Examining Whether the Broncos Need to Blow it All Up & Rebuild

This year featured another offseason in which the Denver Broncos made headlines. From the hiring of Sean Payton (and the picks sent to the New Orleans Saints to make it happen) to the multiple free agents the Broncos added (with a significant amount of money put up), there was no shortage of moves that created a lot of buzz.

And, once again, here we are, with a lot of uncertainty surrounding the Broncos. As with 2022, the expectations built from the offseason are yet to come to fruition. And there's already a lot of fingers being pointed at the culprits.

But it may be time for Broncos fans to accept a particular reality that we may have been in denial about for too long: this team is past due for a full rebuild.

It can be argued that the Broncos were in a rebuild of sorts for a while, but that was more of a "soft rebuild" in which the team slowly parted ways with players from the Super Bowl 50 championship roster and brought new blood in. But it wasn't a "full rebuild," where a team parts ways with a lot of players at once, then builds through the draft, including taking a quarterback early, then going from there the next season if it looks like that pick will work out.

The Broncos, however, have been sort of half-in/half-out when it comes to a full rebuild. Some of their moves hinted that a rebuild was coming, while others suggested the team believed it was still just a few players away from a playoff spot.

It started back in 2017 when Vance Joseph became the new head coach, but it has continued since, even amid all the coaching and general manager changes.

Today, I'm looking back into the past to see if we can figure out what the Broncos seemed to be thinking and what went wrong along the way to deduce if a full rebuild is necessary to stanch the bleeding once and for all.

2017

There's plenty of reason to blame Joseph for his two years as head coach. However, not all of the Broncos' issues could be laid at his feet. Much of it was on the shoulders of John Elway.

Case in point: Elway was reported to have interest in Tony Romo, but when no trade with the Dallas Cowboys materialized, and Romo decided to retire, Elway seemed to think he needed to continue the Paxton Lynch experiment, but hey, he had a fallback option in Trevor Siemian.

However, time has told us that Siemian was a Gary Kubiak pet project who was never the same after Kubiak relinquished his job as Broncos head coach. Also, time has told us that Lynch was wasting away second chances, and the Broncos couldn't keep hoping he'd figure it out.

Also, in 2017 and the years prior, Elway's drafting acumen wasn't great. In 2015, Shane Ray, Ty Sambrailo, and Jeff Heuerman all failed to make a difference, and Sambrailo was eventually traded.

In 2016, only Justin Simmons proved his worth among the early draft picks. And the 2017 draft class gave the Broncos one starter in Garett Bolles but not much else in the first three rounds.

Poor drafting had already been a problem prior to Joseph's arrival. The fact that Joseph was in over his head as the head coach didn't help matters, but Elway didn't have a good plan in place to help any head coach, whether Joseph or somebody else.

And let's not forget how the Broncos signed right tackle Menelik Watson to starter money for three seasons based on a small sample size of starts. Watson was one of several mistakes Elway made in his search for a right tackle.

2018

The approach now seemed to be that Elway would allow the head coach (Joseph in this case) more input. The Broncos' major free agency move was signing quarterback Case Keenum, and their most notable trade was for right tackle Jared Veldheer.

However, with Joseph under notice that he was expected to win in 2018, it may have caused him hesitancy when it came to drafting a quarterback. Most Broncos fans point to Josh Allen, who has had a productive NFL career, as a QB the Broncos should have taken.

However, Allen was the type of quarterback who needed time to develop and, thus, needed consistency with his coaching staff. He got that with the Buffalo Bills, who mostly kept the same staff on board during his first three years in the NFL.

With the Broncos, there was no guarantee he would get that. That may have dissuaded Joseph from wanting to take a chance on somebody like Allen and thus go with a safer bet like Bradley Chubb.

So if we want to believe that's the case, given what went down in 2018, it was probably time to accept that a rebuild was in order for next year. But when you consider Joseph's teams lost a few games by one score, some might have believed all you had to do was fix the coaching.

And that takes us to the next year.

