DENVER — Shane Ray needed about a month in Arizona and 4,800 calories a day to “repair himself from the ground up.”



At the start of training camp last year, Ray suffered a left wrist injury that required pins, screws and three surgeries. He was placed on the recallable injured reserve and, thanks to a scheduling break, was activated by Week 8.



But he never fully returned. His wrist never felt right. He couldn’t lift upper-body weights. He was forced to play with a large cast. And his muscular frame was whittled to 223 pounds by season’s end — which was cut short with a return to injured reserve.



“Anytime you go under the knife three times and are still trying to play football, as physical as the sport is, it was tough,” Ray said Friday after donating nearly 500 pairs of shoes to Denver Rescue Mission through his foundation. “Not being able to be the player that I knew I could be, not being able to be the...