Denver Broncos

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.

Five years ago, then-Packers quarterback Aaron Rodgers hijacked (perhaps not intentionally) the draft-day news cycle with word that the 49ers nearly traded for him. It prompted speculation throughout round one of the 2021 draft that a trade could happen, with the Broncos emerging as a potential candidate.

It didn’t happen, obviously. Rodgers, the 2020 NFL MVP, won the 2021 NFL MVP award before spending one more year in Green Bay.

Now, with (to date) only the Steelers linked to Rodgers during the 2026 free-agency cycle, Denver has potentially re-entered the chat.

There’s talk of the Broncos possibly bringing Rodgers in for a visit. The motivation comes from the possibility that current starter Bo Nix won’t be fully and completely back to 100 percent when Week 1 rolls around.

This notion conflicts with recent comments from Broncos owner Greg Penner, who declared at the NFL’s annual meeting that Nix is “ahead of schedule” from the broken ankle he suffered late in the playoff win over the Bills and should be good to go for OTAs.

Beyond the basic question of whether Nix will be healthy is whether Nix gives the Broncos the best chance to get to the Super Bowl and win it. Coach Sean Payton, who like any coach who has won a Super Bowl with one team is keenly aware that no coach has won a Super Bowl with two different franchises, may be tempted to roll the dice on a possible one-year upgrade (if Rodgers would truly be an upgrade) in order to finish the work the Broncos started in 2025.

For Payton, the possibility of blazing a new trail for NFL coaches could be the thing that gets him to Canton. If he thinks Rodgers gives them a better chance to win the Super Bowl than Nix, why wouldn’t Payton at least ponder the possibility?

From Rodgers’s perspective, which team gives him a better chance to walk away with a second Lombardi Trophy in his back pocket, the Steelers or the Broncos?

It’s all very early. And it’s not an April Fool’s Day gag. The Broncos could be turning to Rodgers, at a time when the Steelers have assumed the position for the second straight offseason.

If — and for now it’s a big if — Rodgers ends up in Denver, he wouldn’t play the Packers (unless the two teams meet in the Super Bowl, for the first time since the 1997 season). But he would make visits to the Jets, the Steelers, and one more trip to San Francisco, the team he wanted to draft him in 2005 and the team that tried to trade for him in 2021.

At a time when tanking has become a regular talking point for the NBA, the NFL’s approach typically goes like this: See no tanking, hear no tanking, speak no tanking.

Commissioner Roger Goodell was required to break from that habit on Tuesday, when he was asked about tanking at the press conference that capped the league’s annual meeting.

“We obviously keep a keen focus on it, but we don’t see any evidence of that,” Goodell told reporters, via Omar Kelly of the Miami Herald.

He then pivoted to touting the competitive nature of the league, with “players and coaches who want to win, and they’re out there playing their hearts out.”

But the issue isn’t whether the players and (for the most part) coaches want to win. Tanking can happen when owners and executives who make a business decision about the cost of finishing, say, 3-14 instead of 4-13, and the benefit of landing higher in the draft order.

Late in a lost season, a team can legitimately decide to evaluate younger players, or (as the Raiders did in 2025) shut down key players who had been playing with injuries.

Tanking doesn’t happen often in the NFL, in large part because the season is short enough to minimize the number of games during which a bad team is dog paddling through the final legs of a lost season. But it has happened.

The best example of blatant tanking came in 2014, when the Buccaneers removed a large chunk of their starters to start the second half of a Week 17 game against the Saints. At halftime, the Buccaneers led 20-7. The Saints won the game, 23-20.

“Heck, they lost a game on purpose to us at the end of the season prior with [head coach] Lovie Smith,” then-Saints coach Sean Payton said in 2020. “They forced Lovie [Smith] to take his starters out of the game so they could get the one spot to draft Jameis [Winston].”

Payton explained the dynamic during a subsequent visit to PFT Live. The Buccaneers put down the sword to clinch the Jameis pick by removing their best players. The players who were inserted into the game were trying to win. They weren’t good enough to fend off the Saints.

During that same appearance, Payton also mentioned the Eagles’ decision to replace quarterback Jalen Hurts with Nate Sudfeld in a Week 17 loss to Washington, which didn’t give Philadelphia the first overall pick but bumped them higher in the draft order for 2021.

“Nate has been here four years and I felt he deserved an opportunity to get some snaps,” Pederson said after that game.

The value of having a higher pick in the draft is indisputable. In most years, teams sacrifice significant assets to move higher. For the teams that are out of the playoff conversation, the easier — and cheaper — way to move higher is to lose meaningless games.

Still, the first rule of Tank Club is you do not talk about Tank Club. On Tuesday, Goodell had no choice, given the direct question he was asked. In answering the question, however, he flatly denied the existence of Tank Club.

It may not have many members. It may not have annual meetings. But it exists. And, for the most part, the NFL has been able to conceal it.

Why do you think there’s no draft lottery in the NFL? If the NFL had one, it would become yet another money-for-nothing offseason tentpole, with massive ratings for a prime-time game show aimed at fueling hope for failing teams.

But the mere existence of a lottery becomes an acknowledgement of the temptation to tank. As evidenced by Goodell’s response to Tuesday’s question, the league will never do that.

Even if it’s hiding in plain sight.

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 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.