Broncos have never stopped game-planning for Raiders WR Antonio Brown

Without recounting all the sordid and almost comedic details regarding the Antonio Brown situation in Oakland, suffice to say, things between the seven-time Pro Bowler and the Raiders took a decidedly sharp turn for the worse on Thursday.

After Brown reportedly had a verbal 'altercation' with Raiders GM Mike Mayock, on the heels of Oakland fining the player for missed practices, further reports emerged that the Raiders were strongly considering suspending him and perhaps maybe even cutting him and trying to find a way out of his contract.

However, one day later, Brown has issued an 'emotional' apology to the Raiders locker room, and presumably, Mike Mayock, and head coach Jon Gruden confirmed on Friday that the team expects Brown to play on Monday night vs. the Denver Broncos.

For the Broncos, who've been working to draw up a game plan and prepare for Oakland, it's been tough to get a bead on what to expect from Brown and the Raiders offensively. At least, that was the outside perception.

Internally, the Broncos never wavered in their preparation, fully planning on Antonio Brown suiting up in the season opener. Brown's up-and-down drama in Oakland hasn't affected Vic Fangio's game plan.

"It hasn't affected it at all because, No. 1, the players weren't here yesterday when everything happened," Fangio said on Friday, "and we've just been assuming that he was going to play all along and obviously, that's the way it looks right now."

Pro Bowl linebacker Von Miller echoed his head coach but added that game-planning for a team doesn't come down to singling out one player as the impetus.

"For me, you can't have a good team and let one player being down, or one player being up, change your whole game-plan or change the way you feel about the game," Miller said on Friday. "We always assumed that he was playing and that's just the way we attacked it from the very first day."

The Raiders didn't endure all the drama they have, give up the trade capital they did to acquire Brown from Pittsburgh, and then pay him all that money, only to cut bait at the 11th hour on the doorstep of the season. Jon Gruden has been pining for Brown to be a Raider and to be available to his team.

It would take a real case of both Hell and Highwater for Gruden to sign off on Brown actually missing a game, especially a season-opener against a Division opponent. Still, Mike Mayock has to be ruing his decision to bring Brown into the Silver and Black fold.

At least for now, anyway. If Brown goes onto have another big Pro Bowl season as a Raider, Mayock will likely forgive all and charge it to the game, as they say.

The Broncos have their game-plan ironed out. The plan includes having to stop Antonio Brown. But the focus is to keep it simple so that the Broncos can play fast and get off to a good start in all three phases.

"It's always good to get off to a good start but games are won and lost a lot of different ways," Fangio said. "We just have to play good on the road. That's the critical part."

If the past is a predictor of the future, the onus of stopping (or at least containing) Brown will fall on the shoulders of Chris Harris, Jr. Harris is one of the league's top cornerbacks, and easily the best nickel corner in the game.

In his battles with Brown over the years, Harris has lost some and won some. Fangio will absolutely scheme it up from an X's and O's perspective, but it'll be Harris at the point of attack.

Harris fully appreciates the threat Brown presents but one missing piece to the current puzzle is what the wideout's chemistry with Raiders QB Derek Carr will be like, especially after playing all those years in Pittsburgh with Ben Roethlisberger.

“He can just run all the routes," Harris said. "I think with Big Ben he had such a connection with Big Ben so it’s going to be definitely different with Derek Carr to see how they mesh together and how he does with our scheme.”

Hope for the best, plan for the worst. That's all Harris and the Broncos can do at this point when it comes to attacking Antonio Brown and the Raiders.

Follow Chad on Twitter @ChadNJensen and @MileHighHuddle.