Broncos coach Sean Payton recently coached one of the teams of current and former NFL players (with a stray YouTuber or two) against the U.S. men’s national flag football team.
It didn’t go well for the non-flag players.
“Well, that was humbling,” Payton said Tuesday of the experience during the AFC coaches’ breakfast. “You remember the Home Alone series, and Macaulay Culkin was inside [the house]. Macaulay Culkin was the international team, and I felt like [Kyle Shanahan and I] were the two guys outside getting hit in the head with the iron and tripping over the garden hose. It’s an entirely different game.”
Payton was likely Harry, which would mean Shanahan was Marv.
“Listen, it was kind of cool to be around those guys,” Payton said. “That was a big deal. I think when this first was announced, there was this feeling there would be 10 NFL players on [the 2028 U.S. men’s Olympic] roster, and I’ll be surprised if there’s one. I just think we have plenty of players that can acclimate, but it’s going to take a month or two. Then if you’re one of those players, do you have that month or two? If you’re training for that, you’re not training for. . . .”
In the transcript supplied by the Broncos, Payton didn’t finish the thought. But it’s obvious — if you’re training for flag football, you’re not training for tackle football.
That’s the ultimate question. Will tackle football players make the commitment necessary to train for flag football, at the risk of undermining their preparation for the version of the game that pays the bills?
Broncos Clips
Broncos quarterback Bo Nix is ahead of schedule in his rehab from ankle surgery that ended his season, team owner Greg Penner said Monday at the NFL owners meetings.
The Broncos are confident Nix will participate in organized team activities this offseason.
“He’s attacked his recovery like he attacks preparing for games,” Penner said, via Nick Kosmider of TheAthletic.com. “He’s done a terrific job. He’s ahead of schedule. No concerns at all for OTAs and [he will] go forward from there. Really, really pleased with his progress and the support from [vice president of player health] Beau Lowery and everyone.”
Nix fractured his right ankle near the end of the Broncos’ divisional round playoff victory over the Bills. He missed the AFC Championship Game, the first game Nix has missed in his career.
He said in a conference call with reporters after the injury that the “simple fracture” would require only a 4-6 week recovery.
The Broncos added wide receiver Jaylen Waddle in a trade with the Dolphins, delivering another weapon to Nix as he begins his third season.
“I wasn’t with him when he found out, but he was pretty excited when I walked down to the training room,” Broncos General Manager George Paton said of Nix’s reaction to the Waddle news, via Kosmider. “He was excited. He obviously went to dinner with all of us. I think Bo thinks he is a quasi-GM sometimes. Sometimes he is right, and sometimes he is wrong, but I think he’s right on this guy. This guy is pretty special.”
The opening of the Broncos’ new stadium is about five and a half years away.
That’s the word from Broncos owner Greg Penner, who said at today’s league meeting that he’s hoping his team will open its new stadium for the 2031 season.
Penner referred to that as an ambitious timeline, so it’s possible that construction delays could push the opening past 2031.
If the new stadium opens in 2031, that would mean the team’s current stadium, Empower Field at Mile High, lasted exactly 30 seasons. The current stadium opened in 2001. Prior to that, the Broncos had played at Mile High Stadium since their founding in 1960.
The new stadium is expected to have a retractable roof, which Penner says would have been closed under conditions like this year’s AFC Championship Game, which was played in snow.
As the NFL keeps trying to spread internationally, the most popular international sport continues to spread in America.
Via Alex Silverman of Sports Business Journal, more than 63,000 fans packed Mile High Stadium, home of the Broncos, for the first match of the NWSL’s Denver Summit.
The Saturday contest with the Washington Spirit ended in a 0-0 draw.
The attendance set a record for the National Women’s Soccer League. The prior mark was set last year, when Bay FC drew more than 40,000 to Oracle Park in San Francisco.
“It’s a surreal feeling to walk into the stadium to see this crowd, this excitement, the enthusiasm just coming through the parking lot,” Summit FC owner Rob Cohen told Silverman. “Even trying to get to the building today was just eye-opening. I came quite early, and they were out in the parking lots, partying, having a great time, which is what you want to see.”
The Summit will play two home games at Dick’s Sporting Goods Park in Commerce City. It will then move to a temporary venue as it commences construction on a permanent home.
Based on Saturday’s attendance, the Summit shouldn’t have a hard time selling tickets in and around Denver.
The Bills made three additions to their 2026 roster on Thursday.
The team announced it signed center Lloyd Cushenberry III, wide receiver Trent Sherfield Sr. and center/guard Austin Corbett to one-year contracts.
Cushenberry’s last stop was a two-year stint with the Titans, where he started every game he appeared in (23) at center.
He began his career with the Broncos as a third-round draft pick in 2020, and he spent four seasons in Denver. He started 57 games for the Broncos.
Sherfield previously played for Buffalo in 2023.
In his first stint with the Bills, Sherfield made 11 catches for 86 yards and one touchdown.
Sherfield spent the 2025 season with the Broncos and on the practice squads of the Cardinals and Patriots. In 10 games and three starts with the Broncos, he caught three passes for 21 yards.
He started his career with the Cardinals in 2018, signing as an undrafted free agent.
Sherfield has also spent time with the 49ers, Dolphins and Vikings.
Corbett, who visited the Bills on Monday, spent the past four seasons with the Panthers.
He played all 17 games in 2022, his first season in Carolina, but missed 29 of a possible 51 games over the past three seasons.
The Browns made him a second-round pick in 2018, and he played 14 games before Cleveland traded him to the Rams during the 2019 season.
