Denver Post Broncos writer Parker Gabriel posts his Broncos Mailbag weekly during the season and periodically during the offseason. Click here to submit a question.
This is a two-part question: Should the Broncos pursue Nick Chubb as he is still a free agent and let him start over RJ Harvey or should they let Harvey develop on his own? And do you think the Broncos will make it to the divisional round or maybe even the AFC Championship this year?
— Nathaniel Landis, Albuquerque, N.M.
Hey Nathaniel, thanks for writing in and getting us going this week. The free agent running back question comes up a lot, and it happens to be particularly timely right at the moment, so I’m glad you asked it.
Just one man’s opinion, but right now I don’t see the need to sign Chubb or, say, JK Dobbins. Dobbins, as it happens, is visiting the Broncos Wednesday night and Thursday. So Sean Payton and George Paton may well disagree.
If they do end up signing Dobbins or Chubb, it might have very little to do with the rookie RJ Harvey and instead with Audric Estime and the rest of the group.
For now, though, it makes sense to me to get the young backs all the work they can handle. It’s just OTAs and minicamp, then early training camp, but still.
Remember, Estime missed part of OTAs and all of the minicamp last year with a knee injury, then spent Weeks 2-5 on injured reserve with an ankle injury. That’s quite a bit of development time missed for a guy who was already one of the youngest players in the NFL.
There’s no guaranteeing how long Chubb and Dobbins will remain available, but they’ve made it this far. If I’m the Broncos, I think I’d aim to have the first couple of weeks of training camp be just about trying to get as good a read as possible on what you have in Harvey, Estime and then Jaleel McLaughlin, Tyler Badie and Blake Watson.
Every player in that room has plenty to prove, but the Broncos are really high on Harvey, and Payton last week said pretty flatly that Estime is going to get a lot of opportunities. Let’s not rush to take reps or game snaps away from those guys just because it’s not entirely clear the pecking order is set in stone. There’s plenty of time before the rubber hits the road.
If you get halfway through camp and you don’t think you’ve got enough, then call one of those veteran backs. It doesn’t take long for those guys to get up to speed and be in position to help. Different circumstances in 2022, but the Broncos signed Latavius Murray off New Orleans’ practice squad in early October after Javonte Williams had that devastating knee injury and Murray ended up rushing for a team-high 703 yards.
Chubb and Dobbins, who each have major injury histories of their own, could likely help Denver in their own way this fall.
The question is if the Broncos need it.
And briefly on your second question: Obviously, we’re perusing the Way Too Early aisle here, but the task of pushing into the divisional round or to an AFC title game would be much easier if the Broncos were to win the AFC West and end Kansas City’s near-decade reign. I’ll take the believe-that-when-we-see-it approach to that, though somebody’s going to do it eventually, right? … Right?
Without winning the West, Denver could well be once again making January travel plans for such tropical destinations as Buffalo, Baltimore, Cincinnati or Kansas City. That’s a tough road to navigate, even if the de-icer is working. Let’s enjoy summer first.
Please get out your Ouija board, tarot cards or crystal ball to tell us what the Broncos regular season will be. Whatcha got?
— Ed Helinski, Auburn, N.Y.
Well, Ed, I’m already on the way-too-early record for saying they’ll be a better overall team and finish with the same 10-7 mark as a year ago. And here’s how much stock to put into that: I picked them to go 6-11 last year. Although, to be fair, I got 8-9 spot on in 2023. Pick a dart and throw it, baby.
This is a roster with far fewer holes than the past couple of years. It’s also one that is due for regression on the injury luck front. Doesn’t matter how good you are in that department — and the Broncos clearly believe they are very good — there’s still going to be years where you’re not at the very top of the league in games missed.
It’s a tough but not impossible schedule. I said similar when it was released last month and continue to believe this: We’ll learn quite a bit about this team in that early stretch Weeks 3-5 where they play at the Chargers, home on Monday night against Cincinnati and then at Philadelphia before going to London.
That run, combined with returning from England without a bye week, is no joke.
How good do you think Pat Surtain II can become? He’s the reigning DPOY. Is he a Hall of Famer right now?
— Mark, Arvada
It’s hard to imagine how much better Surtain can even be, right, Mark? If the Broncos star never played another game, however, it seems very unlikely he’d be a Hall of Famer. Just not enough track record.
He certainly looks to be on a Hall of Fame track, however, and that’s a ridiculous thing to be able to say about a guy who just turned 25 this offseason.
Surtain through four professional seasons already has a Defensive Player of the Year to his name and is a two-time first-team All-Pro and three-time Pro Bowler.
Not only that, but 2024 was a preposterous statistical season for the Broncos’ 2021 first-round pick. According to Next Gen Stats, Surtain allowed a total of 306 receiving yards as the nearest defender in 516 coverage snaps, a rate of 0.6 yards allowed per coverage snap (second-lowest among 83 players with 300-plus coverage snaps to Derwin James).
