Sean Payton could have slept on it.
George Paton could have counseled caution.
After Denver drafted Nix No. 12 overall several weeks later, Payton retold tales of Nix’s studious nature. His accuracy on the field. The way the other Ducks in the flock gravitated toward him. Even the contents of his gym bag.
He looked at Paton at one point and said, wholly impressed, “Are you kidding me?”
Decisions on these sorts of players, though, are not to be taken lightly.
Franchises rise and fall, coaches and general managers come and go, and legacies are made and lost based on the decisions made at the game’s most important position.
Quarterbacks are foundational. Cornerstones. They either hold the weight of organizations that reach great heights or they crumble under the pressure, the expectation and the ruthless, weathering NFL elements.
Payton and Paton had confidence they’d found the material with which they wanted to build.
They felt strongly enough that they took a subtle but major step.
They called their boss.
“It was either during his workout or right after it ended in Oregon, I got a call right away saying ‘This is the guy,’” Broncos owner and CEO Greg Penner told The Denver Post. “Then, obviously, you don’t want that broadly communicated. They wanted to verify it, but they saw that workout in Oregon and Sean was like, ‘This is the guy.’ There was no question. The quick processing, the accuracy, avoidance of sacks — all the things that Sean likes in an offense, he’s the perfect fit.”
Up to that moment, the first months of 2024 had been more about setting the stage for a build. Clearing and planning and estimating and flagging. The scrape that so often comes just before digging begins.
Now, they identified a step forward. Not the first and not the only, but a critical one nonetheless.
In the span of two weeks in March, the Broncos informed quarterback Russell Wilson of his release, did the same with safety Justin Simmons, traded wide receiver Jerry Jeudy to Cleveland and then worked out Nix in Oregon. It represented, in a nutshell, the beginning of a rebuild that’s been several years coming in Broncos Country and now is fully in progress. A process that Denver’s decision-making trio simultaneously feels good about and knows has to work.
The sooner, the better.
The engineers
Continuity has been difficult to come by in Broncos Country.
Payton is the club’s fifth full-time head coach since 2016. Paton has served as general manager alongside three — Vic Fangio, Nathaniel Hackett and now Payton — in four seasons. When the Walton-Penner Family Ownership Group purchased the franchise in August 2022, Hackett and quarterback Russell Wilson were tasked with ushering in the next era of success. Instead, a crash-and-burn 2022 led to Hackett’s firing after 15 games. Payton arrived in February 2023 and along with him came notice for Wilson: Don’t get too comfortable.
Though the past 18 months have delivered much more change — jettisoning of veterans during the 2023 season, the release of three team captains between Christmas Day and mid-March and continued roster and coaching staff churn — it’s also represented the longest time a Broncos brain trust has been together in the past half-decade.
“It’s critical that you have ownership, coach and GM that are all synced up and on the same page,” Penner said. “Probably most important that the GM and head coach have alignment, which we do. I’ve seen those guys working together for a year now and I think their personalities and style — they really balance each other. And for me, then, the role is I have to be asking the right questions. I have to be paying attention. I’ve got to be present. I challenge them on things. But a lot of it is learning and asking questions.
“I have a lot of confidence in them working together and their vision.”
Penner, who chairs Walmart’s board of directors, has decades of business experience. Over the past two years owning the Broncos, he and the ownership group have already had to make several major decisions. He’s not the check-in-once-a-week type, either. He’s out on the practice field most days. In the building regularly.
“Greg’s dug in. Greg’s a part of every decision. Carrie’s a part of all the decisions,” Paton said. “We discuss everything we do with Greg — Sean and I. We talk every single day. Are there still things that come up? Sure, there’s things that I don’t know. But Greg’s obviously a quick study and a quick learner, and he can provide maybe a different perspective than Sean or I can in terms of business. And he does.
“So he’s a really good sounding board on some of the more difficult decisions.”
There are more similarities than differences between a retail giant and a football team, Penner insists, but every business has its unique elements.
“I wouldn’t say I’m an expert yet. I think that might be years from now,” Penner said. “But I’ve learned a lot in a couple of years. Some of that is just the cycle of things. How free agency works — now we’ve seen it happen a couple times — the draft, contracts, moving into training camp.
“Getting the right people in place, to me, has been a real critical part of it.”
Payton’s hire, obviously, is the biggest move to date.
“For me, great leaders, obviously they have ego and passion and drive, but most great leaders have a sense of humility where they’re willing to learn,” Penner said. “I’ve seen that with Sean as a head coach. But what’s a little bit different is, with an NFL head coach, you are just constantly dealing with all of these external pressures to where I think you almost have to have this persona to make your way through and be a leader in this environment that’s different than most businesses.”
