I didn't think it was broken. I thought it was like a bruise to my calf, something that would loosen up.

I had a bruise on my calf last year versus Cincinnati and it felt somewhat similar, so I just thought it was that. I put a calf sleeve on it at halftime and had it worked on.

It got worse and worse, until the last two series of the fourth quarter on defense, where I'm literally just trying to play. Trying to stop is where it hurt — heck, just running hurt, any time I had to roll up onto my toes to try to push off — just everything hurt.

It's just a prime example of the "kicking and screaming" that Elway wants our team to do — to just keep fighting to the last man.

We were already thin everywhere, especially at the safety position. We knew we had a lot of injuries going in there, but there's no excuse. You go in there and you play ball, and I feel like, again, it's just a prime example of fighting and heart and not wanting to give up for your team.

I can't really do much, physically. I'll be a player-coach, show my face here and there. I'll definitely be up to date as far as film study and stuff like that. If I see something, I'll help the young guys or the new guys they brought in, help them out with what I see and just try to contribute in some shape or form.

You always want to play for the guys who went down, the guys who are your soldiers, who have been playing with you all season and making plays and who have helped you get to where you are now, and I think with my injury, it will help, as well. There are a lot of different motivations, but I know as a family, as a team, they definitely want to put in effort for my injury, like we did for Chris and Von and Rahim and whoever else was hurt during that Super Bowl run.

I don't want to see our efforts throughout the whole season go in vain, starting off so hot, taking out a hot Green Bay team, beating a hot New England team. I don't want to see that go in vain.

I don't want to see us not reap some type of reward for beating the top two teams in the league at those given points, and have a number-one ranked defense and not be able to showcase what we're capable of doing in the playoffs.

These problems, we wanted to have them eliminated coming into December. You want to go into the playoffs with great momentum, not having to worry about anything, because we've already faced a ton of adversity as it is. My whole thing, since I've been here, is you want to go undefeated in December and have that momentum carry throughout the playoffs.

I think adversity is always good, but, again, you want to be playing your best ball in December. I feel like in November, we played pretty dang good and in the first week of December, we played well.

It's extremely frustrating; we had chances to put teams away and let them get back into a game. That's not what we want to be about; it's not what we want to showcase. We as a team need to get better at closing these games where we've got a lead going into the half, or a big lead going into the half. We've just got to close the door and lock it shut.

We've showcased it at some times this year, where we play a full 60-minute game. These past two weeks, we've only played 30 minutes where we play our type of ball. We just need to further emphasize finishing. That's the big thing: finish, finish, finish.

We as a team need to get better at closing these games where we've got a lead going into the half, or a big lead going into the half. We've just got to close the door and lock it shut.