INDIANAPOLIS — The Broncos appear to be just a few crossed T’s and some dotted I’s away from saying goodbye to Russell Wilson.
Head coach Sean Payton and general manager George Paton stopped short of saying Denver will officially release the veteran quarterback when the duo spoke at the NFL Scouting Combine on Tuesday. But they opened up ample room to read between the lines.
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“I saw this humorous meme the other day of a Broncos fan with a shirt on and there were like eight quarterbacks names with a cross through it, and he’s drinking the quarterback Kool-Aid,” Payton said of the passers who have shuffled through Denver since Peyton Manning retired in 2016. “Our job is to make sure this next one doesn’t have a line through it.”
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In other words, the search for Wilson’s replacement in Denver is well underway. Payton said the final decision with the veteran quarterback will come sometime in the “next two weeks,” and it appears all that is left for the Broncos is determining the specifics of how they’ll handle the $85 million dead-money hit will result from releasing the 35-year-old veteran ahead of his 13th NFL season.
“There’s a couple factors here,” said Payton, who will have meetings with Denver’s ownership group upon returning from the combine. “Obviously, the cap projections came out (last week). We’re further down the road with the draft class and the pro free agents. So I would anticipate it being within the next two weeks.”
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The specifics of Denver’s timeline with Wilson, who was benched by Payton for the final two games last season, have been well-established. If he is on the team’s roster March 17, his $37 million salary for 2025 becomes guaranteed. Releasing him before that date would create the massive dead-money hit that the Broncos will likely spread out over two seasons by virtue of a post-June designation. The Broncos could take a smaller chunk of the hit in 2024 by exercising an option bonus in Wilson’s contract. Choosing that path would leave the Broncos with roughly $35 million in dead money next season and $50 million in 2025. If they don’t exercise the option, the hit would be $53 million in 2024 and $32 million in 2025.
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“We want to see the entire landscape,” Paton said. “We had to get through our draft meetings. We had to get through a range of meetings and evaluate it with what we have. And so we just want to get through the process. Sean needs to see all these quarterbacks. The coaches need to see all these quarterbacks until we make an informed decision.”
The real decision for the Broncos centers on what comes next. If Wilson is released, the Broncos will enter the offseason with Jarrett Stidham and Ben DiNucci as the quarterbacks on the roster. Free agency will bring the opportunity to add a veteran option, though the player would have to come at a modest rate given that the Broncos are still $16.8 million over next year’s salary cap, according to a projection by Over The Cap.
Another option for the Broncos, one they haven’t tried in their long-running quest to find a permanent answer at quarterback, would be drafting one in the top half of the first round. Denver has the No. 12 overall pick, its first first-round selection since 2021. It is a tricky spot at first glance. The three quarterbacks who are widely viewed as the top prospects at the position — Caleb Williams of USC, Drake Maye of North Carolina and Jayden Daniels of LSU — are likely to be selected ahead of Denver’s turn, and Paton laid out the difficulty the Broncos would face in trying to climb to the top of the draft.
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“I think you’d really have to love someone,” Paton said. “To move up to No. 1, I don’t know that we’d have the draft capital to do that. We’re open for anything, but that would be hard to do, realistically.”
There are many questions after that. How close is Michigan’s JJ McCarthy to the aforementioned trio? Will Oregon’s Bo Nix or Washington’s Michael Penix Jr. work themselves into the mix as first-round prospects? Does Denver opt for a developmental prospect on Day 2 or 3?
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There aren’t clear answers to any of those questions yet, but Payton said he energized by the challenge of finding Denver’s permanent quarterback. It is a quest that could very well come to define his coaching tenure with the Broncos.
“There’s some fundamental things that we have to see and that are present,” Payton said. “Sometimes it’s not as difficult as we make it out to be, and then sometimes, listen, it is very difficult. I think we’ll be really good at this. And I think, to some degree, we’re glad that a lot of people aren’t.”
It was only two years ago that Paton was here at the combine, brokering a deal with Seattle Seahawks general manager John Schneider at a restaurant outside downtown Indianapolis. The trade, which was finalized weeks later, sent Wilson and a fourth-round pick to Denver in exchange for five draft picks, including two first-rounders, and three players to the Seahawks. That the Broncos would be back at the combine only two years later, earnestly searching for another quarterback, would have been hard to comprehend amid the euphoria that accompanied Wilson’s arrival.
But that is the reality the Broncos face now, searching for a name they hope they won’t have to quickly cross off a list.
(Photo: Andy Cross / Getty Images)