When Payton arrived he wanted a culture shock in the locker room and in the building. He said this summer that he was guilty of “pissing on all the trees” in 2023.
If something happened one way before his arrival, chances are he changed it. That confrontation and discomfort wasn’t necessarily endearing, but in Payton’s mind it served a purpose. If you are exacting in everything, then everybody learns the way more quickly or gets off the bus.
“I think it begins immediately,” Payton said.
The trio believes that hard shift is starting to pay dividends a year later — with both the roster and alignment across the football operation.
“Just having another year (Payton) and his staff and our staff — you don’t know how huge that is,” Paton said. “This is my fourth season, and it’s the first time I’ve had the same coach for two years. And so we all speak the same language. We’re all settled in. We’re trying to get better every day.”
The blueprint
Paton looks out his office windows on a fast-warming August morning to Broncos players preparing for another grueling training camp day.
There’s a hum of energy that is normal this time of year but that almost everybody around the franchise thinks is at a different decibel this summer.
That, clearly, is by design.
“Obviously we needed to re-boot,” Paton said. “The big decision was Russ. … And it was challenging. We had to make some really tough decisions. We had to lose some really good players, but we had to. It wasn’t working. We made a push for the playoffs, but we felt like there were a few things we had to do. We wanted to get younger. We wanted to get more athletic. We feel like we’ve done that with the draft and some of our decisions in free agency. …
“Now, again, we’re just in camp, so we’ll see. But we feel like we’ve helped ourselves there.”
Denver started this process last year when it cut veterans Randy Gregory and Frank Clark during the season. They let Kareem Jackson go in late December. By then, it became clear Russell Wilson’s tenure was finished, too, after two seasons.
After an 8-9 campaign, Payton couldn’t even say the first step had been completed.
“I would say we’re not building on that foundation yet,” he surmised in January. “We’re still putting the friggin’ pilings in based on what I saw.”
Then in the spring came the Jeudy trade and the release of Simmons, a franchise stalwart and fan favorite.
While the quarterback wheel spun, the Broncos spent much more sparingly in free agency than they had the previous year. That was out of necessity, given they decided to carry $53 million of the $85 million of Russell Wilson’s dead cap charges in 2024.
“We had to get our cap in order. That was a must,” Paton said. “Obviously it was a big hit, but we wanted to take it this year. We felt like we still had flexibility to do some things and help the team. Feel like we’ve done that. (Vice president of football administration Rich Hurtado) did a really good job.
“That was the plan.”
Build to code
No breaking news here: Payton is particular about the kinds of players he wants.
Even in the spring of 2023, Paton described the veteran head coach as easy to scout for because he makes his standards plain.
Another year into the process, the personnel staff is steeped more thoroughly in Payton’s parlance.
How could they not be? They hear it almost every day.
“Sean sits in every meeting. He doesn’t come and go,” Paton said of his scouting department. “He really contributes and, man, we have great talks. … We have discussions about hits we’ve had over the years, misses we’ve both had and maybe they’ve had here or in other places. You talk about why.”
The general manager says there is “no gray area” between the scouts and coaching staff. Broncos senior offensive assistant Pete Carmichael spent 18 years in New Orleans, all but the past two with Payton, and has seen what this framework looks like when it’s fully constructed.
“Oh, I think that’s really, when you’re building an organization, that has to be one of the starting points,” Carmichael told The Post. “The relationship that I see between the front office and the coaching staff here, it’s what I would expect from an organization that Sean Payton’s the head coach of. He listens to everybody — both sides listen and take in all the opinions. And then when it comes down to it Sean and George work together and make the decisions and everybody is always on board.”
Well, not always. Disagreement is part of finding consensus or at least moving toward it. But that, too, happens more easily when there is familiarity and history already in the room. And those elements cannot be faked.
“George and I, man, we talk daily about our team. We’ve got a great relationship,” Payton said. “There’s a ton of trust there. He’s someone I’d never worked with but I knew from afar. …
“And so the process has gone smooth.”
Added Paton, “You can have those tough conversations. They’re easier to have if there’s a relationship and there’s a trust.”
The pilings
When Penner got that phone call in March about the quarterback in the Pacific Northwest, he acknowledged that his first reaction wasn’t necessarily to jump for joy.
This is, in a way, the state of the Broncos writ large entering 2024.
