Thursday’s #PFTPM including a simple question: “What are your thoughts on a potential Bills-Rams Super Bowl?”
My thoughts are it could happen, because both teams are firmly in the Super Bowl window.
In any given year, not many teams truly are. And while teams not apparently in the window can, in theory, win their way in, the salary-cap system has matured to the point where some teams have cracked the code — and some teams can’t crack their way out of a paper bag.
It also helps to have drafted and developed a franchise quarterback.
In most years, roughly 10 teams are in the window, roughly 10 teams aren’t, and the remaining 12 could break either way. This year, the AFC’s true short-list contenders are the Chiefs, Bills, Ravens, Bengals, and Texans. The Broncos and Chargers could force their way into the conversation.
In the NFC, it’s the Eagles, Lions, Rams, 49ers, and Commanders. Maybe the Buccaneers. Maybe the Vikings.
Again, things can and will change. That’s why they play the games, as someone once said. All the time.
For those who like a little variety, it would be nice for someone other than the Chiefs to get a turn in the Super Bowl. And for someone other than the Eagles, 49ers, or Rams to emerge from the NFC.
Since 2017, it’s been the Eagles three times, the 49ers twice, the Rams twice, and the Bucs once. For the AFC, it’s been only the Patriots, Chiefs, and Bengals.
That’s it. Over eight seasons, seven total franchises have taken the 16 total Super Bowl berths.
Free agency, the salary cap, and a draft process that rewards failure should be enough to mix things up. But the reality is that good teams stay good, and bad teams stay bad.
The days preceding the draft were dominated by news of a sexual assault lawsuit that had been filed against Hall of Fame tight end Shannon Sharpe. An ill-advised P.R. blitz, which included his lawyer, Lanny Davis, that Sharpe had offered at least $10 million to settle the case, fueled the coverage for multiple days.
Then, things died down.
Now, more than two months after the case was filed against Sharpe, he has not responded to the civil complaint. In most jurisdictions, a response is due within 30 days after service. Extensions are commonly granted among lawyers as a courtesy.
The electronic database for the Clark County, Nevada civil court system shows various filings regarding the lawyer(s) who will be associated with the case. A hearing on three different motions to associate counsel is set for July 9, 2025, at 10:00 a.m. local time. The hearing originally had been set for June 30.
Davis said in a press conference held two days after the filing of the case that Sharpe will file a counterclaim against the plaintiff. For now, though, there has been no formal response by Sharpe to the civil complaint.
Less than a week after the case was filed, Sharpe stepped away from his employment with ESPN until the start of the NFL preseason. With the preseason looming (the Hall of Fame game happens on July 31) and the case still in its infancy, it remains to be seen whether Sharpe will indeed return by the end of the month.
Broncos safety P.J. Locke underwent back surgery shortly after the team’s playoff loss to the Bills, he announced in a 14-minute YouTube video.
The first episode of the personal documentary series, “My Breakthrough,” lays out that there were “no guarantees that P.J. would return to play football ever again” as one of the first NFL players to undergo spinal fusion surgery.
Locke shared a meeting with his surgeon, Dr. Chad Prusmack, on Feb. 10 after surgery. The degenerated discs in Locke’s L4 and L5 vertebrae led to bone-on-bone, and Prusmack fused the spine with a “cage” and screws.
“How I felt the first week after surgery. It’s like: ‘Oh, my God. I don’t know how I’m going to get better after this,’” Locke said in the video, via Kyle Frederickson of the Denver Gazette.
Five months later, though, Locke said he’s “got no pain levels.”
“Even the little bit of pain I do have from certain movements, it’s nothing compared to what I was dealing with during the season,” Locke said. “I feel like it’s been a miracle. I feel like it’s a breakthrough I’ve been praying for. It came out of a blessing that I wasn’t expecting.”
Locke was named the team’s Ed Block Courage Award winner in January. No one outside the locker room realized exactly what he was going through to get on the field for 15 games last season.
He played 1,000 defensive snaps in the regular season and all 76 snaps in the postseason loss.
