Quinton Carter placed on season ending IR (knee)

ENGLEWOOD, Colo. (AP) — Second-year safety Quinton Carter needs another surgery on his left knee and is done for the season. The Denver Broncos placed him on injured reserve Saturday.

With Carter hurt and linebacker Joe Mays suspended for Sunday’s game against Oakland, the Broncos promoted two players from their practice squad in rookie safety Duke Ihenacho and second-year linebacker Mike Mohamed.

Mays was suspended for one game and fined $50,000 for an illegal hit on Houston quarterback Matt Schaub last week.

Denver has been fined more than $150,000 in the first three weeks of the season, with coach John Fox and defensive coordinator Jack Del Rio getting theirs for verbal abuse of the replacement officials. They are appealing. Fox had never been fined in his two dozen years of coaching in the NFL.

Carter started 10 games last season, then collected interceptions in the Broncos’ playoff games against Pittsburgh and New England. But a torn right hamstring at an indoor practice July 27 led doctors to discover he needed arthroscopic surgery on his left knee, which had bothered him since last season.

Carter told The Associated Press during training camp that he hurt his left knee in a game against New England on Dec. 18 but even though it grew more and more painful, MRIs hid the injury until July, when he pulled his hamstring inside the team’s practice bubble during a rainstorm.

Therefore, he called his pulled hamstring a blessing because it led to his knee surgery: “Of course, it’s a setback. But it’s a great setback. I feel like I’ve been doing a lot of learning. To come back without a limp or anything, I think it will help me out to be a better player,” Carter said last month.