Someone’s going to pay Kenneth Walker III. And likely pay him handsomely. His value is at an apex after earning Super Bowl MVP honors.
But it’s been a while since the Broncos bought high in free agency.
You have to go back to 2023, when they did so for Mike McGlinchey, Ben Powers and Zach Allen out of necessity: a draft that didn’t have any picks in the first two rounds until they moved up five spots on draft day to sneak into the No. 63 spot.
You don’t want to buy high; you want to sell high. And the complement to selling high is to buy low.
The Broncos did that last year with their four primary free-agent imports, all of whom had some degree of injury concerns, whether in the recent or distant past.
There was no better example than with Talanoa Hufanga, who ranks 13th among safeties in average per-year value. Having already been an All-Pro before hitting free agency, his relatively affordable deal is only possible because he dealt with a torn anterior cruciate ligament and a wrist injury in the previous 16 months.
Inside linebacker Dre Greenlaw ranks 12th in average per-year value among inside linebackers, but his guaranteed outlay ranks 25th. That gamble didn’t pay off in Year One of his deal; he played just eight regular-season games.
You win some and you lose some. But the Broncos were able to make two big swings at defensive game-changers, and one became a second-team All-Pro. And the reasonable price tags for relative buy-low opportunities allowed them to fire two darts, rather than just one.
It was George Paton’s “more darts” theory, simply put into practice for free agency rather than the draft.
The team that signs Walker will bring him in at his peak.
The question is this: Is he REALLY worth peak money?
WHAT HAS WALKER BEEN IN FOUR YEARS WITH THE SEAHAWKS
On the whole, he’s been a solid plowhorse, evolving from a clear-cut RB1 early in his career to one-half of a timeshare with Zach Charbonnet the past two seasons, only to return to bell-cow status in the postseason once Charbonnet tore his anterior cruciate ligament.
It was Charbonnet’s torn ACL that brought a franchise or transition tag into play; the Seahawks could have used that to squeeze one more season out of Walker, especially with Charbonnet’s rehabilitation poised to nudge into the 2026 regular season.
But the potential cap figures of either tag — $14.293 million and $11.323 million, respectively — led the Seahawks to blanch, even with ample cap room.
Consider this: Only six teams have more effective cap space than the Seahawks. So, they had plenty of room to take on a tag for Walker — either to have him as a one-year bridge or to work on a longer-term deal. They passed, which speaks volumes.
Why would they decline? Well, consider where Walker stacks up among 93 running backs with at least 150 touches since the start of the 2022 season, when he broke into the league:
Yards per attempt: 39th
Rushing success rate: 78th
Yards after contact per attempt: 58th
Fumble rate: 13th
Broken-tackle rate: 10th
Yards per reception: 30th
Receiving success rate: 36th
Drop rate: 41st
In other words, solid production, but nothing that bellows, “Elite.”
Compare those rankings to the ledger of J.K. Dobbins in the last four seasons:
Yards per attempt: 7th
Rushing success rate: 43rd
Yards after contact per attempt: 7th
Fumble rate: T-1st
Broken-tackle rate: 16th
Yards per reception: 89th
Receiving success rate: 82nd
Drop rate: 30th
Walker is the superior pass-catcher and has a slightly better broken-tackle rate, but in everything else, Dobbins has the edge. Of course, Dobbins has the lengthy injury history, as well; any plan for him must have missed games built into it, and he isn’t viable without another free agent, a Round 2-4 running back — or both.
But the compare-and-contrast illustrates a point. Would you rather pay upwards of $12 million per year — with a guarantee nudging towards the mid-$20 millions — for Walker alone or, say $3 million for 10 to 12 games of Dobbins and $7.33 million a year for Tyler Allegier on a three-year, $22-million deal? Or use that $7.33 million toward help at inside linebacker, tight end, or kicking it forward toward a Bo Nix extension that becomes more likely with every late-game comeback?
Further, when you look at Walker in the playoffs, remember, that’s in a Klint Kubiak-guided offense with former longtime Broncos assistant Rick Dennison as run-game coordinator. That’s significant, because since leaving the Broncos after the 2016 season, Dennison has been an offensive or run-game coordinator in five different seasons; he had top-10 rushing attacks in four of them.
It’s possible that Dennison and Kubiak extracted peak Walker, and that whoever gives him a massive contract will pay for services already rendered.
Thus, a pursuit of Walker may not align with being “opportunistically aggressive,” as Greg Penner suggested in January.
Furthermore …
THE TRACK RECORD OF SUPER BOWL MVPS WHO MOVED ON IS DUBIOUS
One other trend worth noting is the one regarding Super Bowl MVPs who weren’t retained by their teams in free agency immediately after walking away with the big game’s top individual honor.
It’s happened three times before in the free-agency era: for cornerback Larry Brown following Super Bowl XXX, wide receiver and returner Desmond Howard after Super Bowl XXXI and safety Dexter Jackson in the wake of Super Bowl XXXVII.
None of them played more than two seasons with their subsequent clubs.
Brown signed a 5-year contract to jump from the Dallas Cowboys to the Raiders. He played 12 games in Oakland. A year later, the Raiders tried again with Howard. He played out his two-year contract — and left with two touchdowns.
Finally, there was Jackson, who didn’t even make it through two years of his five-year contract. He started every game in the first year of his deal, then suffered an offseason back injury. The Cardinals cut him six weeks into his second season with them. He quickly returned to Tampa Bay and would end up playing four more seasons, nearly all of them as a starter.
Three Super Bowl MVPs in the free-agency era who cashed in. Three teams who regretted those contracts.
In each case, the signing team bought high. Each of them was coming off of a season in which it missed the playoffs. So, the hypothesis goes, you import some of that championship mettle and hopefully it rubs off on the rest of the locker room.
The Broncos don’t need to pay a premium for that. They’ve made two-straight playoff appearances. They have a collective 32-16 record since their 1-5 start in 2023. Their culture already has the intangible that Walker could bring.
Thus, the case for Walker has to be based on the tangibles. And there’s not enough there to separate him from other running backs on the market such as Allegier or Carolina’s Rico Dowdle, each of whom will likely come in at a fraction of Walker’s price tag.
If Walker ends up sitting on the shelf and becoming a great value, the Broncos could pounce. But that’s unlikely; he should be off the market before contact stops being defined as “legal tampering” and simply becomes “legal.”
And that would lead to a contract that has a decent chance of being more trouble than it’s worth.