When Von Miller signed with the Washington Commanders in July — just a few days before the start of training camp — he went over the calendar and noticed two key details.
The first was a certain Sunday Night Football matchup on Nov. 30, as Miller realized he’d have another run-in with the franchise he’d spent 11 years of his life with.
Damn, he recalled thinking. I gotta play the Broncos.
“I (expletive) hate playing the Broncos,” Miller told The Denver Post last week. “I do. I really do. I don’t want to play none of my former teams. I don’t want to play the Rams, I don’t want to play the Bills, and I don’t want to play the Broncos.
“I just want to play football and stay away from all of that, you know what I’m saying? That’s just how it is, bruh. The NFL love being messy.”
The second, and most important, was the date he’d had circled since the Broncos announced their Super Bowl 50 reunion back in May.
The former All-Pro Broncos outside linebacker realized he had to play a football game in Dallas on Sunday, Oct. 19, and thus could not fly to Denver. He looked at ways to try to make it, as his mother, Gloria Miller, told The Post.
Anything to try to be there the day the Broncos honored his friend Demaryius Thomas.
“I thought it was fitting,” Miller said when asked about the late Thomas’s Broncos Ring of Fame celebration. “I thought it was perfect. I thought the Super Bowl reunion weekend should be the same day as DT going to the Ring of Fame. I thought it was perfect.”
As Thomas’ parents, Katina Smith and Bobby Thomas, unveiled their son’s smiling statue in the Broncos’ Ring of Fame Plaza last Sunday, as scores of his former teammates looked on in sadness and joy, Miller was 800 miles away in Dallas, gearing up for a game against the Cowboys. Still, Miller was thinking of the late Thomas. He has every day since Thomas died in 2021 at 33 years old, a teammate close enough that he and Miller were “like brothers,” Gloria said.
“I’m always thinking about DT, and it’ll always be like that,” Miller said. “And I wouldn’t want to change it for anything.”
Four years have passed since Thomas died, and the 36-year-old Miller’s Instagram profile photo is still a picture of a smiling Thomas holding up a peace sign. Deep down, Gloria reflected, her son still struggles with Thomas’s death. So many still do.
Miller misses Thomas’ laugh. And he still hears his voice when he thinks of him.
They arrived in Denver a year apart, tentpoles of an ascending franchise, like-minded youngsters who bonded across the line of scrimmage over shared commonalities. Both loved to travel. Both of their fathers are country boys from the South, as Miller said. They had a shared family suite at Empower Field at Mile High — one they kept long into their shared years in Denver. It “intertwined our families,” Miller said.
They went to basketball games, went to dinner, and did “everything” together, Miller said. When his first son, Valor, was born in August 2021, Thomas was one of the first people Miller called. They FaceTimed, and Miller showed him Valor, in pride.
“He supported everything Von Miller,” Miller said. “And I felt it. It wasn’t forced, or anything like that.
“If I had something to say to the team, he was always behind it. And to have that type of support system around you — it helps you grow into a bigger light that you didn’t even think was possible, man.”
The Commanders played in Dallas at 2:25 p.m. MT on Sunday. If it were a home game, Gloria said, her son would’ve likely tried to make it out to Denver over the weekend, somehow. Miller has rarely had the chance to celebrate Thomas publicly. In December 2021, shortly after the Broncos traded Miller to the Los Angeles Rams, he couldn’t attend Thomas’ funeral because he’d contracted COVID-19.
And Miller was hurt, Gloria reflected, because he’d never gotten the chance to say goodbye.
Over the years, Miller has authored his own goodbyes in his own ways. He had a massive tattoo of Thomas inked across his back in 2023. The late receiver still walks through Miller’s mind. And on Sunday, the Commanders outside linebacker posted an old photo of Miller, Thomas and fellow ex-Broncos star OLB DeMarcus Ware all smiling, captioned in part: “long live DT.”
“I think he deserves his moment in Broncos history to kinda remember who he was and what he meant to that franchise, and the type of impact he had on that franchise,” Miller told The Post. “And he touched so many different lives.
“And you can’t think about the Denver Broncos without thinking about DT. 88. ‘Bay Bay.‘”
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