ENGLEWOOD, Colo. — Days after George Paton was hired as the general manager of the Denver Broncos in January of 2021, he laid out his roster philosophy for a team trying to find its way.
“To draft and develop talent, you bring high-character players into your organization, you develop them and hopefully get them second contracts, and that’s how you build your best culture,” Paton said at the time. “Now, when you go outside, will you be aggressive and dip into free agency or the trade market? Yeah, every now and then, but it takes that right type of player to do that. I think we all believe in drafting and developing and making them into your own. That’s the best way to build a football team.”
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“Every now and then” has come along more frequently than Paton may have imagined since he took over the day-to-day decision-making role from John Elway. The Broncos, according to Spotrac, ranked 18th in free-agency spending in 2021 ($64.6 million in total contracts), then jumped to seventh in 2022 ($126.2 million) and first in 2023 ($259.5 million). The Broncos have lost 19 of their past 25 games dating back to the final month of the 2021 season — only the Chicago Bears have been worse in that span — and a lack of production from an expensive group of free-agent additions has contributed to the team’s decline in a significant way.
The latest example: Randy Gregory, the veteran outside linebacker released by the Broncos on Wednesday. Gregory signed a five-year contract in 2022 that was worth as much as $70 million, but the concrete commitment was $28 million, which essentially came in the first two years of the deal. What the Broncos got out of Gregory was 10 games played out of a possible 21 and three sacks.
“It was something we felt was just best for our team right now, timing-wise,” head coach Sean Payton said. “… We just felt like with some of our younger players and where we’re going, it was best for our team right now.”
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Gregory was injured for much of his tenure with the Broncos. It began when he missed almost all of his first training camp with the team to rehab a shoulder injury. He then missed 11 games during his debut season due to a knee injury that required surgery. Gregory participated in all of training camp this season and started Denver’s first three games. But he did not have the same burst he demonstrated to open last season, finishing with one sack and three tackles while producing a meager 9.5 percent pressure rate, according to TruMedia, which ranked 146th out of 208 defensive linemen and outside linebackers. Gregory was replaced in the starting lineup in Week 4 by second-year player Nik Bonitto, the writing splashed on the wall.
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“We just felt like the other guys were playing better,” Payton said. “Sometimes that happens in this league. Shoot, we want the best players possible. So it was a combination of things.”
But Gregory is hardly the first free-agent addition of the Paton era to fall short of expectations. His first offseason was highlighted by the signings of veteran cornerbacks Ronald Darby and Kyle Fuller. Darby, who signed a three-year, $30 million deal, missed 18 of a possible 34 games and did not record an interception. He was waived in March. Fuller, who signed a one-year, $9.5 million deal to reunite with Vic Fangio, his defensive coordinator with the Bears, struggled mightily during his lone season in Denver and was benched during the first month of the year.
The biggest signing in 2022 outside of Gregory was defensive lineman D.J. Jones, who inked a three-year, $30 million deal that came with $20 million in guarantees. Jones has been solid, though not spectacular, while starting 19 of a possible 21 games. He had two sacks in his debut season in Denver and his 34 tackles represented the second-best mark of his career. K’Waun Williams, who signed a two-year, $5.2 million deal, has been excellent while he’s been on the field, but he began this season on injured reserve with an ankle injury and there is no clear timetable for his return. There were some wins for Paton, none bigger than the home-run signing of linebacker Alex Singleton for just above the league minimum veteran salary, but the majority of lost-cost signings — offensive linemen Tom Compton and Billy Turner, running back Melvin Gordon — also fizzled.
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It is too early to make a definitive judgment of the 2023 class, collaboratively constructed by Paton and Payton. The group has played only four games. But the early returns suggest the Broncos need more out of the league’s highest-paid free-agent group. Offensive linemen Ben Powers and Mike McGlinchey signed multi-year contracts that came with a combined $52 million in guarantees. Payton viewed an immediate and substantial upgrade on the offensive line as a top priority in the offseason in order to build an offense that could more adequately protect quarterback Russell Wilson, who was sacked a career-high 55 times in 15 games in 2022.
Quantifying the performances of individual linemen can be tricky, particularly over a small sample. But the available advanced data leaves something to be desired by the two new linemen from a pass-blocking perspective. McGlinchey has allowed 13 pressures, according to Pro Football Focus, the 11th-most among all offensive linemen. In PFF’s “Pass Blocking Efficiency” rating, a per-snap measure of performance weighted toward sacks allowed, McGlinchey is 167th out of 185 qualified linemen. He has also committed four false starts in the first four games of the season. The numbers are a little better for Powers, whose eight pressures allowed are the 26th-most among guards and who ranks 58th in the PFF efficiency metric, but the pair has not been among the best at their respective positions.
Overall, the Broncos rank 27th in pressure rate allowed at 39.5 percent. They were 23rd in pressure rate allowed in 2022 at 35.6 percent. Denver has been a marginally improved run-blocking unit to this point, however. The Broncos rank fifth in the NFL in yards per rush before contact at 2.05. They were 12th in the same category last season at 1.7 yards before contact.
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The Broncos’ other highly paid addition in free agency was defensive end Zach Allen, who signed a three-year, $45.75 million contract ($32.5 million in guarantees) to replace Dre’Mont Jones as the team’s top interior defensive lineman. Allen has not been the same disruptive force he was while playing under Vance Joseph in Arizona. His pressure rate of 5.8 percent is the lowest of his five-year career to this point and ranks 196th out of 208 qualified defensive linemen and linebackers this season. The Broncos have been the NFL’s worst run defense this season, and while that is a failure that must be owned by the coaching staff and all 11 players on the field, it’s not a place they thought they would be given the contracts handed to Jones and Allen the past two offseasons.
Again, it’s early. But the Broncos need more from this group.
When the Broncos acquired Wilson in 2022 for the cost of five draft picks and three players, they entered a period in which they would have to depend heavily on free agency. Co-owner and CEO Greg Penner said a spending spree like the one the team had back in March is not an ideal approach year after year, but it was a necessity given that Denver was entering the draft with only five picks and none in the first two rounds.
If the Broncos are to get out of a losing cycle that has them on track to miss the playoffs for the eighth straight season, they must get closer to the vision Paton laid nearly three years ago. Dipping too frequently into free agency can be a risky proposition, and Denver to this point doesn’t have much to show for all the big-money contracts it has thrown around.
(Top photo: RJ Sangosti / Getty Images)
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