2019

Vic Fangio was brought on board to bring discipline back to the locker room. However, his arrival also ushered in the idea that the Broncos needed to get his type of players on board.

Thus, the wisdom was that the Broncos should trade a draft pick for Joe Flacco rather than just ride it out with Keenum for the year while perhaps drafting a QB to see if he might work out. Drafting Drew Lock wasn't a bad idea, but trading resources to acquire Fangio's guy to be the veteran for the rookie to sit behind and learn for a while was.

In the meantime, free agency didn't work out for the most part, particularly the signing of right tackle Ja'Wuan James — a signing that appears to be the case of Elway falling in love with a player and wanting him at all costs. Bryce Callahan seemed like a good idea at the time, but he missed too many games.

As for the season itself, this might have been the year to actually realize a rebuild was in order, but then the Broncos went 7-9, including a 4-1 finish in the five games that Lock started down the stretch. There happened to be a QB in the 2020 draft class who Elway reportedly loved, but it seems that overall record and how the season finished led him to believe that, this time, the Broncos were just a few players away from the playoffs.

2020

If one were to look at a QB draft class that is the best in recent years, the 2020 class may be it. Joe Burrow has been to the Super Bowl, Jalen Hurts has done the same, and Tua Tagovailoa appears to have hit his stride. And then there's the guy that Elway supposedly loved: Justin Herbert.

Go back to the Bills, who had a winning record in 2017 but still followed the notion that they were rebuilding, targeted their guy (Allen), and made multiple moves up the board to get him. It might have been difficult for the Broncos to pull it off, but imagine if Elway found a way to move up to No. 3 overall and select Herbert, despite Lock's presence on the roster.

Instead, the Broncos stood pat, Herbert went to the Los Angeles Chargers, and Elway attempted to build around Lock. Thus far, among the Broncos' early picks in 2020, neither KJ Hamler nor McTelvin Agim panned out, Lloyd Cushenberry III doesn't appear to be part of the team's long-term plans at center, and who knows whether Jerry Jeudy will be.

Meanwhile, despite the Chargers' early struggles, there's no question Herbert is the guy they can build around. And the Broncos got a 5-11 season that exposed their shortcomings.

Elway's role as GM was now being questioned more than ever, and that led to the next decision — yet another time when it may have been time to do that full rebuild.

2021

To be fair to current general manager George Paton, some circumstances in 2021 were out of his control. A case in point was that 2020 had no in-person attendance from fans because of the COVID pandemic and, thus, there were no ticket sales to add to team revenues.

For the record, the lack of ticket sales didn't prevent teams from paying players because money also comes from other areas (notably TV contracts) to go into the pool of money divided among teams for player salaries. Coaching salaries, though, are another issue — those salaries are not paid through revenue sharing, meaning teams are on their own to cover those costs.

Because the Broncos had no ticket sales revenue for 2020, they were likely not in a position to pay one head coach to sit at home upon firing while paying a new head coach to take over. Thus, after being hired to replace Elway as GM, Paton rode it out with Fangio for 2021, with Fangio on notice that he had to win.

As a result, there may have been reluctance by the Broncos to draft a quarterback who needed a consistent regime to develop, and so Paton focused elsewhere in the draft. To his credit, Patrick Surtain II, Javonte Williams, and Quinn Meinerz have all done good things.

However, Paton was focused on getting Fangio the players he wanted because the head coach needed to win, which pulled the GM away from thinking about a rebuild. That led to Patyon giving Ronald Darby a multi-year deal when he was injury-prone, while quarterback Teddy Bridgewater was acquired in a trade.

Moves such as re-signing Shelby Harris and Justin Simmons to long-term deals were popular among Broncos fans, but those decisions, along with others, didn't translate to a playoff trip. The Broncos were a little better in 2021 than in 2020, but not any further along than they were in 2019.

Fangio was fired, and now comes a pivotal season for all the wrong reasons.