There is optimism and energy. A belief that the franchise is on the right track. That they’ve got some of the right pieces in place, not just with Nix but with cornerback Pat Surtain II, guard Quinn Meinerz and defensive linemen Zach Allen and John Franklin-Myers.
“There’s certainly an internal belief more than there was when I got here a year ago,” right tackle Mike McGlinchey said. “People believe that we can win, people believe that we’re on the right track, and people have bought into the program.”
But what’s also true is this: Expectations are modest this year. A breakout from Nix could change that quickly, but in the meantime sports books and analysts widely peg Denver as one of the league’s worst teams. So what is to be made of that?
To win in the NFL, stability is often cited as a critical factor. But without winning, change becomes inevitable. Necessary. This place has been in a constant state of change for years.
“It’s a benefit if you can have some stability, but you have to win and you have to make good decisions,” Paton said. “You have to believe in your process and stick to your process, even when things are going south. It doesn’t mean you don’t adapt — you have to adapt, you have to evolve in this league or you’re going to get passed up.”
The ideal here, the general manager said, is that the Broncos finish 2024 as an ascending team. A young core flourishes and the club’s salary cap flexibility starts to return in 2025 and ’26.
“Hopefully this team is rising and then we’re ready to take off,” he said.
Penner is adamant that outside expectations do not permeate the building.
“Our expectations of ourselves are really high and our fans’ expectations are really high. That’s what we focus on,” he said. “I don’t think our fans are saying, ‘Oh, I don’t have expectations just because someone in the national media is saying that.’”
Nothing is certain in the NFL, but for the first time in quite some time, there is a sense that the blueprint is right. The building is underway. The project goes forward from here instead of resetting again.
“I’ve got a lot of confidence in where we are now compared to where we were two years ago,” Penner said. “We still have a ways to go, but I’m optimistic that we’re on the path. I don’t feel like, in any way, that I’ve got it all figured out, or we’ve figured it out, but at least we have the building blocks to where I think it can take us in the right direction.”
Longest NFL postseason droughts
| Team | Years | Last | 2024 playoff odds* |
|---|---|---|---|
| N.Y. Jets | 13 | 2010 AFC title game | -155 |
| Denver | 8 | Super Bowl 50 | +750 |
| Atlanta | 6 | 2017 divisional round | -115 |
| Carolina | 6 | 2017 wild card round | +600 |
| Four tied | 3 |
* Per ESPN BET
Pre-2022 Broncos in 2024 training camp
| Player | Position | First year in Denver |
|---|---|---|
| Garett Bolles | LT | 2017 |
| Tim Patrick | WR | 2017 |
| Courtland Sutton | WR | 2018 |
| P.J. Locke | S | 2020 |
| Justin Strnad | ILB | 2020 |
| Pat Surtain II | CB | 2021 |
| Javonte Williams | RB | 2021 |
| Jonas Griffith | ILB | 2021 |
| Jonathon Cooper | OLB | 2021 |
| Baron Browning | OLB | 2021 |
| Quinn Meinerz | OL | 2021 |
Broncos 2023 O and D captains
| Name | Position | Status |
|---|---|---|
| Russell Wilson | QB | Released in March |
| Justin Simmons | S | Released in March |
| Kareem Jackson | S | Released in December |
| Courtland Sutton | WR | Back. Skipped voluntary offseason program |
| Mike McGlinchey | RT | Back |
Average age of Broncos teams
| Year | Average age | NFL rank (youngest) |
|---|---|---|
| 2024 | 26.9^ | T-14 |
| 2023 | 26.3 | T15 |
| 2022 | 26.3 | 20 |
| 2021 | 25.8 | T-7 |
| 2020 | 25.6 | T-5 |
| 2019 | 25.3 | T-2 |
| 2018 | 25.7 | T-9 |
| 2017 | 25.8 | 10 |
| 2016 | 25.7 | T-6 |
| 2015 | 26.7 | T-24 |
* Spotrac data | ^ Before roster cutdown
Average age of Sean Payton teams
| Year | Team | Average age | NFL rank (youngest) |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2024 | Broncos | 26.9^ | T-14 |
| 2023 | Broncos | 26.3 | T-15 |
| 2021 | New Orleans | 26.7 | T-23 |
| 2020 | New Orleans | 27 | 31 |
| 2019 | New Orleans | 26.7 | T-28 |
| 2018 | New Orleans | 26.6 | T-27 |
| 2017 | New Orleans | 26.1 | T-14 |
| 2016 | New Orleans | 27.2 | 32 |
| 2015 | New Orleans | 27.1 | 31 |
* Spotrac data | ^ Before roster cutdown
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