Broncos news megathread

[ROYC75]

Discussion: All things Broncos.

[King_Chief_Fan]

Originally Posted by jerryaldini

Payton might want to walk this back. Throws shade on the entire offense

Reporter: Sean, it looks like Russell is getting too much of the blame...

Payton: "I can't replace the entire offensive line. I can't bring in five new receivers..."

— Andrew Siciliano (@AndrewSiciliano) December 27, 2023

sounds like something Veach could be saying

[Red Dawg]

This is a just in case move to no commit more money. If they can't lock down a better player then he stays.

[JohnnyHammersticks]

Who was that wise sage who predicted that the Sean Payton/Broncos experiment would burst into a flaming pile of AIDS in less than 2 years and that he wouldn't be back for the 2025 season? Man...who was it? Anyone remember? Oh yeah, it was me.

Kiszla: After throwing Russell Wilson under the bus, how long before Sean Payton loses trust of Broncos locker room?
The Broncos are Payton’s mess, and we ain’t buying the balderdash he’s selling.
PUBLISHED: December 27, 2023 at 9:13 p.m. | UPDATED: December 27, 2023 at 9:49 p.m.


With arrogance as ugly as it is unfounded, Broncos coach Sean Payton tapped into another page Wednesday from his big jerk playbook. He took the football away from Russell Wilson, because Wilson now serves Payton better as a scapegoat than a quarterback.

“I’m hopeful it gives us a spark,” Payton said.

He insisted benching Wilson for Jarrett Stidham was a football move all about winning for a team that’s two weeks away from packing up the gear and heading to Cancun for vacation.

Maybe Payton believes he can BS all of us knuckleheads all the time.

But I don’t believe a word you’re saying, Sparky.

Spoiler!

My lack of trust in Payton goes far beyond the fact Wilson has won 115 regular-season games in his NFL career, while Stidham is a 27-year-old journeyman who has won zero.

This move stinks of money, because details of his $245-million contract extension would make it extremely costly for Denver if Wilson gets seriously injured before messy divorce proceedings with the team begin in the offseason. Worse, it reeks of retribution by Payton, who blew a must-win game against New England by calling two stupid timeouts late in the fourth quarter, then tries to play us all for fools by blaming Wilson.

In 40 years of following the Broncos from Greeley to London and the Super Bowl to the basement of the AFC West, I’ve never listened to a coach so full of self-aggrandizing balderdash as Payton spews on the regular.

With general manager George Paton, who compounded the mistake of trading for Wilson by rubber-stamping a massive extension before he threw a single touchdown pass in Denver, standing in the wings, Payton looked TV cameras in the eye and sent a message to the locker room: If Wilson isn’t safe, nobody is.

“I can’t replace the entire offensive line. I can’t bring in five new receivers,” said Payton, whose offensive genius has produced 21.8 points per game, which ranks Denver 16th among 32 league teams in scoring. “If it continues over a period of time, there will be another guy here talking to you.”

Those are the words of a coach who inherited Wilson, then has acted as if the task of molding an offense around an unconventional quarterback was more a burden than a challenge.

If the players aren’t beginning to wonder who’s next to get thrown under the bus by Payton, they’re naive fools who deserve what’s coming to them.

After being told Stidham will be entrusted with beating the Chargers and the Raiders to keep their snowball’s-chance-in-Hades hope of making the playoffs alive, the Denver locker room was about as chipper as your friendly neighborhood morgue.

The Broncos are a dead team walking.

Not since Joe Flacco and the Ravens ripped the Super Bowl dream from the hearts of fans during a playoff game nearly 10 years ago has the vibe of Denver’s stadium felt more morose than Sunday night, when Payton had his team totally unprepared to play a bad New England team and Bill Belichick was the Grinch that stole Christmas.

“I came here to win and win a championship for us,” Wilson said following the 26-23 loss to the Patriots, in what now sounds like the sad epitaph to the death of his career in Colorado.

There’s no arguing the skills of Wilson have eroded over time, with the 527 sacks he has endured extracting a physical toll. I’m not certain he completely understood the harshly lofty standard to which quarterbacks are held in Broncos Country, spoiled by John Elway and Peyton Manning. By any measure, his 11-19 record as a starter over the course of two seasons must be regarded as a flop.

