Wide receivers, Joseph, and search for rushers
Phase Three of the Broncos’ offseason program begins Tuesday with the first week of organized team activities.
Denver will run 10 OTA practices over the next three weeks before a week off and then a mandatory minicamp June 13-15.
Coach Sean Payton’s first offseason featured an elongated stretch of primarily lifting and running and transitioned the past couple of weeks to Phase Two, featuring what he called “football school.” That’s time spent on the practice field at walk-through pace, but the Collective Bargaining Agreement prohibits live contact and team offense vs. defense work.
The next step begins this week, and, naturally, Denver has many questions to answer between now and September. Not all of them will be settled before the preseason, but data points start accumulating before then.
As such, here are five storylines to track through OTAS and minicamp.
Crowded WR room
Denver heads into May with a dozen wide receivers on its 90-man roster, 10 of whom have NFL experience and another of whom is rookie Marvin Mims, Jr., the Broncos’ top pick in last month’s draft.
So, what’s going to give? The numbers crunch makes it easy to see why trade speculation followed Denver through the first part of the offseason.
Denver does have a couple of significant injury situations to follow: Tim Patrick is working toward a full return after tearing his ACL last August and KJ Hamler’s rehabilitation from a pectoral injury earlier in the offseason could keep him out into training camp.
After that, though, the competition is substantial. Denver’s two free agent additions — Lil’jordan Humphrey and Marquez Callaway — played for Payton previously. That doesn’t assure them roster spots, but it does mean Payton has a role in mind for both.
The pass- catchers the Broncos counted on as injuries mounted last year — Kendall Hinton and the rookie trio Montrell Washington, Brandon Johnson and Jalen Virgil — are all going to have tough battles to make the 53-man roster.
If Jerry Jeudy, Cortland Sutton, Patrick and Mims are healthy and take up four spots, the rest are fighting for maybe two more openings.
Vance Joseph is back
The Broncos’ new defensive coordinator and former head coach wasn’t at the rookie minicamp day open to reporters earlier this month because he was attending his daughter’s graduation at USC. Combine that with the fact Denver’s assistants haven’t been made available so far for interviews, and Joseph’s return has proceeded pretty quietly so far.
It will be interesting, though, to see him back on the field and to learn what he thinks about the defensive group he’s taking over. A few guys are still around from his head coaching tenure, like safety Justin Simmons and inside linebacker Josey Jewell. Joseph knows all about new defensive lineman Zach Allen after four years together in Arizona. Beyond that, it’s a new, albeit talented, group.
The relationship between Joseph and Payton will be one to watch, too. Payton’s attention game-plan wise obviously leans heavily toward the offense, but he made it clear he’s not just the coach of the offense.
“I think teams sometimes operate maybe where this side of the building is offense, this side is defense, and this side is special teams,” he said during the draft. “I’m not really familiar with that at all.”
Competition at center
At the NFL ownership meetings in March, Payton said the Broncos considered Lloyd Cushenberry their starting center. This offseason, they’ve also added Kyle Fuller and drafted Oregon’s Alex Forsyth in the seventh round. Cushenberry enters OTAS as the perceived favorite, but he’s also entering the final year of his rookie deal.
So whether it’s this summer or next, change could be afoot.
Forsyth, in particular, is interesting because Payton and general manager George Paton said last month they felt “fortunate” he was still available late in the draft and that some of their pre- draft preparations had him as a sixthround player.
That, of course, doesn’t mean he’s going to win the starting job as a rookie, but the picture at that position is more intriguing than it was in February.
Randy and the rushers
Randy Gregory and Bradley Chubb looked like a potentially devastating passrush pair early in the 2022 season, but that feels like a long time ago. Denver traded Chubb at the deadline. Gregory missed 11 games and only played 34 snaps over the Broncos’ final 13 games, 11 of which came in a disastrous, finefilled Christmas Day.
Gregory’s been around for most of the offseason program so far, according to Payton.
“Randy is doing well. It’s Phase Two, and he’s been here,” Payton said during the rookie minicamp.
“He’s in good health. Again, in Phase Two, we’re doing a lot of the teaching, but he’s doing well and looks good.”
Currently, he and Baron Browning project as the starting duo with 2022 second-round pick Nik Bonitto and third-year man Jonathon Cooper next up. The Broncos need Bonitto to take a big jump in his second pro season.
Beyond that, Jacob Martin’s not coming back after agreeing to a one-year deal with Houston. Maybe Denver has something in a healthy Christopher Allen or college free agent Thomas Incoom. Maybe rookie third- round linebacker Drew Sanders can fulfill Payton’s projection as “a pressure player.”
At the moment, though, there are questions to be answered. Gregory, 30, has played more than 12 games in a season once. Browning’s missed time each of his first two years with injury. And there’s not much proven production after that.
Is more front seven help on the way?
All of the outside linebacker intrigue combined with the defensive line picture and a host of veteran free agents available make the defensive front seven ripe for a summer addition or two.
The Broncos essentially swapped out Dre’mont Jones for Zach Allen, but there’s not a natural replacement on the roster for Deshawn Williams unless second-year linemen Matt Henningsen and Eyioma Uwazurike take big jumps. They didn’t draft a lineman in April, though they did sign college free agent PJ Mustipher and also have Jordan Jackson and Elijah Garcia. But in that group of five plus Jonathan Harris, can three emerge and provide 70 quality snaps per game?
Maybe Payton, Paton and company decide they can fill in some of the gaps with a veteran, whether it be a pass-rusher like Leonard Floyd, Yannick Ngakoue or Justin Houston or interior help like Akiem Hicks, Linval Joseph or someone else. Some of the remaining free agent crop will start to find work in the coming weeks and some will wait until closer to training camp.