Denver Broncos
Former Broncos receiver Lionel Taylor, the first pro football player to catch 100 passes in a single season, has died. He was 89.
Via Chris Tomasson of the Denver Gazette, Taylor died on August 6. He would have turned 90 on Friday, August 15.
Taylor joined the Bears as an undrafted free agent in 1959. He played linebacker in Chicago.
In 1960, he joined the Broncos in the first year of the AFL, switching to receiver.
He caught 92 passes in 12 games during the AFL’s first season, and 100 in 14 games during the 1961 campaign.
Taylor played for the Broncos through 1966. He finished his career with the Oilers, in 1967 and 1968.
He caught 567 passes for 7,195 yards and 45 touchdowns.
Following retirement, Taylor worked as receivers coach with the Steelers from 1970 through 1976, winning a pair of Super Bowls. He served as receivers coach for the Rams from 1977 through 1979, adding the title of offensive coordinator in 1980 and 1981.
Taylor coached at the college level from 1982 through 1988. He coached the Browns’ tight ends in 1990.
Five years later, Taylor joined the staff of the London Monarchs of NFL Europe. He was promoted to head coach in 1998.
Taylor is a member of the Broncos’ Ring of Fame.
We extend our condolences to Taylor’s family, friends, teammates, and players.
Broncos defensive lineman Matt Henningsen may be out for the season.
Henningsen suffered an Achilles injury during the team’s joint practice Thursday with the 49ers, and the team fears it will end his season, according to Mike Klis of 9 News.
A final diagnosis won’t be made until Henningsen gets an MRI, but athletic trainers can usually diagnose an Achilles tear with a high degree of accuracy just by feeling the player’s ankle.
The 26-year-old Henningsen was a 2022 sixth-round pick who has played in 34 games for the Broncos.
The Raiders will be in New England to face the Patriots in Week 1, but Tom Brady won’t be at the matchup between two teams he has close ties to on September 7th.
Brady will be in the broadcast booth at Northwest Stadium with Kevin Burkhardt for Fox Sports’ broadcast of the Giants and the Commanders. Sideline reporters Erin Andrews and Tom Rinaldi will also be at the matchup between NFC East clubs.
The same crew will also call Fox’s marquee matchup in Week 2. They will be in Kansas City for a Super Bowl rematch between the Eagles and the Chiefs.
Fox also announced that Joe Davis, Greg Olsen, and Pam Oliver will be on the call for the 49ers’ visit to Seattle in Week 1.
Kenny Albert, Jonathan Vilma, and Megan Olivi will be in Atlanta for the Buccaneers-Falcons game while Kevin Kugler, Moose Johnston, and Allison Williams will call the action for the Browns’ home game against the Bengals. Chris Myers, Mark Schlereth, and Jen Hale will be the network’s team for the Panthers’ visit to the Jaguars. Adam Amin, Mark Sanchez, and Kristina Pink will call the Titans’ road game against the Broncos.
Mike Pereira and Dean Blandino remain the Fox rules analysts for the 2025 season.
The last time the Chiefs lost the Super Bowl, they made it back to the AFC Championship. And then, the next year, they won the first of two more Super Bowls.
Now, they’ve lost another Super Bowl. What’s next for the team that has gone to five of the last six Super Bowls?
“There’s stuff we’ve got to get better at,” Mahomes told Jarrett Bell of USA Today. “Especially myself. There’s plays on the football field that I didn’t make last year, that I’ve made in previous years. At the end of the day, I’m going to do whatever it takes to win, whether that’s passing for a lot of yards, not passing for a lot of yards. But I think if I play better, that’s going to make it better for the team. So, I’ve got to be better at executing whenever the shots are there, making those throws. Because that’s going to alleviate pressure on our defense and make them play more free and make the team play more free.”
So what does the sting of a loss do to Mahomes’s approach to the job?
“It just gives you a little extra in some of the workouts and those film sessions, to try to find the little things to get even better,” Mahomes said. “You try to do that when you have success, but at the same time when you have success you can sometimes be complacent. Obviously, you don’t want to lose the game, but it can give you a little bit more motivation to be even better.”
There’s another potential source of motivation. The Broncos and Chargers are on their heels. Some (including Chris Simms on Tuesday’s PFT Live) have predicted the Chiefs will yield the AFC West title to the Denver Broncos.
It could end up being a crossroads season for the Chiefs and Mahomes, in his ninth NFL campaign and the year he’ll turn 30. His worst finish as a starter is losing in overtime of the AFC Championship. His best is three Super Bowl wins in seven seasons.
The Broncos have been securing their key players to long-term contracts. One such player to get a new deal was receiver Courtland Sutton.
Due to make $14 million in 2025, Sutton recently signed a four-year, $92 million extension. That’s a new-money average of $23 million per year.
Here’s the full breakdown of the contract, per a source with knowledge of the terms:
1. Signing bonus: $18.5 million.
2. 2025 base salary: $4 million, fully guaranteed.