Let us not forget, however, that Wilson also is a Super Bowl champ, with nine invitations to the Pro Bowl and 334 touchdown passes to his credit. He is a Broncos captain and an accomplished Black man that a crusty, old, white coach has too often treated like a 10-year-old child, dressing him down for all the NFL world to see in Detroit and now requiring him to stand on the sideline as a chastised back-up quarterback in his home stadium.

You always follow the money in pro sports, and by benching Wilson, the Broncos protect themselves from the possibility of owing Wilson an addition $37 million if he gets hurt and can’t pass a physical in March.

“I understand the economics here,” groused Payton, irked the football business of the Broncos might be any of our damn business.

For life after Wilson to be fun on the football field, it could help mightily if the quarterback restructured his contract to make trading him more than remotely feasible. But after the way he has been dissed and dumped by Payton, who could blame Wilson if he told the Broncos to stick that proposal where the sun doesn’t shine?

Domineering by nature, Payton has bullied and bloviated his way to carving out a little football kingdom in Denver, taking advantage of inexperienced new franchise ownership with a cocksure attitude that answers to no one.

But he seems oblivious to the growing suspicion in Broncos Country this emperor has no clothes. And that’s not a particularly flattering look for a coach who when Payton celebrates his 60th birthday this week, he will be 14 seasons removed from his lone Super Bowl victory.

Payton is running out of people to blame for this mess.

link

[notorious]

Having an anchor contract like this on your team interests me, so I went to the Bronco board to learn about it. This is what I found:

With the benching of Russ will come a lot of salary dumps. Bolles, Patrick, Jeudy, Jewell, Singleton, K'Wuan Willams and Simmons are guys that will get cut or traded I guarantee it. Look for some big swinging moves during or just before the draft.

Cut/trade:

Bolles saves 16m in cap (age 32)
Patrick 10M (age 31)
Sutton 10M (age 29)
Simmons 14M (age 31)
Jones 10M (age 29)
Singleton 4.5M (age 31)

64M in cap room.

If this is the plan, then may as well trade Surtain to start the rebuild. Some of the guys above may fetch a 3rd or more, but only Surtain would return enough to accelerate a rebuild. If, and it is a huge if, we can get a couple 1st round picks (think Ramsey trade), then we could be competitive again in 2025 or 2026.

How I understand the post june 1 designation per the OTC article explaining it is we will have to deal with 100% of Wilson's dead cap in March. We then get cap relief in June. So we can avoid the March trigger of another 37 mil guarantee but we can not avoid the 85 mil cap hit. I think in terms of Wilson the cap will be even in 2025 assuming we roll over what is gained in June to 2025. We may end up with dead money elsewhere for 2025 in all the other moves we do though.

I assume we keeping Stidham in this move and he is not on the table for cutting.

With that said we can keep 1 of the following players - Sutton, Simmons, Bolles, DJ Jones and Patrick. We can keep two but we would have to essentially have to cut 4-6 other players in a list of about 8-9.

We probably would need to release more after that in order to meet our rookie salaries and get enough cap in order to replace the players we just cut.

This is not even counting that we are currently 18 mil over the cap already in 2024 and what the salary cap goes to.

Wow collateral damage from 1 bad signing

Hopefully someone besides Paton making these calls...

These guys know their team better than we do. Looks ugly.

[Rainbarrel]

The General should officially get his stars ripped off anytime now

[JohnnyHammersticks]

The notion that Surtain could bring two 1st round picks shows us all exactly how good the weed in Colorado is.

[TomBarndtsTwin]

Originally Posted by jerryaldini

Add another one to the list. Will be 7 in 9 seasons.

#Broncos starting QBs since SB50:

2016: Trevor Siemian
2017: Trevor Siemian
2018: Case Keenum
2019: Joe Flacco
2020: Drew Lock
2021: Teddy Bridgewater
2022: Russell Wilson
2023: Russell Wilson
2024: TBD

— Zack Kelberman (@KelbermanNFL) December 27, 2023

This is PERFECT.

Denver cuts Russ post June 1st (to not completely kill their cap in 2024, but just too mortally wound it for 2024 & 2025).

KC signs Russ to one year 'revenge' deal, promising him the opportunity to pull down Payton's pants on National TV. (Note: schedule had previously been released and we already know Chiefs and Denver are playing on a Sunday night matchup in Mile High, due to media being convinced now Denver is good due to 9-8 second place finish in AFC West and their first win over Chiefs in 17 tries)

Week 5 matchup comes up in Denver (because of course it's scheduled early because talking heads as much as they say 'Denver's back', NFL knows deep down they will falter down the stretch again and disappear so no point in late season matchup that won't mean anything). KC is likely 4-0 or 3-1, defense has been solid, not great, but offense (after complete off-season overhaul and new WR's, coaches, etc. is back to humming). Denver is also 3-1 due to front loaded schedule with altitude inflated assistance. Both teams coming into game feeling good about themselves, especially Denver because they are 'BACK' and on Prime Time against the Chiefs for a chance to take early division lead.

