Broncos' Cost of Top-3 Move-Up Revealed by Two Recent Draft Trades
With the Denver Broncos slated to pick at No. 12 overall in the 2024 NFL draft, there have been several rumblings from the fanbase about the team selecting a quarterback of the future this year. As it currently stands, most pundits believe that at least three quarterbacks could be gone in the top 10 selections, leaving Denver at risk of reaching for the fourth signal-caller in the class, at best.
It’s still early in the process, and a lot of evaluation still needs to play out, but after the top three guys — USC’s Caleb Williams, North Carolina’s Drake Maye, and LSU’s Jayden Daniels — there are several warts with the next three.
Washington’s Michael Penix, Jr. is a sixth-year senior with a lengthy injury history that includes a pair of torn ACLs. Penix and Oregon’s Bo Nix both have age concerns as they'll enter the NFL at 24 years of age, which is old for a rookie quarterback. Michigan’s J.J. McCarthy is incredibly young and raw but has incredible tools that teams are going to fall in love with if they're willing to go through the growing pains for a couple of years.
Over the past few weeks, there's been a loud chorus of Broncos fans who have pounded the table for the team to package as much capital as it can to try to move up to draft one of the top signal-callers. Most of those cries specifically ask for trading with the Chicago Bears, who have the number one overall pick.
If the Broncos want to move up that far, it’s going to take a massive trade package to even come close. When it comes to projecting what the cost of such a trade would be, we have a couple of examples within the last decade that could put us in the ballpark.
Two Eagles Trades in 2016
The Philadelphia Eagles went into the 2016 NFL holding the No. 13 overall selection. The Eagles had just fired head coach Chip Kelly and were desperately looking for a long-term answer at quarterback after Sam Bradford struggled to prove that he was it.
Eagles GM Howie Roseman proved to be aggressive in his pursuit of a top quarterback that offseason, executing a pair of draft month trades to get all the way up to the No. 2 overall pick.
The first trade package sent the No. 13 overall pick, cornerback Byron Maxwell, and linebacker Kiko Alonso to the Miami Dolphins in exchange for the No. 8 overall selection. The second trade, which happened about a week before the start of the draft, saw the Eagles send pick 8, a third-round and fourth-round selection in that same class, a 2017 first-round pick, and a 2018 second-round pick to the Cleveland Browns in exchange for the No. 2 overall pick, selecting North Dakota State's Carson Wentz.
While this seems like a lot of capital, the Eagles actually got away with a major steal in the first trade. Miami was looking to acquire high-dollar contracts at the time to avoid salary cap penalties, and the Eagles took advantage by offering middle-of-the-road players on escalated deals.
Philadelphia also managed to find a partner willing to accept those players, which adds to the complexity of the possibility of the Broncos being able to pull off a similar deal. It’s not that the Broncos don’t have tradeable assets in terms of veteran players on elevated contracts.
Rumors have floated around about Courtland Sutton, Jerry Jeudy, and Justin Simmons potentially being traded for draft capital for several months now. The problem is finding a team with enough salary cap space that is also willing to accept those players in exchange for moving down. There’s also a significant change in terms of draft pick and positional value over the past eight years that they would need to navigate.
So while it would be easy to project a team like the Tennessee Titans — who have the No. 7 overall selection, $68 million in salary cap space, and a significant need in the secondary and at wide receiver — as a potential team to move Jeudy and Simmons to, it remains to be seen what they will demand to move forward with a new coaching staff. The Titans may not value veteran players and could opt to move forward with their ongoing youth movement.
Denver also has a significant lack of draft capital to navigate the second trade-up that got Philadelphia to the No. 2 overall selection. In 2016, Philadelphia had nine draft picks to work with, even after moving up from No. 13 to 8 overall.
The Eagles could afford to part ways with the third- and fourth-round selections that they sent in the second deal and still help replenish the roster moving forward. With only six selections and holes all over the roster, the Broncos simply don't have that luxury this season unless they can get extra picks for those aforementioned players throughout the offseason.
This is a very unlikely scenario to emulate for Denver.
Niners Jump to No. 3 Overall in 2021
In 2021, the San Francisco 49ers made a massive move to trade up in what was one of the most enticing quarterback classes in recent draft history. With five players projected to go in the top 15 picks, the Niners sent the No. 12 overall pick, a third-rounder that same year, and two future first-round selections to the Dolphins in exchange for the No. 3 overall pick.
The Niners would eventually use that selection to draft North Dakota State quarterback Trey Lance. San Francisco had just come off of an incredibly disappointing season that was marred with injuries, and the future was unclear with Jimmy Garoppolo as the starting quarterback.
It was widely reported that head coach Kyle Shanahan blamed Garoppolo for San Fran's loss to the Kansas City Chiefs in Super Bowl LIV. Plus, Garoppolo missed significant time in 2020 due to injury.
With a ready-built roster that had just reached the summit of the NFL a season ago, the Niners mortgaged their draft capital in order to secure their quarterback of the future, even though Lance didn’t pan out for them in hindsight.
The Broncos are nowhere even close to where the Niners were at that point in terms of their overall roster construction, so if they were willing to move up to the top of the draft, it would take a massive chunk out of their already limited draft capital and likely a quality starter on a rookie deal to be able to do so. Such a hefty price could be too much to bear.
That said, the Broncos do have a trade piece that could net them more than the value of a first-round selection in Pro Bowl cornerback Patrick Surtain II.
Hypothetically speaking, Denver could package the No. 12 pick, a future first-round selection, a future second-round selection, and Surtain to get the conversation going with the Bears in exchange for the No. 1 overall pick. But that's the conversation starter.
The Takeaway
There’s little doubt that the Broncos' starting quarterback of the future is not currently on the roster as it stands. Russell Wilson is likely going to be released prior to the start of the new league year in March, and Jarrett Stidham is just a placeholder for now.
The Broncos are going to have to commit to a young player sooner rather than later and roll with the punches for at least a year or two. However, Denver has already decimated its roster talent and depth over the past two seasons by sending premium draft capital to the Seattle Seahawks in the Wilson trade as well as a couple of picks to the New Orleans Saints in exchange for Coach Payton.
The Broncos desperately need to replenish the roster to place a young quarterback in a position to succeed early in his career rather than throw him to the wolves. Denver also has a massive conundrum on its hands in terms of moving up into the top 3, as all three of the Bears, Washington Commanders, and New England Patriots have a need to clarify their situation at the position as well.
Chicago still has Justin Fields developing, but they could want to reset the position with a cost-controlled rookie. Washington is going to try to find an upgrade over Sam Howell, and the Patriots have seemingly given up on the Mac Jones experiment.
We can talk all of the hypotheticals until we are blue in the face, but the simple fact of the matter is this: Denver would be better off either standing pat at No. 12 overall and taking its next favorite quarterback, finding a valuable building block piece, or trading back to acquire more capital to find their guy in 2025.
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