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Denver Broncos 2024 NFL Season Preview and Picks

Photo of Scott Kacsmar Scott Kacsmar29/08/2024 - 08:31 am
(Photo by Dustin Bradford/Getty Images)

The Denver Broncos were supposed to be our great case study in the value of coaching last season when they upgraded from the dreadful Nathaniel Hackett to a career winner in Sean Payton. He was going to fix Russell Wilson, end the losing streak against the Chiefs, and the playoff drought had a chance to finally end as well.

Well, Payton got Denver a win over the Chiefs, but at what cost? The Broncos limped to 8-9, missed the playoffs for the eighth season in a row, and they took on a record $85 million in dead cap money over the next two seasons to get rid of Wilson.

It was a messy breakup, but the Broncos are back at it in 2024 with a rookie quarterback in Bo Nix. Expectations are among the lowest in the NFL as the sportsbooks are only setting the preseason line to 5.5 wins for the Broncos.  

Payton has never finished worse than 7-9 in his 16 seasons as a head coach. With more veterans than Wilson gone from Denver, this feels like a rebuilding year and certainly not a team fighting for a playoff spot.

Can Denver surprise some people and win over 5.5 games? Let’s examine. We look at the end of the disappointing Wilson tenure, the key offseason changes, Payton’s opportunity with Nix, and the best Broncos bets for 2024.

2023 Season Recap: A Montage of Mediocrity

The 2023 Broncos are a hard team to define:

  • Were they an improved offensive team held back by a historically-bad defense? Yes (Weeks 1-4).
  • Were they a struggling offense that was carried to a 5-game winning streak by an unbelievable run of turnovers that created great field position? Yes (Weeks 5-12).
  • Were they a dismal offense and a defense that was only worth a damn if they were playing the Chargers while Justin Herbert was injured? Yes (Weeks 13-18).

It was like watching three seasons in one and none of them were particularly enjoyable. Even when Denver was winning and in the wild card hunt at 6-5, you couldn’t realistically think that was sustainable.

Sure, it beat the first month of the season when the Broncos went down to Miami and allowed 70 points and 726 yards of offense, one of the greatest offensive (or worst defensive) performances in league history.

Denver even allowed Justin Fields to throw a perfect half against them before forcing him into some turnovers in the fourth quarter for the team’s first win of the season. But losing 31-21 at home to the Jets with Zach Wilson and offensive coordinator Nathaniel Hackett was another low point of the season for Payton’s Broncos.

As we said, even the 5-game winning streak was fool’s gold:

  • The Broncos caught the Packers at the right time in a 19-17 comeback win before Jordan Love caught fire.
  • The Broncos played the Chiefs on a day where Patrick Mahomes had the flu, the Chiefs were a mess with 5 giveaways, and Denver finally ended its 16-game losing streak to Kansas City.
  • Buffalo coughed the ball up 4 times against Denver, and the Broncos missed a game-winning field goal that was negated by a penalty, allowing for a re-kick and 24-22 win.
  • Denver survived Joshua Dobbs and Minnesota in a 21-20 comeback win.
  • Cleveland’s backup quarterbacks – before they started Joe Flacco – had 3 turnovers in a 29-12 win for Denver.

The 2023 Broncos had a 4-game winning streak without surpassing 300 yards of offense in any game, tying the record (regular season only) for the longest such streak in the NFL since 1970.

It wasn’t sustainable, and sure enough, the team only swept the Chargers the rest of the year, and that was largely thanks to Justin Herbert suffering a season-ending injury in the first matchup.

Rumor has it that Payton and the Broncos approached Wilson at the end of October during the bye week after the 24-9 win over Kansas City about altering his contract’s injury guarantee. They threatened benching him if he didn’t do it.

In the end, Wilson was benched for the final two games for Jarrett Stidham, drawing an end to the disappointing Wilson tenure in Denver the last two years. By the way, Stidham had a 31.1 QBR last year that would have flirted with the worst mark in the league. Wilson’s was at least 50.7, which ranked 21st.

But the experiment of Payton fixing Wilson was not a success. His numbers were better on the surface compared to 2022, but a lot of it was the short fields from the turnovers that boosted his touchdown rate. He also had a few clutch moments as he led a fourth-quarter comeback win in half of Denver’s wins.

But Wilson averaged a career-low 6.9 yards per pass attempt, and his 204.7 passing yards per game was his lowest average since his rookie season. Basically, Payton treated him more like Taysom Hill than trying to run the Drew Brees style of offense in Denver.

It wasn’t a good fit and now it’s over and done with.

Denver Broncos Offseason Review

Payton did not change his coordinators as he still has Joe Lombardi (offense) and Vance Joseph (defense) working for him. The team’s rookie quarterback will have to deal with a fairly similar cast to what Wilson had last year, and the defense is not returning one of its best players in the secondary.

It’s not a lot of big changes for a team that statistically overachieved last year to finish 8-9, which still was an underachievement with a preseason line of 8.5 wins.

