The Broncos are without a first-round draft pick. They traded the 30th overall choice and their third-rounder in a deal with the Dolphins for veteran wide receiver Jaylen Waddle.
The Broncos made the deal believing Waddle will help them more than two rookies selected in the top 94 would have.
The team’s first pick next week will come at No. 62 overall, and whoever the choice is, the Broncos don’t expect him to contribute much in 2026.
“We like to draft high-trait players and maybe they lack a little polish, and it’s going to take some development,’’ Broncos General Manager George Paton said Thursday, via Mike Klis of 9News. “Sure, we’d like someone to come in and start right away, but that’s not always realistic for first-, second-[round picks], no matter where they’re picked. It’s just hard, and with the way our team is built now it’s going to be hard to come in and start Day 1.”
Cornerback Jahdae Barron, the team’s first-round pick in 2025, played only 30 percent of the defensive snaps in 17 games last season. He spent most of his rookie season watching Ja’Quan McMillian.
The Broncos have done their homework on prospects they expect to be drafted between No. 45 and 75 overall. They then narrowed the list again.
“There’s six players we’re kind of focused on that could be there at 62,’’ Paton said. “We feel good about those players. We’re going to keep working through them.”
Paton said the Broncos could move up in the second round, but they are “unlikely” to trade back into the first round.
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The NFL has announced the names of the current and former players that will take part in next week’s draft by announcing second-round picks.
The list includes players associated with all 32 teams, including Cardinals running back James Conner. Conner has strong ties to the Pittsburgh area after playing for the Steelers and attending Pitt, which likely made him an easy choice as the Cardinals’ representative.
Former Bears tackle Jimbo Covert, former Cowboys running back Tony Dorsett, former Chiefs defensive lineman Bill Maas, current Vikings tackle Brian O’Neill, former Jets running back Curtis Martin, and former 49ers punter Andy Lee are other Pitt alums who are set to take part.
The hometown team will be represented by four players. Former Steelers Jerome Bettis and John Stallworth will be joined by Joey Porter Sr. and Jr. next Friday.
The other players taking part and their team affiliations appear below:
Falcons: Michael Turner
Ravens: Mark Ingram
Bills: Shane Conlan
Panthers: Jake Delhomme
Bengals: Ken Anderson
Browns: Phil Dawson
Cowboys: Drew Pearson
Broncos: T.J. Ward
Lions: Calvin Johnson
Packers: John Kuhn
Texans: Billy Miller
Colts: Pat McAfee
Jaguars: Paul Posluszny
Raiders: Matt Millen
Chargers: Shawne Merriman
Rams: Tavon Austin
Dolphins: Dwight Stephenson
Patriots: Deion Branch
Saints: Marques Colston
Giants: Osi Umenyiora
Eagles: Brian Westbrook
Seahawks: Cliff Avril
Buccaneers: Ronde Barber
Titans: Jeffery Simmons
Commanders: Mark Rypien
Former Vanderbilt tight end Eli Stowers is meeting with the Broncos before the window for pre-draft visits closes this week.
Ian Rapoport of NFL Media reports that Stowers is visiting Denver on Tuesday. Stowers also visited with the Rams, Titans and Cowboys recently.
Stowers is a converted quarterback who made stops at Texas A&M and New Mexico — where he was beaten out at quarterback by future Vandy teammate Diego Pavia — before heading to Nashville. He won the Mackey Award in 2025 after posting 62 catches for 769 yards and four touchdowns.
Stowers has acknowledged the need to continue improving as a blocker given his late shift to his current position, but his receiving prowess and upside have many projecting him to get selected in the first couple of days of the draft next week.
Eight years after his only regular-season NFL game, quarterback Chad Kelly is still hoping for another shot.
“That’s always the goal,” Kelly told Chris Tomasson of the Denver Gazette. “It’s always a goal of quarterbacks, whatever league you’re in, is to get to the top of the top. . . . My talent speaks for itself.”
