Broncos ILB Jonas Griffith is back on the field for first time since November and loving it: “It’s been phenomenal”

Nobody plays an entire NFL schedule entirely unscathed, so when Jonas Griffith started to feel a sharp pain in his foot last October, he figured an upcoming bye week was arriving at just the right time.

The Broncos inside linebacker played 36 snaps in a 21-17 win in London against Jacksonville through the pain and planned on managing it the rest of the season.

“I knew something was going on, because every time I took a step – it happened in London – and every time I took a step I was feeling this sharp pain,” Griffith told The Post recently. “I knew it wasn’t a regular muscle strain or something like that, that it had something to do with a bone, but I didn’t think it was a season-ender.”

Turns out, it was.

The pain didn’t subside through 13 snaps of action against Tennessee after the bye and then only worsened in practice the following week.

The cause: A broken bone at the top of his foot. Griffith landed on injured reserve and missed the rest of the season. He said he wasn’t allowed to put weight on the foot for about three months.

“I always think of myself as someone that’s indestructible. Kind of like a flip phone,” he said. “You can throw it anywhere and it’ll be OK. It might have little nicks and dings, but you can still just turn it on and call somebody.

“That was my first kind of wake-up call of, you can’t get injured. Take care of your body. I always try to do a good job taking care of my body as it is, but you can still get injured.”

The timing proved particularly poor because 2022 started with such promise for the 6-foot-4, 250-pounder. He won a starting job next to Josey Jewell in training camp and cracked the lineup in Week 1 despite dislocating his elbow in the preseason. Griffith started eight of Denver’s first nine games, sharing time with Alex Singleton around Jewell’s early season injury issues.

“It was definitely frustrating, but the thing for me is it taught me a lot,” Griffith said. “It taught me how to deal with adversity – it was my first real injury and missed time throughout my career, high school, college and into the NFL. It taught me to appreciate the game and the process of practicing and to enjoy it.

“That’s what I’m doing now is just enjoying being out there with the guys.”

Griffith is back on the field and having fun as part of an inside linebackers group that looks substantially different than it did a year ago.