ENGLEWOOD, Colo. — Hand and ankle tape had already been peeled away and tossed into waste bins. Players had removed their cleats, showered, dressed and prepared for the final meetings of the day. The buzz of conversations carried across the Denver Broncos locker room.

Finally, about half an hour after a practice late last week had ended, defensive lineman Zach Allen walked into the room, still in shoulder pads. He was joined by Eyioma Uwazurike, the 2022 fourth-round pick who has stepped into significant role on Denver’s defense for the first time this season. Allen’s hands darted this way and that as he drove over some of the finer points of pass-rushing the two players had just drilled on an empty practice field.

It has been a common scene during a season in which Allen has taken another step forward after being named a second-team All-Pro in 2024. He had a career-high nine pressures in last week’s 34-26 victory against the Green Bay Packers and became just the second defensive lineman in NFL history to have 40 quarterback hits in back-to-back seasons, joining former teammate and mentor J.J. Watt on the list.

“I was teasing J.J. about it and was like, ‘You’re technically a D-end. I’m the first D-tackle to do it,’” Allen said. “He was like, ‘No, no, no.’ … There is a lot of work that goes into it, and I’m really fortunate for it to happen.”

Allen has long been intentional about adding targeted skill work to his daily routine. Since his arrival in Denver as a free agent in 2023, Allen has routinely pulled aside reserve or practice squad offensive linemen to give him a target for pass-rush sets after practice. As rain poured down after a practice at the Greenbrier Resort last season, there was Allen, mastering technique as teammates retreated indoors.

It’s not just the extra reps that illustrate the ways in which football consumes Denver’s star interior pass rusher. Allen is well-known in Denver’s building as a relentless notetaker. Uwazurike joked that Allen includes the middle names of the offensive linemen the Broncos are set to face in a given week.

“His notes are crazy,” defensive line coach Jamar Cain said. “… He’ll text me in the middle of the night and say, ‘Hey, turn on Jaguars vs. whoever and go to play 18. What do you think of this? I’ve got an idea on that. I’m like, ‘Zach, go to bed.’”

As his roots in Denver’s locker room have grown, though, so too has his impact among the team’s younger defensive linemen. After Allen signed a four-year, $102 million contract with the Broncos during training camp, Cain sat down his star player and issued a challenge.

“I was like, ‘Hey, Zach. You’ve got to bring other people along,’” Cain said Thursday as the Broncos (12-2) wrapped up a practice ahead of Sunday’s massive AFC showdown with the Jacksonville Jaguars (10-4). “He’s such a perfectionist that it can stand people off. I said, ‘Zach, you can teach people your work ethic, how much you watch film, how you bring ideas to the meeting room, how you challenge me as a coach.’ I said, ‘You can teach the guys those things, how to bring ideas to the room and challenge me to make sure I’m on point.’”

The result has been a growing bond, in particular, with Uwazurike, who was suspended during Allen’s first season in Denver, in 2023, for violations of the NFL’s anti-gambling policy. Upon Uwazurike’s return in 2024 Allen saw a player with a unique frame (6-6, 320 pounds) who was still figuring out how to use it. As Broncos coach Sean Payton put it, Uwazurike returned to the Broncos as “a big ball of clay.”

“He doesn’t know what he doesn’t know,” Allen said of his approach with Uwazurike when he returned last season. “What works in college is one thing and what works now is (a different) thing. That was the same with me. I didn’t really understand until J.J. came to Arizona and it was like, ‘Oh, this is how you do that.’”

The Broncos have so much veteran talent in their defensive line room, Cain said. Allen is joined by stalwarts John Franklin-Myers, Malcolm Roach and D.J. Jones. The older players can speak in a shorthand that requires only a couple of words or even a nod to communicate. The extra time with Allen, be it after practices or even on the sideline during games, has helped Uwazurike slow things down.

“He made sure he didn’t let me go in,” to the locker room right after practice, Uwazurike said with a grin recently. “That’s something we’ve picked up and I see me doing that with him for the foreseeable future. It’s him putting it in our head that we need to still do extra reps.”

Uwazurike played in only four games last season after returning from suspension, logging just 63 defensive snaps, but he has played 34 percent of Denver’s defensive snaps in 2025. He has tallied 30 tackles and 2 1/2 sacks, and he pressured and hit Packers quarterback Jordan Love on a third-quarter play Sunday that resulted in a game-changing interception by Pat Surtain II.

Interesting quote out of the Packers locker room in @MikeSilver‘s story from left guard Aaron Banks, who suggests that the pressure and QB hit on Jordan Love from Eyioma Uwazurike helped lead to the INT: pic.twitter.com/IWjx3Y8ZR7

— Nick Kosmider (@NickKosmider) December 15, 2025

Allen has seen his share of defensive snaps drop from 89 percent last season to 73 percent this season, in large part because of the trust the Broncos have developed in Uwazurike.

“You’re starting to see the technique, and the leverage and the power,” Payton said of Uwazurike. “It’s hard for anyone if you’re just gone a year — for any of us. Think about just being gone a year and then hopping back into your job. … He comes to work with a great attitude. He’s one of those guys that sometimes, when you play a position he plays it goes unnoticed, but he’s a big part of what we’re doing and why we’re successful, especially in the run game and then pushing the pocket.”

When Allen was in Dallas for a couple of days ahead of the 2024 season to work with pass-rush specialist BT Jordan and a handful of other interior pass rushers, he struck up a conversation with Gerald McCoy, the former six-time Pro Bowl defensive tackle with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. They formed a fast mutual admiration to the point where McCoy, Allen said, “sent me the entire process of what he (did)” during a season. Allen said he adopted some of the things he learned from McCoy into his own routine last season, which ended in his first All-Pro selection. He still incorporates much of what he learned from Watt as a young player in Arizona and said he is “forever grateful” for all he’s been able to take from playing alongside Franklin-Myers.

Now, Allen is trying to pay it forward.

“You just get these new ideas and you find out what works for you and what doesn’t,” Allen said. “So for (Uwazurike), we’re figuring out, ‘Oh, it’s OK to do an extra five or 10 reps after practice. It’s OK to do the extra film.’ In the league, it’s not as simple as just go straight or go inside. You have to understand these concepts. These guys are too good to be defending every single play. You have to get some semblance of what you can be getting on a play, and he’s starting to do a really good job of figuring it out.”