After spending 2017 and part of 2018 with the Broncos, Kelly had two seasons with the Colts. Out of football in 2021, he landed in the CFL the following year.
And it went well. Kelly, the nephew of Hall of Famer Jim Kelly, led the Toronto Argonauts to a Grey Cup win as a backup. The next year, Chad Kelly was named the CFL’s Most Outstanding Player.
Things got complicated, to say the least, in 2024. He was suspended for the first nine games of the 2024 season due to actions against a female strength coach. After he returned, a broken leg ended his season and kept him from playing in 2025.
He’s now back, and the Argonauts head to training camp on May 2.
Kelly’s off-field incidents made him a seventh-round pick in 2017. He was released the day after entering a random home, sat on the couch next to a woman holding a small child, and was chased away by a man wielding a vacuum-cleaner tube. He eventually pleaded guilty to misdemeanor second-degree trespassing.
“I sought help right after,’’ Kelly told Tomasson. “There was counseling. There was mental health stuff. . . . I self-reflected and knew what I can and can’t do and the same with drinking. I definitely would do a lot of drinking and that’s not good. You’re a quarterback. You got to represent the team and everybody in the right light.”
Still only 32, Kelly has performed well in Canada. He’ll need to play extremely well to earn a second chance in the NFL, and he’ll need to continue to show that the off-field issues are a thing of the past.
In two different rulings issued less than 15 months apart, the internal grievance system created by the NFL and the NFL Players Association found that, essentially, the NFL invited its teams to collude on the issue of fully-guaranteed contracts but the teams did not accept.
The first part is stunning, and in many ways unprecedented as it relates to the NFL. In response to the Deshaun Watson contract (five years, $230 million, fully guaranteed), the league sounded the alarm at the 2022 annual meeting.
From the notes of the presentation made to the teams in March 2022: "[I]f guarantees continue to grow in both amount and number of players, then there’s a risk that they become the norm in contracts regardless of player quality . . . That not only has the potential to hinder roster management but set a market standard that will be difficult to walk back. Of course, all Clubs must make their own decisions. But continuing these trends can handcuff a Club long into the future.”
The teams, per both the arbitrator and the three-person appeal panel, ignored this invitation/advice.
The appeals panel recognized that the teams will never admit to collusion, and that circumstantial evidence is “the coin of the[] realm” when it comes to proving it. The panel, however, found insufficient circumstantial evidence to prove that collusion occurred.
The panel dismissed expert testimony regarding the decrease in signing bonuses and guaranteed salary after the league invited the teams to collude. The panel rejected the basic, commonsensical idea that, if the league invited them to restrict guaranteed contracts and if guaranteed contracts were thereafter restricted, the teams must have followed the league’s advice.
It’s a myopic assessment of the real world that borders on the obtuse. The 32 teams operate as a league. They enjoy an antitrust exemption as to the player workforce through a multi-employer bargaining unit. The Collective Bargaining Agreement allows the teams to give players guaranteed contracts. The mere fact that the league would even broach the subject of the teams choosing to not do something the CBA allows them to do is, as the panel found, “improper.”
What other proof is needed to show that the league and the teams colluded?
Beyond that, the appeals panel acknowledged that the text-message exchange between Chargers owner Dean Spanos and Cardinals owner Michael Bidwill after the Cardinals managed to avoid giving quarterback Kyler Murray a fully-guaranteed contract was “inappropriate.” The panel somehow found that Spanos thanking Bidwill for “staying strong” when it comes to not giving Murray a fully-guaranteed contract was not proof of collusion but of an “isolated incident.”
Some would call that “isolated incident” a “smoking gun.”
The appeals ruling ignores the evidence of internal communications within the Broncos organization regarding their negotiations with quarterback Russell Wilson. From the original arbitration ruling, owner Greg Penner told other members of the team’s ownership group that “there’s not[h]ing in here that other owners will consider off market (e.g. like the Watson guarantees).” Later, Penner told his partners that G.M. George Paton “feels very good about it for us as a franchise and the benchmark it sets (versus Watson) for the rest of the league.”