3. 2026 option bonus: $12 million, fully guaranteed.
4. 2026 base salary: $4.735 million, fully guaranteed.
5. 2026 per-game roster bonus: $765,000 total, fully guaranteed but must be earned.
6. 2027 base salary: $19.235 million, $1 million of which is guaranteed for injury and becomes fully guaranteed on the fifth day of the 2027 league year.
8. 2027 per-game roster bonus: $765,000 total.
9. 2028 base salary: $20.735 million.
10. 2028 per-game roster bonus: $765,000 total.
11. 2029 base salary: $23.375 million.
12. 2029 per-game roster bonus: $765,000 total.
The deal has $40 million fully guaranteed at signing. The other $1 million in injury guarantees vests in 2027.
It’s clearly a second-tier deal. Good but not among the highest-paid of all receivers. With Bengals receiver Ja’Marr Chase now north of $40 million, Sutton is at $23 million in new-money APY.
From signing, the five-year deal has an annual average of $21.2 million.
The Broncos went to the playoffs for the first time in a decade last season and head coach Sean Payton thinks they can do even more in 2025.
After an offseason that saw the team add players like linebacker Dre Greenlaw, safety Talanoa Hufanga, tight end Evan Engram, cornerback Jahdae Barron, and running back RJ Harvey, Payton told Charles Robinson of Yahoo Sports that “I like this team a lot.” Payton went on to say how much he likes the team and the answer was enough to rank them among the very best he’s ever coached.
“The short-term goal is winning the division,” Payton said. “But this is a team capable of winning the Super Bowl. I’ve coached six teams that I thought could win the Super Bowl. Some went to championship games, some to the playoffs. This is my seventh team that I think has that.”
Payton has one Super Bowl ring, so being capable of winning it all obviously isn’t the same thing as getting it done. Doing that will require the Broncos to execute at a high level, enjoy some good injury luck and survive the inevitable ups and downs of a long season, but Payton’s confidence will likely inspire a few more believers in what’s going on in Denver.
Broncos linebacker Drew Sanders, who injured his foot July 26, underwent foot surgery last week, Mike Klis of 9News reports.
Sanders injured a ligament, not a tendon as feared, and his return is uncertain, though coach Sean Payton said “it’s going to certainly be north of four to six weeks.”
The Broncos have not placed Sanders on injured reserve, a sign they expect him back at some point this season.
He missed most of last season with an Achilles tear that required surgery, returning to play four regular-season games and Denver’s postseason loss.
A third-round pick in 2023, Sanders appeared in all 17 games with four starts as a rookie, recording 24 total tackles and a fumble recovery.
The Broncos and defensive lineman Zach Allen have worked out a new, four-year deal. For Allen, it’s his third NFL contract.
We’ve tracked down the details on the four-year, $102 million extension. Here they are, per a source with knowledge of the terms:
1. Signing bonus: $24 million.
2. 2025 base salary: $2.49 million, fully guaranteed.
3. 2025 per-game roster bonuses: $510,000 total, fully guaranteed, but must be earned.
4. 2026 base salary: $16.485 million, fully guaranteed.
5. 2026 per-game roster bonuses: $765,000 total, fully guaranteed, but must be earned.
6. 2027 base salary: $22.235 million, guaranteed for injury at signing, with $15.75 million becoming fully guaranteed in March 2026 and the remaining $6.485 million becoming fully guaranteed in March 2027.
7. 2027 per-game roster bonuses: $765,000 total, guaranteed for injury at signing and becoming fully guaranteed in March 2027.
8. 2028 base salary: $21.735 million. Of that amount, $2.25 million is guaranteed for injury at signing and becomes fully guaranteed in March 2027.
9. 2028 per-game roster bonuses: $765,000 total.
10. 2029 base salary: $24.480 million
11. 2029 per-game roster bonuses: $1.02 million total.
The deal has $44.25 million fully guaranteed at signing, with a practical guarantee of $60 million. By March of the third year, $69.5 million becomes fully guaranteed.
In comparison to defensive tackles who signed actual extensions (not a rip-up deal like Aaron Donald did), it’s the highest APY at $25.5 million per year.
The timing works out perfectly for Allen. He turns 28 this month. If he’d been tagged in 2026, he would have been hitting the market in the year he turns 30.
From the Broncos’ perspective, the move shows a willingness and ability to identify their most talented and valued players, and to get them paid far faster than certain other teams do. Which is one of the ingredients in becoming a championship organization.
Anyone who has been following the NFL since 2021 knows the name Tony Buzbee. He arrived on the scene as the lawyer representing the first plaintiff who sued then-Texans quarterback Deshaun Watson for misconduct during massage-therapy sessions.
Eventually, Buzbee represented more than 20 plaintiffs against Watson.