2022

Paton made his first major mistake of his GM tenure with what appears to have been a panic move. While conducting the second interviews, the Jacksonville Jaguars were reportedly interested in Nathaniel Hackett for their head-coaching vacancy. At that point, many had assumed that Byron Leftwich was destined to get the Jaguars' job.

The result was Paton moving right into the hiring of Hackett without giving second interviews to Dan Quinn and Kevin O'Connell. And then came the next problem: Paton believed that the Broncos had the talent in place and all they needed was the quarterback. That led to the trade for Russell Wilson.

It was a trade that triggered much rejoicing at the time but has since led to a lot of questions. Some of this is likely fueled by the big extension Wilson got after the purchase of the Broncos by the Walton/Penner group was consummated.

Regardless of who did or didn't push for the Wilson extension, we all know what happened in 2022. Hackett proved to be in over his head more than Joseph ever was. Wilson, meanwhile, had his worst season as a pro.

It also didn't help that the Broncos free agent class of 2022 has been a huge disappointment. The Broncos overpaid for DJ Jones, they didn't get much out of Randy Gregory in 2022, and the likes of Billy Turner and Tom Compton failed to stabilize the offensive line.

The Wilson trade with Seattle left the Broncos without much draft capital, though they got some back in the deal that sent Bradley Chubb to the Miami Dolphins. But now we move forward to the next season.

2023

It's not clear what was going on with the search for the new head coach, but it does appear that Jim Harbaugh was Penner's top choice. However, Harbaugh opted to stay at the University of Michigan.

Dan Quinn interviewed again but didn't seem to be interested in playing second choice again and pulled out. The Broncos pursued DeMeco Ryans but he preferred the Houston Texans job. That left the Broncos with what seemed like no choice but to send draft capital to the Saints to acquire the rights to Sean Payton.

Because of the commitment to Wilson and the lack of draft capital, the Broncos were pushed into a position in which they had to go big in free agency. And that they did, with the likes of Mike McGlinchey, Ben Powers and Zach Allen among the big ticket signings.

Thus far, the results have been discouraging. It's easy to pick on Joseph and his defensive play calling, but the Broncos don't have a true No. 1 pass rusher.

Gregory, for example, is a No. 2 at best and might have looked better than he was in 2021 when he played alongside Micah Parsons and DeMarcus Lawrence. Allen seems to be on board more because of his familiarity with Joseph, but he hasn't been a difference maker thus far.

To add to the defensive woes, Damarri Mathis is failing to get it done as the No. 2 cornerback and injuries are leaving the Broncos thin at the safety position.

Meanwhile, the offensive line is still sorting things out and McGlinchey, who missed the bulk of the preseason, is struggling. Wilson has been better than he was in 2022 but his solid first-half performances haven't translated to the second.

What started with room for optimism is turning into another case of "here we go again." There's a very real chance the Broncos are 2-6 at best going into the bye week, meaning they might actually finish with a worse overall record than 2022.

Bottom Line

Again, I understand the desire to blame certain people fans don't like or want, but they also have to ask themselves this: Do we really want to go through another season in which the Broncos tease us that they are "just a few players away, we just need to fix this and change that," only to lead to even more disappointment in future seasons?

The reality is if Broncos fans want to see a true turnaround, they can't just accept repeated 7-10 seasons that tell them they need to fix this or that, fire this guy or that guy, or go sign this big-ticket free agent. They really need to ask themselves if it's time for a full rebuild.

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All I will say at this point is we will know more once the Broncos reach their bye in Week 9. At that point, we may have a better idea about who these Broncos really are and what really needs to happen for the long term.

If the Broncos are 5-3 at the bye and show improvement in multiple areas, the optimism for a playoff trip will be warranted. But if the Broncos are a 2-6 team at the bye, then it'll be time to accept that it's time for a full rebuild.

I'll check back with everyone on this subject during the bye week. Until then, we can only give the Broncos a chance to get things going in the right direction. But given the track record the past few seasons, my optimism for 2023, much like yours, is starting to wane.

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