Going into the 2025 offseason, the #1 concern on the Denver Broncos' defense could not have been more obvious. The team needed help at the linebacker position.
The Broncos shuffled through a number of players, including three street free agents, over the course of the 2024 season. Despite the revolving door at linebacker as well as injuries galore, the Broncos still ended up 3rd in the NFL in points allowed.
All is well that ends well, except things didn't end well. The Broncos' defense broke down as the season went along, and a lot of their problems could be traced back to the linebacker position. Even though the team went out and added Dre Greenlaw in NFL free agency, the linebacker position remains a major weakness in 2025, and has already started "wrecking" the season.
Broncos persistent linebacker issues are haunting the team early in 2025
If now isn't the time to say, "I told you so," then I don't know what is. The strategy of the Denver Broncos in the 2025 offseason to upgrade and fix their linebacker position was dreadful.
It's only been two weeks, but we've been hearing about more injury concerns for linebacker Dre Greenlaw since the offseason when he suffered a pulled quad. And then as Greenlaw made his way back onto the field at training camp, he suffered an apparent setback and narrowly avoided being placed on short-term IR.
The Broncos already lost one of their contingency plans at linebacker with third-year player Drew Sanders suffering another major injury at the start of training camp. Sanders is expected back at some point this season, but even when he's healthy, what in the world is he going to do to help the team? He was playing the EDGE position last year.
Alex Singleton was brought back this offseason coming off of a major knee injury, and is predictably the weak link on defense so far through two weeks. Singleton looks like a player who is going to be 32 years old this year and is coming off of a major knee injury. Considering he was already having to compensate for lack of top-end athletic metrics before, the fact that he's not looking fresh coming off the knee injury is detrimental to the team.
The only other move the Broncos really made to add to the linebacker position was to re-sign Justin Strnad, whose greatest strength is attacking the line of scrimmage.
This is an issue we all talked about in Broncos Country throughout the entire offseason. In an ideal world, Dre Greenlaw would be out there for 17 games, but the Broncos were naive to think that would ever be the case, and they did absolutely nothing to plan in case things didn't go well with Singleton.
This is looking like a clear loss for general manager George Paton and head coach Sean Payton, who are obviously the ones in charge of building the roster. Why was so much faith put in Singleton? Why did the team not draft a linebacker in response to the Greenlaw injury back in the Spring?
Why was the only substantial move for depth to bring back Justin Strnad? Why was there not a response move after Drew Sanders was hurt?
The issues at linebacker were a clear reason why this team gave up 473 yards of offense to the Colts and couldn't stop a nosebleed. The offense played well enough to win the game, but the defense's inability to get off the field quickly was ultimately what cost the team a win in Week 2. And the way the team addressed linebacker is directly to blame.