Why would or should the Broncos care what other owners think? The mere fact that the concern was on the radar screen shows that the Broncos were worried about running afoul of the wink-nod understanding that teams would hold the rope on the issue of fully-guaranteed contracts after the Watson deal.
Although the panel did indeed find that the league invited teams to collude, what choice did it have? The NFL didn’t just say the quiet part out loud. It put it in writing! Anyone who understands how the NFL works knows what the message was, and how it was received. The Spanos-Bidwill texts confirm it, as do the internal Broncos communications.
And while the Ravens, per the panel, did indeed offer quarterback Lamar Jackson a pair of three-year fully-guaranteed contracts, he didn’t accept them. He wanted a five-year, fully-guaranteed deal, like the one Watson had gotten. The Ravens, to paraphrase Spanos, “stayed strong.”
Did the NFL invite the teams to collude? Yes. Did the teams thereafter accept the invitation? Hell yes.
The NFL suggesting that the teams refrain from doing something that the CBA allows them to do should have been enough. The Spanos-Bidwill texts should have been enough. The Broncos’ internal communications should have been enough.
Now that the league has dodged the collusion bullet, the NFL and its teams will learn from the experience. They’ll never put anything in writing that ever could be characterized as proof of collusion. And it will become even harder — if not impossible — for the NFLPA to prove collusion when it happens.
Even if it will happen. Because the facts of the failed grievance show, in our view, that it absolutely did.
Seven years after the ship sailed on Paxton Lynch’s NFL career, he’s still dog paddling after it.
Most recently, Lynch was playing for the Colorado Spartans of the National Arena League. He suffered a torn ACL in his third game.
“I was pissed off,” Lynch told Luca Evans of the Denver Post. “And it sucks. I didn’t want it to be like this.”
The sentiment undoubtedly applies to his entire professional career. A first-round pick of the Broncos in 2016, Lynch washed out of Denver just before the start of his third season. Lynch started four total games in two seasons, with 792 passing yards and a passer rating of 76.7.
He didn’t play for anyone in 2018 before getting a shot to make the Seahawks in 2019. He eventually landed in Pittsburgh after Ben Roethlisberger suffered a season-ending elbow injury against Seattle in Week 2.
The Steelers waived Lynch before the start of the 2020 regular season. He then spent a season in the CFL before playing for three teams in two years with multiple spring leagues.
In both 2024 and 2025, Lynch didn’t play. The Spartans were his return to football.
“I was like, ‘OK, if I play this year in arena football,’” Lynch said, “‘I’m going to play as Paxton Lynch. I’m going to have full confidence in myself. I don’t really care.’ And that’s what I did. . . . It felt good to do that again.”
He lost that authenticity in 2018, when the Broncos signed Case Keenum to be the starter and doubt derailed Lynch’s time in Denver.
“I always knew who I was off the field,” Lynch told Evans. “But when it became Paxton Lynch the football player, and all these people had these different opinions about me — that’s when it was hard for me. . . . I was like . . . ‘You believe that you’re good. But you’re not playing good. And then all these people are saying you’re not good. So it’s like, ‘Are these people seeing something I’m not seeing?’ It was the constant battle in that.”
Whether a brief stint of feeling like himself again is the final chapter or just another page in a longer book remains to be seen. Regardless, he had talent. He wasn’t a fluke first-round pick. He was widely regarded as the No. 3 prospect in the 2016 draft, behind Jared Goff and Carson Wentz.
And if the Broncos hadn’t traded up to get Lynch at the bottom of round one, the Cowboys would have. Which would have likely short-circuited Dak Prescott’s time in Dallas before it even began. Prescott was a fourth-round pick that same year.
Broncos owners Carrie Walton Penner and Greg Penner are expanding their footprint in Denver sports.
The Penner Sports Group, the family entity of the Penners, has become the largest minority owner of MLB’s Colorado Rockies, the team announced on Friday.
Rockies majority owners, Dick Monfort and Charlie Monfort, will continue to run the team with Walker Monfort leading day-to-day operations as team president.
