Broncos plan is clear after taking bigger Wilson cap hit now
Mar 14, 2024, 4:09 AM | Updated: 4:14 am
The Denver Broncos and Sean Payton have a plan.
But if you’re impatient — understandably so, given seven-straight losing seasons and the second-longest active postseason drought — you might be hard-pressed to understand or accept it.
That said, it became evident Wednesday with word that the Broncos chose to swallow the larger of the two salary-cap hits on Russell Wilson’s $85 million dead-money figure.
Wilson is officially no longer a Bronco. And the team will still have to navigate a $32 million cap crater next year. But by swallowing the $53 million chunk this year, the Broncos set forth their plan for trying to build a sustained contender.
Which means using this offseason and the coming season to reset and retrench while absorbing a team-wide dead-money figure of over $67 million.
Granted, teams with four of the five biggest dead-money figures last year made the playoffs. But all were in the NFC, with a landscape that allows for more upward mobility and volatility in the standings than an AFC that features teams led by Patrick Mahomes, Josh Allen, Lamar Jackson, Joe Burrow, C.J. Stroud and Trevor Lawrence.
Being in a conference where even some of the quarterbacking colossi miss the playoffs serves as a reminder of how the Broncos won’t get out of their mess by taking short cuts. They need to be sensible — which is exactly what they were when they decided before free agency to absorb the bigger Wilson cap hit this year.
THE BRONCOS PLAN HAS ASPECTS OF “MONEYBALL”
Key word: “aspects.”
Unlike the Oakland A’s of the early 2000s immortalized in the book and film adaptation of “Moneyball” — and, to be fair, the A’s of the present day — the Broncos don’t have to plan based around going low-cost at all costs. And in fact, going thrifty and absorbing most of the blow of Wilson’s dead-money figure allows them to spend more later — say, by 2025.
Further, in some ways, the Broncos are still laying the foundation.
As Payton said in January regarding the offense, “I would say clearly it’s a heavy-duty work in progress. We’re not building on that foundation yet. We’re still putting in the friggin’ pilings in, from what I saw.”
That could be said about the team at large, really. And they decided this week that the long-term plan did not include key contributors such as Lloyd Cushenberry, Jerry Jeudy, Josey Jewell and Justin Simmons.
In the case of Simmons, the Broncos got their putative starting safety combination of Brandon Jones and P.J. Locke for less than the savings created by Simmons’ release. With Jewell, the Broncos re-signed Jonas Griffith, a former starter, for one year at not even 20 percent of Jewell’s average annual value from his new contract with Carolina. Jeudy’s replacement is likely to be Marvin Mims Jr., whose path to the lineup was blocked last year by Jeudy, who then benefitted from the inertia that often favors an experienced player over a rookie.
In the short term, these are moves the Broncos must make. Finding success while working around a $67 million dead-money crater means counting on some players to step forward — either via experience or better health.
SO, WHY TAKE THE BIG WILSON HIT NOW?
The argument against doing so is the desire to uphold cap flexibility. After all, any cap space can be carried over into the following year, anyhow. That ideal yielded a valid question: Why not simply take the smaller Wilson cap hit — $35.4 million — this year, and use the carryover to help take care of what would be a $49.6 million cap figure in 2025?
There are two reasons.
First, they could use the space next year. The bill will come due on potential new contracts for members of the 2021 class, which is the Broncos’ most productive group since Super Bowl 50. Right guard Quinn Meinerz and cornerback Pat Surtain II are prime candidates for big deals, and the explosion of the guard market this week means that Meinerz’s price tag could go north of $15 million per year. Surtain is likely to be on the fifth-year option, which cranks up his price, but the Broncos could work out a long-term deal with him, too.
The Broncos have roughly $120 million of cap space for 2025 — even with Wilson’s contract in play. Surtain and Meinerz could gobble up a significant chunk of that, but the Broncos would have plenty of space left over, presumably to find support for whoever their quarterback will be, perhaps from Round 1 of next month’s draft.
Second is that taking the larger hit now means the Broncos have a guardrail in case the emotion of the moment — or an unexpected player hitting the market — leads emotion to overrule rationality.If the Broncos have extra space, they could be tempted to use it in the moment. And if they did, the point of a carryover would be neutralized.
Effectively, the Broncos force cap frugality on themselves. It’s like walking into a casino with a hard loss limit of $300 cash and no access to an ATM. There isn’t the temptation to channel the inner Clark Griswold and willy-nilly attempt to win against a gleeful blackjack dealer.
The Broncos might get some benefit from having more space now.
But they are virtually guaranteed to extract a benefit from extra space in 2025.
And while they will make an earnest effort to compete and navigate the dead money this coming season, make no mistake, this is a long-term plan tasked with not only repairing the damage from the Wilson trade and contract, but with positioning the team to be a viable multi-year contender, just as Payton’s Saints were for two separate stretches.
In each case, there were multiple consecutive non-winning campaigns and roster-building seasons preceding the boom years. Payton hopes now to forge a similar outcome out of a 2024 year that appears to be about resetting and rebuilding — even if both words never cross his lips.
It’s a viable plan for the Broncos — even if it requires more patience than an already pained fan base can bear.
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