The Denver Broncos snuck up on some people last season to become an overnight sensation.
Evidently, they’re still doing so now.
And one listen to Mina Kimes on her recent podcast was telling, because as she dove into NFL rosters in the wake of the first waves of free agency, what she saw from the Broncos revealed something to her:
The Broncos — a sad sack for several years before emerging from their funk and returning to the postseason last year — are actually in good shape, heading into the draft without massive holes.
It surprised her.
“I was like, ‘Damn,'” she told Sam Monson on her podcast this week.
The Broncos’ roster is….in great shape?
On this week’s pod, @SamMonsonNFL and I looked at all 32 depth charts and agreed: Denver has very few needs.
🎧: https://t.co/4n66Q2pO7U
📺: https://t.co/jRUbooJeXG pic.twitter.com/SKttWNXrzV
— Mina Kimes (@minakimes) March 27, 2025
“There’s probably like, two or three teams where I was like, ‘Whoa, this is actually a really good roster,'” Kimes said. “… I don’t know why, but I didn’t notice how good and how deep they were at multiple positions. And they’re a really good football team.”
They acknowledged the situation at running back, but if you’ve taken in any manner of analysis — whether national or local on Orange and Blue Today — you know about the massive depth of this year’s class. Viable answers to Denver’s ground conundrum likely exist in any of the first four rounds of this draft.
But that’s a different question than the ones of recent years.
In Denver, we got used to a triage approach — having to prioritize needs.
Now, the Broncos have a roster that is ready to play a game today.
And if their running backs remained Tyler Badie, Jaleel McLaughlin, Blake Watson and Audric Estimé, it would be fair to expect this team and this roster to be in the postseason.
As the Broncos’ top brass prepares to settle into the swanky Breakers resort for the annual NFL League Meeting, it’s an appropriate time to reflect on that reality — one that hasn’t existed for the Broncos in nearly a decade.
CONSIDER THE LAND MINES THE BRONCOS AVOIDED TO REACH THIS POINT
First, there was an absence of draft capital from the trades for Russell Wilson and Sean Payton.
Outbound:
2022 first-round pick (OT Charles Cross)
2023 first-round pick (CB Devon Witherspoon)
2023 first-round pick (originally from San Francisco, through Miami in the Bradley Chubb trade, pick eventually made by New Orleans, DT Bryan Bresee)
2022 second-round pick (Edge rusher Boye Mafe)
2023 second-round pick (Edge rusher Derick Hall)
2024 second-round pick (LB Edgerrin Cooper, pick made by Green Bay)
2023 fifth-round pick (LB Tyreke Smith)
Inbound:
2022 fourth-round pick (DL Enyi Uwazurike)
2024 third-round pick (traded to Seattle when Denver moved up in 2023 to pick Riley Moss)
And with draft capital depleted, the only reason George Paton had second-round picks in 2022 and 2023 was because he traded Von Miller to the Los Angeles Rams in 2021 and then in the 2023 draft was able to nudge up five spots. In consecutive years, the Broncos held the final second-round choices.
Paton had to draw inside straights. Of course, he did.
Consider this for a moment: In back-to-back years, Paton used the final second-round selections — No. 64 in 2022 and No. 63 in 2023 — on players who became Pro Bowl selections within their first three seasons, Nik Bonitto and Marvin Mims Jr. In the case of Mims, he became an All-Pro in his second year.
Can you possibly nail the end of the second round any better? Statues have been erected for less than this.
Then, there was the second-highest single-year dead-money figure in league history last offseason — one that did not prevent the Broncos from making the postseason. Despite that, the Broncos’ free-agency class last year was nearly perfect, highlighted by targeted pickups such as Malcolm Roach and Brandon Jones.
Plucking John Franklin-Myers on the third day of the draft when he became a cap casualty with the New York Jets was the cherry on the sundae as the Broncos managed to fix the glitches with limited resources under the cap.
The Broncos had to let center Lloyd Cushenberry walk for a sizable contract in Tennessee, but Luke Wattenberg stepped in and the offensive line had no collective drop-off, leading the league in run-block and pass-block win rate, per ESPN Analytics. Their other offensive-line investments — through the draft in Quinn Meinerz and in free agency with Ben Powers and Mike McGlinchey — all improved from their 2023 form; the inside-out approach allowed Denver to successfully navigate the rookie ebbs and flows of Bo Nix.
Certainly, Payton deserves plenty of credit, but Paton must take a bow, too, because the roster-restoration work began the moment he arrived in 2021 and began diving into a pandemic-altered draft process. Without the benefit of a Combine and robust in-person interviews, his first draft class yielded three foundational players who signed long-term extensions: Meinerz, Jonathon Cooper and Pat Surtain II. Only a horrific knee injury kept Javonte Williams from being among that group.
The three players to sign multi-year extensions from the 2021 class matches the tally from the previous four Broncos draft classes combined.
The Broncos might seem like an overnight sensation.
Truth is, it took four years for them to get here.