The Musical Chairs at Wide Receiver

After four years, the Broncos had seen enough underachieving from wide receiver Jerry Jeudy and traded the 2020 first-round pick to Cleveland. Courtland Sutton remains as the team’s No. 1 receiver.

Who will replace Jeudy? The Broncos signed Josh Reynolds, who was best known in 2023 for dropping a couple of crucial passes that cost the Lions dearly in the NFC Championship Game in San Francisco. He’s always been a low-end No. 2 at best, so don’t view it as an upgrade at all to Jeudy.

It would have been nice to see Tim Patrick make his return after tearing his ACL in 2021 and tearing his Achilles in 2022. That’s a rough double whammy, but the team released him this week.

Not all is lost though as the Broncos need to get more out of Marvin Mims, who is going into his second season. He made the Pro Bowl as a rookie on the strength of a 99-yard kickoff return touchdown, but he can be a deep threat too. He only caught 22 balls last year but they went for 377 yards and he averaged 11.4 yards per target. Would love to see more from him as he can fit that deep threat role a la Devery Henderson in the Payton offense.

While he was quiet in the preseason, it is worth noting the Broncos used a high fourth-round pick on Oregon receiver Troy Franklin, who played with Bo Nix in college. Don’t expect Joe Burrow to Ja’Marr Chase here, but their chemistry could be beneficial to the offense.

Mims and Franklin may be the future for Denver at receiver, but it’d be nice to see contributions from them this year. It’s not like Denver changed much else on offense with the same backfield (Javonte Williams and Jaleel McLaughlin), same tight ends (Adam Trautman and a healthier Greg Dulcich), and a very similar offensive line that replaced center Lloyd Quesenberry with an inexperienced Luke Wattenberg (one start since 2022).

Random Denver Defense

When Payton was in New Orleans, a valid criticism was that his defenses were largely terrible and wasted a lot of prime years from Drew Brees and the offense. It sure looked like that was following him to Denver when the Broncos gave up 70 points in Miami last year, and that was after blowing fourth-quarter leads to Jimmy Garoppolo and Sam Howell in Weeks 1-2.

While the Broncos eventually improved on defense, you just can’t rely on getting so many turnovers every week. The Broncos had 15 takeaways in a 4-game winning streak against the Chiefs, Bills, Vikings, and Browns. They had 11 takeaways in the other 13 games combined last year.

Denver led the league with 15 fumble recoveries, a number that will almost certainly regress to the mean. The Broncos will also see some tougher games in the division as the Chiefs have a stronger offense this year, Mahomes hopefully won’t have the flu this time, and the Chargers have Justin Herbert back with Jim Harbaugh as his coach.

The Broncos only allowed 16 points in two games to the Chargers last year. But they gave up 42 points in a rout in Detroit, a real offense, and they even lost 26-23 at home to lowly New England with Bailey Zappe carving them up.

If you want to dismiss the 70-point game as an outlier, then do the same for the sweep of the Chargers. Either way, this defense was not good, and coordinator Vance Joseph has usually produced below-average results with his defenses.

We’ll see how the Broncos fare without Pro Bowl safety Justin Simmons, who was released in March and led the team with 3 interceptions last year. He’s been one of their best players. They still have Patrick Surtain Jr. in that secondary, but the defense lacks building blocks everywhere else. They added safety Brandon Jones from Miami, but he has never been as good as Simmons, one of the few safeties to give Mahomes problems.

Edge rusher Jonathon Cooper stepped up last year to lead the team with 8.5 sacks, but 3.0 of those sacks came against sack merchants Sam Howell (Commanders) and Justin Fields (Bears). What are the chances Cooper has fully arrived for Denver after nearly having as many quarterback hits (13) last year as 2021-22 combined (14)?

Zach Allen, who came over from Arizona last year, led the Broncos with 27 pressures. But Allen and Cooper are a far cry from the reliable pass rushers in this division like Chris Jones (Chiefs), Maxx Crosby (Raiders), and Joey Bosa and Khalil Mack (Chargers).

Does signing an inside linebacker like Cody Barton from the bottom-ranked defense of the Commanders move the needle? Not one bit. In fact, that’s probably a downgrade at inside linebacker since the team lost Josey Jewell to Carolina.

Denver’s highest draft pick on defense in 2024 was third-round defensive end Jonah Elliss from Utah. He should be part of the pass-rushing rotation this year, but don’t expect much.

Frankly, it’s hard to expect much out of this defense period.

This Year’s Narrative: Sean Payton’s Molding of Bo Nix

In being the No. 12 pick in the 2024 NFL draft but the sixth quarterback off the board, Bo Nix realistically has the highest expectations of any QB6 in a draft in NFL history. That slot did once famously go to Dan Marino in the famed 1983 class, but let’s not make any comparisons to Marino just yet.

