in that season-ending loss to the Bills, beat on a crucial and controversial touchdown grab from Buffalo receiver Tyler Johnson.
Quietly, as detailed in a conversation between Prusmack and Locke in the video, the Broncos safety was dealing with pain in his right hip before the surgery. And Locke hinted that a pre-surgery reflex test was a “determining answer” for him to get the operation.
“Even the little bit of pain I do have from certain movements,” Locke said, “it ain’t nothing compared to what I was dealing with during the season.”
In the video, Locke is seen throughout various stages of his rehab, in one section grinding through mobility exercises in a pool.
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The surgery, isn’t a career black mark. A 2016 study by Wolters Kluwer Health revealed that a majority of NFL players who’d undergone spinal-fusion surgery for herniated discs returned to play, with little difference in their performance after the operation. And Lions defensive lineman Levi Onwuzurike has retuned and played productive football after missing the 2022 season due to spinal-fusion surgery.
Locke enters training camp, coming off his own operation, looking for a pathway to snaps in a crowded safeties room after the Broncos’ signing of Talanoa Hufanga.
“I feel like, man, it’s just been a miracle,” Locke said in the video, of his recovery. “I feel like it’s been a breakthrough that I’ve been praying for.”
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