The 2024 NFL Draft and the lion’s share of the free agent signings are now in the rearview, meaning the Denver Broncos’ final 53-man roster for the upcoming season will almost entirely consist of players the team has already acquired.
With that in mind, what questions continue to hang over the heads of the Broncos? Let’s look.
10. Will Greg Dulcich be healthy enough to contribute to the offense?
From a per-game productivity perspective, Greg Dulcich’s rookie season is one of the 10 best we’ve ever seen from the tight end. The problem is, he just can’t stay on the field, and that’s been a problem ever since he entered the league.
In two seasons in Denver, Dulcich has missed 22 of his 34 games, despite traveling across the country to visit different hamstring specialists. If that trend continues, it might be his last season with the Broncos, and potentially his last in the NFL. If that trend flips, Dulcich could quickly emerge as one of Bo Nix’s favorite and most reliable targets.
No. 9 When will Bo Nix start?
Many in Broncos Country are feeling like kids on Christmas, anxiously awaiting their parents coming down the stairs so that they can see what glorious prizes they’ve received. But how long will they have to wait?
The fact Bo Nix’s top competition for the spot is Jarrett Stidham, odds are he won’t have to wait long. Wilson won’t get in the way of Nix starting, unless he suddenly learned how to play quarterback during the offseason, so it will come down to who can run the offense better between Stidham and Nix.
Odds are that Nix solidifies himself as the starter sometime during training camp or early in the preseason, but don’t be surprised if Stidham gets the Week 1 nod. It seems clear that Payton is placing a lot of value on having a quarterback that can run his offense (all the more reason to fade the Zach Wilson notion), and it shouldn’t be that surprising if the veteran with a 14-month head start is still in the lead over the rookie in that department come September.
8. What’s the plan for Drew Sanders?
It might be hard to believe, but Drew Sanders was the highest-ranked high school recruit of anyone on the Denver Broncos.
His high-end athleticism made him a coveted edge-rushing recruit and ultimately landed him at the University of Alabama. However, unfortunately, his gifts didn’t translate to the next level.
In two seasons with the Crimson Tide, Sanders had just one sack, leading to him deciding to transfer to Arkansas, who had plans of moving him to off-ball linebacker. Following the position change, Sanders looked like a new player, and quickly became one of the SEC’s top defenders, although it was very apparent at times he was still learning the position.
Sanders entered the draft as one of the most athletic off-ball linebacker prospects we had ever seen, and despite the understanding that he only had one year playing linebacker under his belt, many draftniks ranked him as the best linebacker in the class. The catch was that there was an understanding that Sanders would require some time to develop.
Enter, Vance Joseph and the Denver Broncos, in need of a more athletic off-ball linebacking presence. They decide to target Sanders to fill that need. Sanders even showed signs of promise, although there were plenty of hiccups as well.
Then, a mere eight months after acquiring him, they decide to abandon the experiment of him playing off-ball linebacker to move him to edge rusher — the position he couldn’t even experience minor success at while in college.
This process required a shocking amount of logic that truly makes one want to tear their hair out.
It feels like Vance Joseph bought some brownie mix, went home and started making the brownies. Then, the very instant he closed the oven door to start the baking process, he tore it right back open in a panic, went “Ah! They’re not ready yet!” And then proceeded to dump the chocolate sludge onto his kitchen counter and watch it drip off the sides.
One would hope that the selection of Jonah Elliss makes the Denver Broncos go, “hmmmm. Maybe we should try and see this process through, rather than attempt to abort the mission before it’s even started. We already have five edge rushers on rookie contracts and don’t really need a sixth, especially a sixth that can’t impact the passing game or the running game.”
However, the fact the decision makers ever thought bouncing Sanders from position to position was a good idea makes it hard to place much trust in them.
7. How will the wide receiver room shake out?
The rest of these sections will be short, but the Drew Sanders plan is so mind-numbing it required a bit of a rant.
Back to our regularly scheduled programming.
Selecting Troy Franklin when the Denver Broncos did was smart team-building. Beyond the chemistry with Nix, Franklin was arguably the best weapon on the board by a wide margin, and the Broncos need weapons.
That said, there’s some funkiness with fitting them all together.
The four wide receivers the Denver Broncos certainly won’t cut are Courtland Sutton, Josh Reynolds, Marvin Mims Jr. and Troy Franklin, with those latter two projecting to be the team’s future. Unfortunately, those latter two also have pretty redundant skill sets.
‘Can Payton make Mims and Franklin work together?’ And, ‘what does that look like?’ Are some of the biggest questions for Denver’s offense this season.
6. Is Alex Forsyth ready to be the team’s unquestioned starting center?
The future of the Denver Broncos franchise and their fanbase’s experience rests in Bo Nix’s hands, so the team should be doing everything in their power to try and make sure he pans out. At this point, it’s fair to wonder if they’re actually doing that at center.
Now, it’s great that Alex Forsyth and Nix already have experience playing together, thanks to their time at Oregon, but the center is one of the most important pieces of the offense for a young quarterback to be able to lean on, and we just don’t know how much Nix will be able to lean on the second-year seventh-round pick that has yet to play his first career NFL snap.
The Broncos are a young, rebuilding team, and should be placing an emphasis on giving guys like Forsyth a chance, so that alone isn’t an issue.
However, the fact they don’t seem to have any solid backup plan in case that gamble doesn’t work out is fairly concerning.
5. Can Zach Strief work his magic again?
This one ties right into the lingering Forsyth question.
Last year, we all saw Zach Strief work wonders with Garett Bolles and Lloyd Cushenberry III. During Strief’s first year in Denver, Bolles made a much quicker-than-normal return from a leg fracture only to have arguably the best season of his career, while Cushenberry went from a potential cut candidate to being the fourth-highest-paid center in the NFL.