In his career, Corbett has appeared in 94 games with 78 starts.
Running back J.K. Dobbins is set to return to the Broncos offense after missing the final months of last season with a foot injury and that won’t be the only difference when the team’s offense returns to the field.
They’re set to have quarterback Bo Nix back from the ankle injury that kept him out of the AFC Championship Game and they just traded for wide receiver Jaylen Waddle. The rest of the key players from last year’s unit are also set to return and Dobbins offered a prediction of big things ahead during an appearance on NFL Network.
“And then we’ve got another guy that just came in, Jaylen Waddle, you know what I’m saying?” Dobbins said. “Pick your poison because we’ve got Courtland Sutton, we’ve got the young Pat Bryant, we’ve got a great O-line, we’ve got everything. We’ve got an embarrassment of riches on this team of talent. I’m excited. I really am, because, call it what it is, I got hurt, I missed the last, what, seven games in the regular season. I’m fresh. I’m gonna be fresh and I’m gonna be pissed off because I’m tired of the unfortunate stuff. I know that I can do it. It’s gonna happen this year. It’s gonna be great. I ain’t gonna spill too much, I don’t want to spill too many beans, but it’s gonna be great.”
We can’t know how the AFC title game would have gone with Nix and Dobbins available for the Broncos, but we may get a chance to find out this time around and Dobbins likes the Broncos’ chances.
The well-traveled Zach Wilson will be traveling to the NFC for the first time.
Nick Underhill of NewOrleans.football reports that the Saints will sign Wilson to a free-agent deal.
Wilson, the second overall pick in the 2021 draft, started 13 games as a rookie and nine in 2022. Supplanted by Aaron Rodgers in 2023, a Week 1 torn Achilles for Rodgers threw Wilson back into the fray; Wilson ultimately appeared in 12 games that year, with 11 starts.
In 2024, Wilson served as a backup to Bo Nix in Denver, after being traded by the Jets to the Broncos. Wilson didn’t play at all that year.
He signed a free-agent deal with the Dolphins in 2025. He appeared in four games with no starts. After Tua Tagovailoa was benched, rookie Quinn Ewers was elevated to the first string.
Wilson joins Tyler Shough and Spencer Rattler on the depth chart. Shough became the clear starter in 2025, given his performances after he replaced Rattler as the team’s starting quarterback.
The Eagles are signing free agent wide receiver Elijah Moore to a one-year deal, Ian Rapoport of NFL Media reports.
Moore, who turns 26 this week, spent last season with the Bills and Broncos.
He played nine games with two starts in Buffalo, making nine catches for 112 yards, before the team released him Nov. 26. Moore joined the Broncos, who elevated him from the practice squad for the AFC Championship Game, where he caught one pass for 4 yards.
The Jets made him a second-round pick in 2021, and he spent two seasons in New York before two seasons with the Browns.
In his career, Moore has 209 receptions for 2,274 yards and nine touchdowns.
It’s been more than four years since Brian Flores filed his landmark race discrimination lawsuit against the NFL and various teams. The case remains stuck at square one.
The six teams that are the subject of claims made by Flores, Steve Wilks, and Ray Horton — the Dolphins, Giants, Broncos, Texans, Cardinals, and Titans — continue to seek a stay of the proceedings, pending multiple different appeals. This week, the presiding judge declined to stay the litigation.
Currently, the Giants, Broncos, and Texans have a petition for appeal pending before the U.S. Supreme Court on the question of whether the claims made against them require mandatory arbitration. A ruling is expected within the next month or so. (The Supreme Court first has to accept the appeal before resolving the issue.)
The Dolphins, Cardinals, and Titans more recently had their efforts to force arbitration denied. That will inevitably be the subject of another petition for appeal to the Supreme Court, based on the broader conclusion that the NFL’s entire system of arbitration controlled by the NFL has been struck down.
Like most defendants to civil litigation, there’s value in slowing the process down as much as possible. Flores, Wilks, and Horton want to move the case along.
While, like all parties in civil cases, appeal rights can be exercised as to certain issues before the case has ended, there’s a point at which justice delayed becomes justice denied. It has been more than four years. At some point, it’s time to start addressing the merits of the case, and to stop spinning the wheels of the court system on the threshold question of where and how the case is going to be litigated.
As to the notion that the case would have moved faster if the plaintiffs had accepted the league’s arbitration procedures (even if the process is inherently rigged against them), consider this — the league’s designated arbitrator (according to the plaintiffs) did nothing with the claims for more than a year.
A defendant to a civil case can run, but it cannot hide. Unfortunately, the NFL and the six teams that have been sued have managed to run an ultramarathon in the effort to avoid having to answer the specific claims that Flores, Wilks, and Horton have made.
Common sense suggests that, if the NFL and the six teams had any real confidence in its arguments on the merits, they would eventually stand and fight instead.
Broncos offensive lineman Matt Peart remained with the team after agreeing to a pay cut.
Spotrac reports that Peart signed a one-year, $2 million restructured contract that includes $755,000 in guaranteed money. It cuts his salary by $1.5 million and frees up $1.58 million in cap space for the Broncos.
Peart was entering the second year of a two-year deal for $3.075 million base salary and a $425,000 roster bonus.
He is working his way back from a knee injury.
Peart tore his MCL on the third play of an October game against the Jets and played the rest of the game with the injury. It was his only start of the season as he replaced Ben Powers at left guard after Powers went on injured reserve with a biceps injury.
Peart is a valuable backup with 66 game appearances and 10 starts in his six seasons, the past two with the Broncos.
