PHOENIX — Broncos general manager George Paton knew it would hurt to part ways with two of his team’s first three 2026 draft picks in order to acquire wide receiver Jaylen Waddle from the Miami Dolphins.
“No one loves picks more than me, so, that’s hard,” Paton said at the NFL Annual Meeting on Monday morning. “And I’ve probably traded too many. God darn it. But I think it’s worked out.”
You have to give up something to get something. And what Paton and the Broncos weren’t willing to give up last season, when he first negotiated with the Miami Dolphins about acquiring Waddle, he was willing to do in the last several weeks, when the deal came to pass.
When the NFL trade deadline hit last November, the Broncos were 7-2 and on a six-game winning streak.
“We know [the draft pick] is 30 now, in late October, we didn’t know where it would be,” Paton said.
“Again, we were healthy at receiver. We were unhealthy towards the end of the season, and so, we liked our group. I mean, we were on a win streak. We were rolling pretty good.”
Then there was Miami’s asking price.
“They were asking a lot at that time,” Paton said. “And then the more you think about it, the more you go through all your different models, like I said, cap and draft picks, who’s available in the draft, free agency, all that, who could really help us, our team.
“It had to be a unique circumstance for us to do this, to make a trade like this, and we just felt this was too unique to pass up.”
BRONCOS AND DOLPHINS DISCUSSIONS KICKED UP AROUND THE COMBINE
Paton detailed the timeline of how the swap came together in negotiations between himself and new Dolphins general manager Jon-Eric Sullivan.
“At the Combine, we hadn’t talked yet, and then when we got back to the combine, I reached out to Jon-Eric, and it kind of started from there and obviously did a lot of work on him — all the coaches did, scouts,” Paton said.
“We’d done a lot of work at the trade deadline. We felt like we knew the player well, we knew the person, even better and so I feel really good about the trade.”
Paton spoke with Waddle’s college roommate, Broncos cornerback Pat Surtain II, about him at the trade deadline, so that part of the scouting was handled; through that, Broncos brass felt good about Waddle’s cultural fit within the team’s locker room.
Then it was a matter of making the deal happen.
The price was steep. Paton now hopes the rewards will be massive.