“We are excited to expand our commitment to the Denver sports community through a minority partnership with the Colorado Rockies,” the Penners said in a statement, via Thomas Harding of MLB.com. “This investment from Penner Sports Group reflects our deep appreciation for what the Rockies mean to this region, the passion of their fans and our confidence in the future of the franchise.
“Our family’s had such a positive experience with the Broncos, reinforcing our interest in partnering with another team in this dynamic sports market. We’ve enjoyed getting to know the Monforts and are grateful to join Dick and Charlie in the Rockies’ ownership group along with the other partners.
“While our focus remains firmly on the Broncos, we look forward to being supportive, long-term partners of the Rockies and Major League Baseball.”
The Penners officially bought the Broncos in Aug. 2022.
Having won the CFP National Championship with Indiana in January, running back Kaelon Black has a busy pre-draft schedule.
Black has several teams on his list for pre-draft, top 30 visits, including the Jets, Broncos, Panthers, Colts, Texans, Dolphins, Packers, Vikings, Patriots, and Raiders, a source with knowledge of the situation tells PFT.
He may also meet with the Bengals.
Black played under head coach Curt Cignetti at James Madison for two years before transferring to follow Cignetti to Indiana in 2024.
He rushed for 251 yards for Indiana in 2024 before becoming one of the Hoosiers’ two 1,000-yard backs in 2025, finishing the season with 1,040 yards and 10 touchdowns. He also caught four passes for 36 yards.
Offseason programs will start getting underway around the NFL next week.
The ten teams that hired new coaches this offseason will be eligible to start working with their players on Monday, April 6. The Ravens are the only team that has set that as their first day of work while the Cardinals, Falcons, Bills, Browns, Raiders, Dolphins, Giants, Steelers and Titans have set Tuesday as their opening day.
All of those teams will also be able to hold a voluntary minicamp later in the spring. Every team is also scheduled to hold a rookie minicamp and a mandatory minicamp over the course of the next few months.
The first two weeks of work for all teams is limited to meetings, strength and conditioning, and physical rehabilitation only. The three-week second phase allows for on-field work, but no full-speed team drills while the third OTA phase allows for team drills, but there is no live contact allowed at any point in the offseason.
Most of the 22 teams with returning coaches will be opening their offseason programs on April 20 or 21. The Broncos have set May 4 as their first day.
Linebacker Dre Greenlaw’s move to Denver last year did not work out as planned.
Greenlaw signed a three-year deal with the Broncos, but missed the first six games of the season with a quad injury and then was suspended for the eighth because of an altercation with referee Brad Allen. Greenlaw dealt with a hamstring injury near the end of the year and was released in March after playing 10 total games with the AFC West club.
During an appearance on The Set podcast with former NFL player Terron Armstead, Greenlaw shared why he believes things didn’t work out with the Broncos.
“Going from a 4-3 to a 3-4 was a huge difference, especially not being able to practice in the defense,” Greenlaw said. “It’s just kinda like, for me, the fact that I’m not healthy, I don’t feel that twitch or that gear that I felt like I need to have, but, obviously, I’m out here trying to do everything I can to be on the field. It makes it tough when you pay a guy $11 mil and he’s only on the field 50 percent of the time. It made it tough for me. It made it to the point where it kind of makes you not happy. Now I’ve got to slowly come in and take reps from somebody else — the linebackers were playing really, really good at the time, so now I’ve gotta come in I’m taking reps from this guy. And now it’s like, OK, we’re splitting reps, how are we going to do it? One week it’s this, one week it’s that, and it’s like, I’ve never been in that position before for one and, for two, yeah, I just wasn’t happy. That’s really what it boiled down to at the end of the day.”
Greenlaw said he was thankful for the opportunity to play for Sean Payton in Denver and for the way he was accepted by the organization, but added that “everything works out for a reason” and that he’s excited to be back with the 49ers after signing a one-year deal with his first team in the wake of his release.