Most recently, Buzbee settled a lawsuit on behalf of a woman who claimed that Hall of Fame tight end Shannon Sharpe committed sexual assault. After the lawsuit was filed in April, Sharpe attacked Buzbee personally, claiming among other things that he “targets Black men.”
In a new Esquire profile, Buzbee responded to that claim.
“I didn’t wake up one morning and say, ‘I want to sue Shannon Sharpe.’ He has no relevance in my life,” Buzbee said, via Sean Keeley of AwfulAnnouncing.com. “I actually think he’s very entertaining when he yells and screams and talks about sports that he’s not involved in. But if I think it’s a legitimate case, then I pursue it. And I think this is worth my time.”
Buzbee’s business model, if he’s doing it properly (and the results would suggest he is), doesn’t discriminate. He told Esquire that he receives as a fee roughly 40 percent of any recovery his clients get.
That’s how the American civil justice system works. Individuals who have grievances and who can’t afford to pay lawyers by the hour hire them based on a contingency fee. This creates a strong business incentive for those lawyers to take good cases, not weak ones.
The question of whether a case is worth pursuing has three prongs: clarity of liability, amount of damages, and the ability to collect on a settlement or verdict.
Beyond that, nothing else should matter. And given that Sharpe’s lawyer immediately admitted that at least $10 million was offered to settle the case before it was filed and that the case was eventually settled without Sharpe ever responding to the civil complaint, chances are that Buzbee walked away from the Sharpe case with at least $4 million in fees.
That’s how it works. Find strong cases, pursue strong cases, settle or try strong cases. Buzbee did that after the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in 2010, generating more than $500 million for more than 10 thousand clients who pursued claims against BP.
“I guess a bunch of old white men could say I’m targeting them, and a bunch of multinational corporations could say I’m targeting them as well,” Buzbee said. “I guess you could say I was targeting BP. . . . Well, I probably was targeting BP.”
That’s how it works. For anyone who represents individuals on a contingency fee.
For Buzbee, the Watson case made him a go-to choice for anyone with valid claims against current or former NFL players. Without the Watson cases, there’s a good chance the plaintiff in the Sharpe case wouldn’t have known Buzbee’s name.
That also explains Buzbee’s publicity-driven style. At a time when plenty of lawyers advertise their services with gigantic billboards and goofy TV commercials, the best advertisement remains free advertisement from news coverage. Buzbee knows that. His business thrives on that.
And there’s no reason to pursue a weak case simply to harass someone.
That said, a case that seemed strong can turn out to be weak, if the lawyer mistakenly believed a client whose story didn’t hold up under scrutiny. That’s what may have happened in Buzbee’s misadventures with Jay-Z, which resulted in the plaintiff acknowledging inconsistencies in the story she was telling about allegations of rape when she was 13 and the case eventually being dismissed without a settlement.
The Esquire profile contains this curious statement: “Buzbee later withdrew from the case because he has not been admitted to practice law in the Southern District of New York.” The presence of that assertion in the final product, frankly, shows that whoever wrote and/or edited the story has no idea how the legal system works.
Lawyers licensed in one jurisdiction routinely seek and receive what’s known as pro hac vice (Latin, “for this occasion”) admission in other jurisdictions in a specific case. As long as a local lawyer who is licensed to practice in that court is personally involved in the case, pro hac vice admission is routinely granted.
Actually, that’s how Buzbee pursued Sharpe. The primary lawyer on the complaint filed in Las Vegas was Nevada lawyer Micah D. Nash. Buzbee’s name appears on the document below Nash’s, with this designation: “Pro Hac [Vice] Forthcoming.”
This doesn’t mean Buzbee was targeting Jay-Z because of his race. The more plausible explanation is that Buzbee took on a case that ended up being far weaker than he thought it was, so he found a way to retreat. Of course, he’s now facing a lawsuit from Jay-Z claiming that the lawsuit sparked $190 million in business losses.
Unfortunately for Buzbee, he’s got the money that would make him a target for a lawyer who represents plaintiffs on a contingency fee.
That’s the primary motivation in this specific form of legal practice. It’s good business to take strong cases with significant damages against defendants who have money.
The personal characteristics of the defendants do not matter. All that matters is: (1) did they do something they shouldn’t have done?; (2) did those actions cause tangible and significant harm?; and (3) can they easily write a check to make things right?
The Broncos have agreed to another contract extension with one of their veteran players.
According to multiple reports, the Broncos and defensive lineman Zach Allen have agreed to a four-year extension. The deal is worth $102 million and it includes $69.5 million in guaranteed money.
The Broncos signed wide receiver Courtland Sutton to an extension earlier this week. Both players were heading into the final year of their current contracts.
Allen was a 2019 third-round pick in Arizona and he joined the Broncos in 2023. He had 61 tackles and 8.5 sacks on his way to being voted a second-team All-Pro last season. He has 259 tackles, 25 sacks, an interception, a forced fumble and three fumble recoveries for his career.