Do the Broncos have to choose between Riley Moss and Ja’Quan McMillian?

There’s a narrative that has taken hold across Broncos Country this offseason, repeated so often that it has started to feel like an established fact rather than an assumption. The Broncos are going to have to choose between Riley Moss and Ja’Quan McMillian.

One stays, one goes. The cap demands it. The math doesn’t work. Pick your favorite and say goodbye to the other.

Josh Dover isn’t buying it.

On a recent edition of “Dover and Cecil” on 104.3 The Fan, the co-host pushed back on the either-or framing that has dominated the conversation around Denver’s cornerback room heading into the 2026 season. Both Moss and McMillian are entering the final year of their respective contracts, and the assumption that the Broncos can only afford to retain one of them has become so ingrained in the discourse that few people have stopped to question whether it is actually true.

Dover questioned it directly.

“McMillian/Moss, we keep having this conversation of like, ‘Well, they’re gonna have to pick one.’ Are we sure?” Dover asked.

The question isn’t rhetorical. The financial picture in Denver is more favorable than the narrative suggests.

“Right now, the Denver Broncos are sitting with like $20-something million of extra cap space,” Dover said.

That is real money, the kind of flexibility that gives a front office room to maneuver without being forced into painful decisions at positions of strength.

The Broncos cornerback room, anchored by former Defensive Player of the Year Pat Surtain II, is one of the best in football precisely because of the depth behind him. Moss has established himself as one of the league’s premier CB2s, a physical and reliable presence opposite Surtain who showed elite-level play down the stretch last season. McMillian has proven he belongs in high-leverage moments, none bigger than his overtime interception against the Buffalo Bills in the divisional round that helped seal one of the most memorable wins in Broncos’ history.

Both players bring genuine value. Both players have earned the right to be part of Denver’s long-term plans. And Dover believes the conversation needs to shift accordingly.

“I think we should probably stop talking about one or the other,” Dover said.

He then laid out the condition that makes the decision straightforward.

“If Moss is who he was in December, it’s not one or the other. It’s both, and McMillian and Moss will earn contract extensions,” Dover said.

That’s the cleanest version of the argument. If both players perform at the level they showed last season, the Broncos have the cap space to retain them. The front office doesn’t have to choose between its second and third-best defensive backs; it just has to be willing to invest in a position group that has been foundational to everything this defense has accomplished.

The assumption that Denver must pick one has been repeated long enough to feel true. Dover just wants Broncos Country to consider the possibility that nobody has to go, and that keeping both might be the smartest move of the entire offseason.

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