Russell Wilson has taken his last ride with the Broncos, but the offseason business in Denver has only just begun.
The Broncos, who announced Monday they will release their veteran quarterback when the new league year begins on March 13, are $16.4 million over the salary cap, according to Over The Cap. Team leaders have said there is no plan for an exorbitant spending spree in free agency, but Denver will nonetheless need to create room to sign targeted free agents, including a few in-house players. It’s also important to note that if Denver opts to take the larger chunk of Wilson’s dead money on its 2024 ledger — if the team declines to exercise a bonus option in his contract, it would take a $53 million hit this season and $32 million in 2025 — it would ultimately need to create roughly $18 million in additional space by the start of the league year.
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It all means there are going to be significant moves made by the Broncos in the coming days to solve their financial puzzle and prepare for the player-acquisition periods. That business will take numerous forms, so let’s look at a few avenues the Broncos could go and which players could make sense in each category.
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Restructures
Teams routinely restructure contracts by taking a portion of a player’s base salary and converting it into a signing bonus. The signing bonus is then prorated over the duration of a player’s deal, which creates immediate cap space. It is a tool the Saints used routinely during Sean Payton’s 16 seasons as the head coach in New Orleans, kicking the proverbial can down Bourbon Street to account for moves the team needed to do each offseason. The potential downside is that teams are pushing money into the future when a player’s production could start to decline, making separations later in the life of the contract more costly. That’s why each potential restructure must be analyzed carefully.
“You just look at the contracts we have,” Broncos general manager George Paton said of potential restructures with the current roster. “In the players, some of the veterans we have … make more sense than others. You don’t want to mortgage the future, so some you don’t have to mortgage as much. Really, it’s the player, it’s the youth, do you feel like they’re going to be there a while? Those are the ones maybe you go to, and I’m not sure we’re going to do that or not, but we do have that flexibility.”
Candidates in Denver would include right tackle Mike McGlinchey, left guard Ben Powers and defensive end Zach Allen. All three players signed multiyear contracts with the Broncos in free agency last season and should be anchors at their positions for the foreseeable future. The Broncos could create roughly $27 million in cap space if they were to restructure the contracts of all three players, according to Over The Cap.
There is a good chance Denver will look for 2024 savings with this trio in some way.
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Extensions
The Broncos have a handful of veteran players who are entering the final season of their respective contracts with big impending cap charges and no guaranteed money remaining. Those types of players can typically be candidates for extensions that would dramatically lower cap charges for the upcoming season.
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Left tackle Garett Bolles ($20 million cap charge in 2024), safety Justin Simmons ($18.25 million) and defensive lineman D.J. Jones ($12.96) fit into this category most prominently. But a lower cap figure in the short term is only a part of the calculus when weighing a multiyear extension. Bolles and Simmons have been fixtures at their positions in Denver for at least seven seasons. They have each received All-Pro accolades in the past. They are the best options the Broncos have at those positions on the roster as 2024 approaches.
But Bolles will be 32 during the upcoming season and Simmons will be 31. Do the Broncos want to have big cap charges with those players in, say, 2026? Or even 2025? Or are the Broncos better off spreading resources around the rest of the roster while searching for young replacements in the draft?
It is important to note that Denver has not handed out an extension to a player before the end of his contract since handing Wilson a five-year, $242.5 million deal in 2022 when he still had two years left on the original contract that he had signed with the Seahawks. That’s certainly not to say the Broncos aren’t going to do extensions with their players again. Drafting and developing prospects and rewarding them with second deals is how teams want to build sustainable winning cultures. But it’s fair to predict the ownership group led by Greg Penner is going to be very judicious in how it approaches potential extensions with aging veterans.
The Broncos could do an early extension with All-Pro cornerback Pat Surtain, but there isn’t incentive for Denver to rush to the table with the fifth-year option on Surtain’s rookie contract, a fully guaranteed $19.8 million figure that must be exercised by May 2, at its disposal. The cap charge for Surtain in 2024 is $6.7 million, so an extension likely wouldn’t lower that figure dramatically.