Teams hardly bothered throwing against Surtain. His 10.9% target rate was lowest among that group with 300-plus coverage snaps. He allowed just 35 catches overall, didn’t give up more than 45 yards in any single game and consistently put the clamps on the game’s best receivers. Watch the Week 3 game at Tampa again when you start jonesing for football this summer. He completely erased Mike Evans, a future Hall of Famer. He did similar to DK Metcalf, Garrett Wilson and others.
As odd as it may sound, perhaps Surtain’s stamp on the DPOY came in Week 17 against Cincinnati. Surtain lined up across from Ja’Marr Chase on 43 routes and allowed three catches (six targets) for 27 yards.
Chase only got other Broncos defenders on 13 routes and yet quarterback Joe Burrow found him for six catches (nine targets) for 75 yards.
When Surtain covered the best receiver on the planet, an MVP candidate at quarterback only looked his way 14% of the time. When anybody else had Chase, Burrow went his way 69% of the time.
Surtain also had four picks and a forced fumble, and completely turned around an early-season game against Las Vegas with a 100-yard pick-six.
All of that said, Surtain may not replicate those numbers every year. Cornerback play is volatile analytically and fluky stuff happens.
So even if 2024 goes down as one of Surtain’s best — it’s almost impossible to imagine it won’t be — the Broncos will continue building everything they do defensively around him and he’ll continue facing the best in the league every week.
One side note: Among the many benefits of the NFL making more Next Gen Stats available and the explosion of analytics in football coverage is that it makes it easier to appreciate non-front-seven players like Surtain. This might be a hot take, but I really do believe that if it weren’t for NGS, Surtain wouldn’t have won DPOY last fall. He obviously would have been every bit as deserving, but it’s hard enough to quantify his impact with all of those stats at our disposal and harder still for the casual observer to see his full impact on television without the numbers to help.
Pat Surtain II (2) of the Denver Broncos walks on the field before the first quarter against the Kansas City Chiefs at Empower Field at Mile High on Sunday, Jan. 5, 2025. (Photo by AAron Ontiveroz/The Denver Post)
Pat Surtain II (2) of the Denver Broncos walks on the field before the first quarter against the Kansas City Chiefs at Empower Field at Mile High on Sunday, Jan. 5, 2025. (Photo by AAron Ontiveroz/The Denver Post)
Who’s looking good at OTAs right now?
— Raegan, Golden
It’s June, Raegan, everybody looks good! Not to give a glib answer, it’s just hard to fully tell when there are no pads and no tackling. We’ve talked a lot about Harvey, the rookie running back, and there’s a reason he’s getting so much buzz. My beat partner, Luca Evans, had a good one last week in pointing out that Kris Abrams-Draine looked good when we were out there watching.
He’s a young player who gets overlooked in a group with Surtain, Riley Moss, Jahdae Barron and Ja’Quan McMillian, but he’s got a chance to be really good. We’ll see if the Broncos have Barron and McMillian compete for the nickel job or if those guys get reps in other spots, but I’ll bet Abrams-Draine puts up a good fight against Riley Moss if they’re battling for an outside job.
Even if he doesn’t win that fight, he’ll provide enviable depth on the outside.
Sticking in the secondary, seeing Talanoa Hufanga running around made it easy to look forward to the day he actually gets to hit somebody. Payton sounded like he was looking forward to it, too.
I didn’t watch the receivers super closely last week, but plan to this week. Troy Franklin’s never going to be a big, physically imposing guy, but at a glance I thought he put on a few good pounds this offseason. Payton said he thought there’d be terrific competition between the young receivers, not so much for roster spots, but for playing time and predicted an ascension for Franklin in Year 2. That kind of jump isn’t guaranteed, but if he does make it and you combine it with the other additions Denver made on offense, it’d be very interesting.
How hard is it to get tickets to the London game? I’m going to the UK and I’d love to go see our boys play across the pond.
— Will, Denver
Hey Will, that’s a great question. Tickets for the game haven’t gone on sale yet here in the States. It looks like the Broncos have a way to stay up to date on ticketing information and to have a chance to get them at denverbroncos.com/nfl/london. The Jets are the host team and they’ve got a bunch of travel packages up on their website, but nothing on single-game tickets. It does look like there are secondary market tickets available on Ticketmaster’s UK site, so perhaps that’s worth exploring if you’re itchy to lock up a spot. If you’re going to London anyway, you can always wait until late and see if prices come down — though I’ll say, in 2022 when the Broncos were at Wembley to play Jacksonville, that place was packed.
Overall, it probably won’t be too hard to find available tickets. The price point just might be steep.
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