A No Bull look at the Denver Broncos quarterback and runningback roster, its strengths, weaknesses, and what we can expect George Paton and Sean Payton to target this offseason
With the Denver Broncos offseason kicking off, it is a great time to step back, take a look at the roster, and play a little armchair GM leading up to all of the excitement of possible free-agent signings, trades, and of course the NFL Draft.
Let me give a tip of the hat to www.footballguys.com for their information on snap percentages and www.overthecap.com for their information on current contracts for all players.
All of this is my personal opinion based on my tried-and-true eye test of what I’ve seen from these players on the field this season. For the sake of brevity, I’ll be leaving out guys who didn’t see the field in any significant way in 2024 and most Unrestricted Free Agents.
Enjoy the discussion, join the subjective debate, and share your thoughts (good or bad) in the comments.
Next up, we’ll examine the quarterback/running backs and determine what holes the Broncos should look to fill in the 2025 NFL offseason.
Player Rating Key
- Project / developmental – lacking necessary skills to contribute as it stands today
- Backup quality – Can play, but isn’t a guy you want out there every snap
- Average starter – Doesn’t bring anything special to the table, but can do the job
- Good starter – An above-average talent
- Blue chip player – Top 10 talent in the NFL at what he does
Unit Rating Key
- Critical Need – lack of talent at starter and depth
- Lacking at least one starter
- Mediocre need
- Solid talent and depth
- Elite talent level
Quarterbacks
Bo Nix – 4
Bo Nix was honestly an answer to Broncos Country’s prayers in 2024. His rookie season was superb. He showed command of the offense, clutch ability late in games, and the ability to hit targets at all levels of the field.
Heading into his second season, the biggest thing for him to sharpen is his ability to make throws with snappier timing. While he definitely showed that capability at times, there were many instances where he hesitated and it cost him open windows for his throws. This is very normal for NFL rookie quarterbacks. The NFL windows are much smaller than what quarterbacks get in the college game and it definitely requires more than one season to get dialed in all the way with a variety of routes that a quarterback can hit with timing to throw his receivers open.
Much of the difficulties he did have came from the mental side of the game. While I think he’s at least a year past what most rookies look like in their first year, he’s got work to do on pre-snap and post-snap reads. Once that gets dialed in tighter, he’s going to really get dangerous in a hurry. As the season wore on, I saw more and more out of him where he’s snapping the ball and has the answer immediately. Those were the plays that had us all raising our eyebrows and high-fiving the person next to us and he’s got a lot of ceiling room in this area to grow into.
I think it is also worth mentioning that the team needs to put some better weapons on the field with him. Throwing to two smaller speedy options like Franklin and Mims is only easy when they get wide open. Vele and Sutton had trouble creating consistent separation. If Nix can get better weapons, he’ll be able to really dial up the production on offense.
Unit Rating – 3
The big problem with our quarterback room is that we currently don’t have a backup quarterback on the roster. Both Jarett Stidham and Zach Wilson are unrestricted free agents this season. I honestly think if given a choice, the Broncos should bring back Wilson as he showed more upside in what we saw of him during preseason action.
The Broncos will need a backup heading into 2025. I think the answer in the offseason is going to be either bring back one of the free-agent quarterbacks or bring in a new backup during free agency. The Broncos don’t really need to draft a young guy for development in the current situation.
Running backs
Jaleel McLaughlin – 3
Jaleel McLaughlin was in my mind the best running back we had on the roster in 2024. He’s speedy, shifty, and uses his vision to cut when the designed gap for a play isn’t there. The knock on McLaughlin is always going to be his size. He’s not got the kind of build that lets him block successfully enough or take the kind of beating that a starting back is going to go through. I think he’s a superb #2 back and does a good job in that role.
Audric Estime – 2
I had a lot of hope for Audric Estime to take over #1 duties as the season got late, but it never really happened. He did get plenty of opportunities and while we saw some really nice runs from him, he wasn’t able to show enough to oust Javonte Williams from the starting role.
The biggest thing he needs this offseason is to continue developing his body for the NFL (year 2 is a big deal for most new players). Technically speaking, he needs to really dial into being able to block well. That was the one thing that Williams did that set him apart from the rest of the running back room and if Estime wants to step forward, he needs to be a dominant blocker for Payton to trust him in the role.
Tyler Badie – 2
Tyler Badie is another young player that the Broncos are developing. This was his 3rd year in the league and this training camp will likely be make or break for him.
I will say that I thought his running flashed pretty well. He had some good runs consistently when he did get opportunities. My guess on why we didn’t see him more would be that he was likely not blocking well enough or able to perform catching out of the backfield consistently enough.
Unit Rating – 2
Our starting running back Javonte Williams last season was a shadow of what an actual NFL running back should be. While I like McLaughlin, I wasn’t impressed with anything else the Broncos did. This unit needs a serious starting talent player and will probably see at least 2-3 new faces this offseason.
Defensive roster status overall
Special Teams roster status overall
Offensive roster status overall
- Interior Linemen – 3
- Offensive Tackles – 5
- Wide Receivers – 2
- Tight Ends – 2
- Quarterbacks – 3
- Running backs – 2