In a presser today, Broncos head coach Mike Shanahan confirmed that D.J. Williams will be out for 4 weeks with a 3rd degree MCL injury, and Marlon McCree will be out 3-4 weeks with a high ankle sprain.

Wesley Woodyard and Louis Green will compete to spend time replacing D.J. Williams. “We are going to have (LB Wesley) Woodyard and (LB Louis) Green (to replace LB D.J. Williams). Woodyard doesn’t have a lot of experience, obviously, but he has played well on special teams. Lou Green has a lot of experience. We will take a look at those two guys and make a decision on which direction we are going to go,” Shanahan said.

The only good news so far is that Jarvis Moss — and, in fact, the entire defensive line — stepped it up a bit on Sunday, and we can hope that trend continues, but at the cost of the linebacker core getting weaker and weaker, and the secondary getting weaker, it’s hard to think there will be any real improvement until they get some of these players back.

We can bet that Broncoland fandom will be rooting for Wesley Woodyard on this one, though personally I would rather have D.J. Williams. With a short week and so many injuries, I don’t know what we can expect out of a game that should be winnable, but the team is in such disarray I’m not confident they could beat anyone right now. I really hope that’s just a touch of despair and not reality talking, but 4 losses out of 5 with each loss coming with bad news is hard to stomach.