Von Miller finds a team for 2026 season

Von Miller’s long wait for a new NFL home for his 16th professional season finally concluded Sunday night.

The Super Bowl 50 MVP and all-time leading sacker in Denver Broncos history is expected to sign with his home-area team, the Dallas Cowboys. Miller offered a visual confirmation of the move on social media. ESPN’s Adam Schefter was first to report the move.

Dallas ! Let’s make this one Special ! 😈 pic.twitter.com/STWZiqBLij

— Von Miller (@VonMiller) August 17, 2026

The Cowboys will be Miller’s fourth team since his 10-plus seasons in orange and blue concluded midway through the 2021 campaign. Denver started the whistle-stop tour by trading Miller to the Los Angeles Rams, for which Miller notched 9 sacks in 12 games en route to helping them win Super Bowl LXVI over the Cincinnati Bengals.

From there, Miller moved on to the Buffalo Bills in free agency. His three years there started with a flourish — 8 sacks in 11 games — but he tore his anterior cruciate ligament on Thanksgiving Day 2022, an injury that may have cost the Bills a Super Bowl — and also sent his sack production into retreat. Miller returned in 2023 and finished without a sack, but rebounded in 2024 with six in a pass-rush specialist role.

Miller moved on to Dallas’ NFC East arch-rivals, the Washington Commanders, in 2025 and found his form again, notching nine sacks in a rotational role. Still, that wasn’t enough to spur any free-agent interest throughout the offseason.

That changed over the weekend. Miller has long spoken of watching the Cowboys before he joined the NFL, and cited DeMarcus Ware as one of the players he admired. Eventually, Ware and Miller would be teammates in Denver from 2014-16, together powering a Broncos defense that dominated in 2015 and led the club to its most recent Super Bowl win.

VON MILLER HAD ANGLED FOR A RETURN TO THE BRONCOS

Throughout the offseason Von Miller made it clear how he would love to return to the team that drafted him No. 2 overall in 2021.

“It still feels like home,” Miller said in May at an event for his charity, Von’s Vision, which distributes eyeglasses to children in the Denver area — work that has continued since his last Broncos game.

“Whenever I see the mountains, whenever I see the environment, right when I land … it doesn’t feel like I left,” Miller said. “So, I would love to finish my career here, Would love to come back and be a Denver Bronco and have Von’s Vision days and Von’s Vision events.”

He lobbied publicly for a return to Denver, but also met privately with general manager George Paton and head coach Sean Payton to learn about the player-personnel side of matters. Miller has expressed a desire to step into personnel and front-office work after his playing career concludes.

“George has been so instrumental, and he’s really fanned my flame the same way that (Bills general manager) Brandon Beane did. They’re all for it,” Miller said in May.

But the state of the Broncos’ roster precludes them from having room for Miller. The team already fiddled with the notion of giving edge rusher Jonah Elliss some inside-linebacker repetitions before scuttling that, with part of the rationale being a desire to get Que Robinson on the field more often after he was inactive for 12 of 19 total games in 2025.

The Broncos have a strong rotation, with Elliss and Dondrea Tillman spelling starters Nik Bonitto and Jonathon Cooper throughout the last two years.

Another holdup on the potential for a Broncos reunion was that reserve edge rushers with the team typically are asked to have special-teams roles, too. But Miller has limited experience in that phase.

“Obviously I wouldn’t play special teams,” Miller said in May.

But despite the roster crunch, Bonitto publicly supported the idea of a Von Miller return to Denver. Coincidentally, Bonitto joined the Broncos as the player selected with the draft pick acquired from the Rams for Miller’s services in 2021.

But if there is to be any potential Miller-Broncos reunion, it will have to wait.

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