This year, they’re going to need Strief to conjure up some more magic. First, he’ll have to try and make a seventh-rounder without a single NFL snap into a viable starter. Then, he’ll have to try and make Matt Peart and decent backup, after demonstrating the past few seasons with the Giants that he couldn’t even be trusted as a reserve.
If Strief pulls it off, there will be little doubt that he’s one of the league’s best offensive line coaches. That said, considering he’s only held this position for one year, it’s hard to know for sure just how good Strief is yet.
4. How well will the secondary fare without Justin Simmons?
Justin Simmons has been the central nervous system of the Denver Broncos’ secondary for the last half-decade and has excelled in that role. Of course, he is a tremendous player — with the range, size and physicality to be a true centerfielder in zone coverage, be an impactful piece in man coverage, and be an asset in defending the run — but he was also a coach on the field whose intelligence allowed the defense to run more varied and complicated coverages.
Removing that element is going to be damaging to an already shaky Broncos defense, but how painful will it be?
That will be determined by Brandon Jones‘, Caden Sterns’ and P.J. Locke’s ability to mitigate the damage. In the past two seasons, we’ve seen real flashes of Locke and Sterns filling in for Simmons and the defense surviving, but we’ve also seen that swap contribute to the worst defensive performance in modern NFL history.
3. What is the plan at CB opposite Pat Surtain II?
The question marks at safety make the lack of a clear answer at cornerback especially concerning.
The Denver Broncos cornerbacks will no longer have an All-Pro safety with the aforementioned intelligence and range cleaning up after them, which means a lot more pressure will be placed on the individual corners themselves.
Now, for Pat Surtain II, that’s not a concern. For Ja’Quan McMillian, it could be a concern, given his limited sample size, but he was so good last season, odds are he’ll continue to hold up as the nickel corner.
For the boundary corner opposite Surtain, though? Could be pretty scary.
Riley Moss hasn’t started an NFL game yet, and the Broncos even seemed hesitant to give him snaps in a meaningless game at the end of the season vs. the Raiders. Damarri Mathis doesn’t have a lot of experience either and it wasn’t a coincidence how much the defense improved following his benching. Levi Wallace is the one boasting experience, but he was one of the league’s worst starting cornerbacks a season ago, giving up a passer rating north of 100 when targeted.
Now, just last season we saw the Broncos turn Fabien Moreau into a viable starter for almost an entire season, and Moss and Mathis are both young enough that they could easily develop into solid long-term starters, but as it stands now, the outlook is murky at best.
2. Which version of Vance Joseph’s defense will the Denver Broncos get?
The first five weeks of last season, the Denver Broncos had the NFL’s worst defense by a wide margin, in terms of Expected Points Allowed per play, and gave up a 70-burger to the Miami Dolphins. Over the next 12 games though, the Broncos defense ranked sixth in the NFL in that same metric, and that isn’t purely the result of takeaways either, as they rose from 29th to 16th in defensive success rate, a metric that focuses more on down-to-down sustainability and mitigates the impact of splash plays.
What version of the defense will we get this year, though? It’s hard to say because so many of the pieces that helped fuel that turnaround are no longer around, making a regression feel very realistic.
Benching the inexperienced options and turning to Fabien Moreau bailed the Broncos out of their cornerback conundrum last year, and that option is now off the table. Justin Simmons returning from injury was another major factor in the flip, but it seems like his time in Denver is done.
Plus, while the turnaround wasn’t entirely the result of the turnover luck, it’s impossible to deny that it was a major factor and is likely to regress towards the average this season. Again, 15 defenses were more stable than Denver’s down-to-down over the final 13 weeks, but only five were better at limiting offensive production. The difference of 10 teams is largely the result of takeaways — one of the highest variance stats in the sport.
1. What version of Javonte Williams will the Denver Broncos get?
In 2021, Javonte Williams trampled over the entire NFL, with a level of physicality that garnered comparisons to Marshawn Lynch and Nick Chubb.
In 2023, post-ACL tear, he was a fine running back for much of the season, but trailed off down the stretch, and was nowhere near the punishing force he once was.
Now, to be clear, coming back from a multi-ligament knee tear at the running back position and being solid is absolutely a feat. According to Pro Football Focus’ injury expert, 30 percent of players to suffer such an injury never see an NFL field again and Williams was ready for Week 1.
Nonetheless, it’s fair to recognize the difference in the post-injury Williams and wonder if he can return to pre-injury form.
While the history of similar injuries is very concerning, the fact Williams rehabbed as much as he did between 2022 and 2023 fuels optimism that he could maybe make a similar leap this year, and look more like his old self.
So, why is this the top question remaining?
Because the answer to this question will largely determine how fun the Denver Broncos offense is to watch in 2024.
Bo Nix is likely to experience some rookie struggles no matter what, as is the nature of the position, but if Audric Estimé can hit the ground running and Williams can turn back the clock, the Broncos will have a clearly defined offensive identity and one that is built to take advantage of the modern NFL’s lighter pass-focused defenses.
With a strong run-blocking line and two of the league’s more physical backs, the Broncos can also force defenses to load the box, and potentially play less nickel or dime packages, leading to simpler looks for Denver’s rookie to develop against.
It would also aid Nix in the sense that it would remove a lot of the offensive pressure from his shoulders.
It’s ironic to talk about Russell Wilson now, but one can’t deny how much an offensive infrastructure — similar to the one the Broncos have constructed — was a boost to Wilson’s early success in the league.
Hopefully the Sean Payton and Bo Nix regime can follow a similar trajectory to the Pete Carroll and Russell Wilson one.
