The wait is finally over. The Denver Broncos have locked up their star pass rusher, Nik Bonitto, for the foreseeable future. The two sides agreed to a four-year, $120 million contract extension on Thursday. The base value of the deal is $106 million with $70 million guaranteed.
BREAKING: The #Broncos and All-Pro pass-rusher Nik Bonitto have agreed to a 4-year extension worth up to $120M, with $70M guaranteed, multiple sources tell me.
Bonitto is coming off a breakout season with 13.5 sacks and two defensive touchdowns — and now gets rewarded in a major… pic.twitter.com/PzkBCDdFQD
— Jordan Schultz (@Schultz_Report) September 4, 2025
The deal makes Bonitto the highest-paid non-quarterback in franchise history.
The Broncos have already handed out two big extensions with Zach Allen and Courtland Sutton in recent weeks, but this one was the most important. Bonitto established himself as a star last season with 13.5 sacks and two defensive touchdowns, and everyone in Broncos Country knew that this wasn’t a player they could let get away.
George Paton and the rest of the Broncos organization responded, and now they have a franchise cornerstone secured for a long time.
This is the seventh major contract extension that the Broncos have inked in the last 14 months, with the other four being Quinn Meinerz, Jonathon Cooper, Pat Surtain II and Garett Bolles. The total guaranteed value of the seven extensions is a whopping $376 million.
Bonitto will still get the $5.35 million he was scheduled to make this season, the final year of his rookie contract, along with the signing bonus from this deal.
The 25-year-old has shown exponential growth in his three seasons in Denver, going from 1.5 sacks to 8.0 sacks to 13.5 sacks in his three years repping the orange and blue. His total tackles have increased by at least 16 every season, and he let the NFL know that his name is one that fans should expect to see at the top of defensive leaderboards every season.
With their franchise quarterback on a rookie contract through 2028, Paton and the Broncos are putting their money into every other aspect of the team they can before Bo Nix has to sign a deal that will have to revamp Denver’s cap sheet down the line. That has been the recipe to success in recent years, as San Francisco did the same with Brock Purdy in the 2023 season, Philadelphia did with Jalen Hurts in 2022 and Cincinnati did so with Joe Burrow in 2021.
Bonitto’s new deal is in the neighborhood of what Trey Hendrickson signed in Cincinnati recently, but nowhere close to the anomaly of a contract that Micah Parsons signed with the Packers last week. That deal ended up being too much of an outlier to reset the pass rusher market, a fortunate outcome for the Broncos. His $26.5 million average annual salary ranks 10th in the league among edge rushers.
With almost every key player locked in for the next few years, it’s time for the Broncos to seriously pursue the main goal they have in mind, winning a fourth Super Bowl.