Denver has spent all week preparing for Mahomes and the new and improved Andy Reid upgraded offense. Suddenly the day before, the all world QB Patrick Mahomes goes down with an injury (don't worry, he's faking it), OMG, what will the Chiefs do!

You know what happens next: Russ steps in 'I got this coach' (secretly he had been running reps with the first team off and on all week). Andy Reid busts out the 2017 Alex Smith offense that took the Patriots (and the NFL world) by storm and Russ looks 'perfect' in this dumbed down user friendly scheme. Russ goes 23-28, 215 yards, 3 TD's, but one fumble due to tripping over his own feet when trying to scramble. KC wins in a laugher 27-13 and reminds everyone why they are the big dog.

After the game, Russ is all smiles and is interviewing with (pick favorite hot female post game interviewer) and explaining how he just knew God might give him an opportunity like this for this week. He gives Sean Payton a hug (quietly murmurs 'go **** yourself') and jogs off the field getting high fives and praises and raises his finger in the air signaling #1 (when in fact, he was actually flipping off the Denver fanbase, but who would actually believe that, right? I mean, come on, it's super Christian Russell Wilson).

He gets ready to celebrate with his teammates and comes back to the locker room only to find a piece of pink paper hanging inside his locker that says 'Come see me' - Coach Reid.

He goes into Coach Reid's janitor room (because it's Denver, so of course they wouldn't have nice facilities and an office area for the visiting head coach) and Coach Reid tells him 'Russ, thanks my man, great performance. Now I'm gonna need your playbook, your keys and any self respect you have left over'.

Russ silently cries to himself in the corner while Andy chow downs on an Atomic Cheeseburger from Bob's, smiling as melted cheese drips down the side of his GOAT mustache.

Thanks for the memories, Rusty.

[KC_Lee]

via GIPHY

[Eleazar]

Originally Posted by Al Bundy

No one outside of Kansas City has ever heard of that dude, so if it happened to him no one cared and it never got talked about.

dude had what, 30 career receptions?

*edit - 39. Still, Skyy Moore has already passed him.

[MagicHef]

Originally Posted by notorious

Having an anchor contract like this on your team interests me, so I went to the Bronco board to learn about it. This is what I found:


These guys know their team better than we do. Looks ugly.

They're definitely overreacting. Tim Patrick is 100% gone, because he can't get on the field and is being paid as if he's a difference maker. Bolles and Sutton will stay, not sure about the others.

[MagicHef]

Originally Posted by BigRedChief

I could understand this move if he was playing like last year. But, he's not.

Its about getting rid of Wilson. Personality conflict? Payton doesn't like his work ethic or buying into his system etc.

Russ' skill set (or lack thereof) does not match Payton's scheme. Russ was gone next year the moment Payton was hired, IMO.

[Shiver Me Timbers]

I'm trying to figure out (best case scenario) how this plays out.
They find a young gun next year or two. still paying for Rusty in some form or fashion Young gun wants a substantial contract. They give it to him but lose 1/3 of the other "play makers" due to free agency. Can't afford them. I'm thinking this is 10 years of purgatory for the Donks.

[notorious]

Originally Posted by MagicHef

They're definitely overreacting. Tim Patrick is 100% gone, because he can't get on the field and is being paid as if he's a difference maker. Bolles and Sutton will stay, not sure about the others.

I remember the “cut everyone” days here. This Denver team has isn’t near as bad as those teams were.

[JohnnyHammersticks]

The fact that Sean Payton - who's an Urban Meyer-style jackass imo - panicked and took the Donks job instead of sitting tight for a mere 9 more months and almost certainly getting the much, much better Chargers job is very heart-warming for me.

[Eureka]

Originally Posted by JohnnyHammersticks

The fact that Sean Payton - who's an Urban Meyer-style jackass imo - panicked and took the Donks job instead of sitting tight for a mere 9 more months and almost certainly getting the much, much better Chargers job is very heart-warming for me.

They have major cap issues as well. They will be cutting/trading some on that roster this off season.