In short, don’t count on extensions being a major piece of the puzzle as the Broncos start creating 2024 cap space.
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Releases
This is the most straightforward way for teams to create salary cap space and will be a likely mechanism for the Broncos in the coming days.
The top candidate here is wide receiver Tim Patrick, who has missed the last two seasons with injuries and has a scheduled $15.6 million cap charge in 2024. The Broncos would save $9.5 million by releasing Patrick outright while taking on $6.07 million in dead money. Releasing Patrick is not the only way to save money with the wide receiver. The sides could instead agree on a significant pay cut that would allow Patrick to show he can make an impact while returning from Achilles surgery and would still allow the Broncos to save appreciable money against the cap.
Jones, the defensive lineman who signed a three-year deal with Denver in 2022 and has played in 31 of a possible 34 games since, could also be a release candidate given that the Broncos would save just under $10 million by cutting him. But losing a stout presence on the interior could be a tough pill to swallow for a team that is desperately trying to improve against the run next season and is limited in the ways it can add depth to the position. The Broncos have only six draft picks and, as outlined above, won’t have much in the way of available cap space to add players.
The Broncos could save $5 million by releasing quarterback Jarrett Stidham, but that move is unlikely. As it stands now, Stidham is the favorite to replace Wilson as the team’s starting quarterback. The competition Denver acquires in the coming weeks and months, by some combination of free agency and the draft, could ultimately supplant Stidham, but Denver has no reason to move on from the veteran ahead of the new league year.
Modest savings could come by releasing players like running back Samaje Perine ($3 million), defensive back Tremon Smith ($2.5 million) and tight end Chris Manhertz ($2.1 million).
To open up much larger swaths of cap space, the Broncos could cut Bolles ($16 million) or Simmons ($14.5 million). But if Denver has no plans to extend either player, they would fit better in the final cost-saving category below.
Trades
The Broncos have only six picks in the upcoming draft, so it would be beneficial if they could add draft capital in the course of executing their cost-saving maneuvers.
The player who could sit at the top of this list given the interest he’s previously drawn is wide receiver Jerry Jeudy. The Broncos last spring picked up the fifth-year option of $12.98 million on Jeudy’s rookie contract, which he is set to play on this season. If Jeudy were to be traded, his cap charge for 2024 would come off Denver’s books entirely.
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It was notable that Payton spent time at the NFL Scouting Combine last week predicting a much larger role for Marvin Mims Jr. as a receiver in 2024, saying that the rookie who made the Pro Bowl as a returner last season was essentially blocked at receiver by Jeudy. The market for Jeudy may not be as robust right now as it was last offseason or during the trade deadline in November when Denver reportedly had offers for a third-round pick. But the Broncos may be willing to entertain lesser offers because it would mean cap space cleared, a draft asset acquired, a bigger role for Mims created and a clean separation from a wide receiver who Denver likely doesn’t have in its long-term plans.
When it comes to Bolles and Simmons, the Broncos would realize the same salary-cap savings from trading them as they would from releasing them. Simmons has more interceptions (30) than any other player in the NFL since entering the league as a third-round pick of the Broncos in 2016. Bolles may not be an All-Pro caliber left tackle at this point — he received second-team distinction in 2020 — but he remains a solid starter at a premium position, something that isn’t always easy for teams to find. The Broncos would likely have interested suitors if they signaled they were open to trading either player.
None of this is to suggest that trading Bolles or Simmons is the right move for Denver to make this offseason. While Payton and Paton spent much of their time at the combine talking up the young depth on the roster, it is unlikely they have players ready to step in next season and match the production — or even the durability — Bolles and Simmons have consistently displayed. The best course of action for the Broncos could be allowing both players to play on the last year of their deals and then evaluate their options at the end of the season — or even at the trade deadline.
Still, the cap space has to come from somewhere over the next week. Some moves may be the expected routine contract adjustments. Others could be more seismic. After the Broncos cut Wilson two years after acquiring him in a massive trade, no move can be considered off limits for a team desperately trying to dig out of a losing hole.
(Top photo: David Reginek / USA Today)
