It shouldn’t come as much of a surprise, but Omar Bolden, the Broncos top returner and backup safety, has been placed on injured reserve.

Bolden had missed the Broncos’ previous four games with a hamstring injury before returning in the Divisional Round of the playoffs. Unfortunately, it didn’t take long before he was forced off the field again with what would turn out to be a season-ending knee injury.

On Monday, Gary Kubiak said the next step will be finding someone who can step up in Bolden’s absence, both on special teams and on defense.

“He has a partial tear, so he’s probably heading to IR here in the next couple days,” Kubiak said. “We’ll have to replace him. Don’t quite know which direction we’ll go yet, so we’ll sit down and deal with that here over the next couple days. We’ll miss him. It was good to have him back. Obviously he had an impact play early in the game. Just some bad luck right there, so we’ll miss him. That’s a direction we’ll have to go.”

Bolden’s absence will be felt most in the return game, where he led the league in punt return average (of returners with more than one attempt). Even in the brief time he spent on the field last weekend against the Steelers, Bolden had a major impact on the game with a 42-yard punt return on his only attempt.

As Bolden will enter unrestricted free agency, last week’s game may end up being his last as a Denver Bronco. While Bolden has undoubtedly had an impact on the Broncos, he’s never proven to be much more than a special teams player — a special teams player who has a tendency to get injured.