But there is one thing you can say about Nix that is similar to Drew Brees, and that is he has some records in his name for completion percentage, a stat Brees owned in the NFL. At Oregon last year, Nix set an NCAA record by completing 77.4% of his passes. He threw 45 touchdowns to 3 interceptions, which are absurd numbers.

But that was college. Nix will face way better defenses every week than he ever did in the Pac-12.

In the preseason, we did see Nix complete 23-of-30 passes (76.7%) for 205 yards, 2 touchdowns, and no picks. He led several scoring drives in his appearances. Payton can certainly live with that in the real games. We should note that Nix was playing against backups in preseason games, but he also was playing with a lot of backups. The preseason may not translate to the real games – just ask Kenny Pickett in Pittsburgh last year – but it’s never a bad thing to see your young quarterback producing.

Nix has almost no chance of having the kind of career Brees did in the NFL, but Payton could have done a lot worse at finding his rookie quarterback in this year’s draft to mold into someone like Brees. Someone who will work within his system to make the smart plays, make the short, quick throws with accuracy, and we’ll find out later if the deep ball is there at the pro level. But even Brees didn’t have the strongest arm early in his career.

Payton absolutely should be starting Nix in Week 1, which he is, when you consider the rookie is already 24 years old. Let him get his lumps in now, and he should be better for it in 2025 as no one really expects this team to compete for anything this season. You have to maximize that rookie contract since it’s so relatively cheap, so Nix absolutely should be the starter right away.

This will be fun to watch as Brees was a proven veteran by the time he teamed up with Payton in New Orleans in 2006. While Brees was injured late in his career and after Brees retired, we saw Payton working with veterans like Teddy Bridgewater, Jameis Winston, Trevor Siemian, and of course Wilson last year. We also saw him repeatedly try to make Taysom Hill happen in New Orleans.

But we’ve never seen Payton with a rookie quarterback he can mold from Day 1 in his vision, which should make this an interesting experiment.

If Payton, who never got back to a Super Bowl in New Orleans after winning in 2009, wants to solidify his Hall of Fame bust, he needs a good second act in Denver. Ending the Chiefs’ reign in the AFC West with Nix as his quarterback would certainly be up there.

It’s just not going to happen in 2024 barring one of the most stunning rookie seasons ever from a quarterback.

Best Bets for the 2024 Broncos

The Broncos are favored to win over 5.5 games, but which ones might they be? As always, let’s go to the schedule:

  • A trip to Seattle in Week 1 is some 2022 déjà vu, but this one may not go better if rookie coach Mike Macdonald is ahead of what Nix tries to do in his road debut. It’s winnable but tough.
  • Hosting the Steelers in Week 2 is more possible for an upset as the Steelers love playing down to the competition on the road under Mike Tomlin, and that altitude in September has been advantageous for decades for the Broncos. But Russell Wilson Revenge Game?
  • Offense could certainly struggle on the road in Weeks 3-4 against the Buccaneers and Jets.
  • If the Broncos are going to take some AFC West games this year, they better capitalize on the Raiders’ lousy quarterback situation.
  • However, the Broncos are 0-8 against the Raiders since 2020, a stat few people are probably aware of, so that streak better be the next one to end here.
  • The Chargers shouldn’t be an easy sweep this year with Harbaugh and Herbert together.
  • A Thursday trip to New Orleans will be emotional for Payton, and don’t be surprised if he pulls that one out.
  • Home games against NFC South teams like Carolina (Week 8) and Atlanta (Week 11) are better opportunities for wins than most games this year.
  • Good chance of getting punked in Baltimore and Kansas City in back-to-back weeks as it’s hard to see the Chiefs not starting a new winning streak against Denver.
  • Hosting Cleveland on a Monday night in Week 13 depends on what version of Deshaun Watson shows up.
  • Hosting the Colts after a late bye is possible if Anthony Richardson isn’t playing well.
  • Tough finish with Bengals (road) and Chiefs (home).

Can I find a way to get this team to 6-11 or better? Grab a couple of division wins over the Raiders (streak ends) and Chargers, surprise the Steelers or Buccaneers in September, upset the Seahawks or Saints on the road, surprise the Browns or Colts at home in December near the bye, and win at least one home game against the Panthers or Falcons.

None of that sounds crazy on paper. Last year, it would have sounded crazy to predict the Broncos would beat the Chiefs and then the Bills on the road in back-to-back weeks, but that happened. Turnovers can happen. Injuries can happen.

The fact is if Nix can be a high-percentage passer who protects the ball and doesn’t expose the defense to bad field position, then even with a volatile, random defensive unit, this team can fight its way to at least 6-11.

That’s not glamorous by any means, but this is not a great roster by any means in 2024. Let’s see what Payton can get out of it.

NFL Pick: Denver Broncos over 5.5 wins (-142 at FanDuel)

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Photo of Scott Kacsmar Scott Kacsmar29/08/2024 - 08:31 am