Locke did not participate in the team’s offseason program as he continued his rehab. He is expected to compete for safety snaps after the Broncos signed Talanoa Hufanga in free agency.
When Sean Payton was head coach of the Saints in 2010, they drafted Jimmy Graham even though he had played only one year of college football. Graham, who played four years of college basketball at Miami, became one of the best tight ends in the NFL.
Now head coach of the Broncos, Payton would love to see history repeat itself with another college basketball player who was drafted to play tight end. This year the Broncos drafted Caleb Lohner, who played just 57 snaps of college football but showed flashes of tight end talent and also showed off his athletic ability while playing college basketball at Utah.
Payton said it would be incredible for the Broncos to get Lohner to be the kind of player Graham was.
“If it turns out like the last one did, then we’d be real excited,” Payton said, via DenverBroncos.com.
Lohner is 6-foot-7 and 250 pounds and has a similar athletic profile to Graham. Expecting him to have the kind of NFL career Graham had would be expecting too much, but it’s easy to see why Payton is excited about the possibilities that Lohner brings to Denver.
Hall of Fame quarterback Peyton Manning watched his nephew, Texas quarterback Arch Manning, at the recent Manning Passing Academy and came away impressed — and also impressed by some of the other college quarterbacks on the field.
Manning told Pat McAfee that both Arch Manning and LSU quarterback Garrett Nussmeier showed off elite arms at the Manning camp.
“I’m excited to watch Arch play,” Manning said. “He threw the ball really well at the camp. He and Garrett Nussmeier at our three throwing expeditions really threw the ball well — all the quarterbacks throw the ball well. It’s impressive. They make throws that I can’t even think about making. Arch made a throw the other day that I’d have to hit the cutoff man to get the ball to the actual receiver.”
Peyton Manning also mentioned South Carolina quarterback LaNorris Sellers as a standout at the Manning Passing Academy. Arch Manning is currently the betting favorite to be the first overall pick in the 2026 NFL draft, followed by Penn State quarterback Drew Allar, then Nussmeier, then Sellers.
The Broncos returned to the playoffs last season for the first time since they won Super Bowl 50 and linebacker Alex Singleton is looking to that championship team as inspiration for the year to come.
Defense carried the Broncos for much of that season and the unit’s performance overwhelmed the Panthers in Levi’s Stadium to secure the title. The 2024 Broncos finished third in points allowed and seventh in yards allowed, so it was already a strength before adding players like linebacker Dre Greenlaw, safety Talanoa Hufanga and first-round cornerback Jahdae Barron this offseason.
Singleton told Zac Stevens of DNVR that he didn’t expect that investment in the defense and that he feels “it’s going to be special” enough to support setting some high goals for the year to come. Singleton said “if you’re not saying you want to be the best, I think it’s crazy” and he’s got his sights set on that Super Bowl crew.
“It’s one of those things where it’s like, ‘Let’s be better than the 2015 defense.’ Stuff where like that’s what we need to chase,” Singleton said.
The AFC has no shortage of contenders, but reaching the lofty goal that Singleton has set for the Broncos could put them in the mix for another February trip to Santa Clara.
Broncos cornerback Patrick Surtain was the league’s best defensive player last season. The NFL honored him with the defensive player of the year award, and PFF recently dubbed Surtain “the most valuable non-QB in football.”
So, how does Surtain top what he did last season?
He has an idea, he told reporters at his camp Saturday.
“There’s always something out there to do better,” Surtain said, via video from Zac Stevens of DNVR Broncos. “I mean, why not get another one? Why not get more All-Pros further on into my career, but I think the main goal is to win a Super Bowl. At the end of the day, that’s what I play the game for is to win, so I think that’s the angle for me.”
The Broncos upgraded on defense in free agency after ranking seventh in yards and third in points on defense last season. They signed two former 49ers defenders, safety Talanoa Hufanga and inside linebacker Dre Greenlaw, and drafted cornerback Jahdae Barron with the 20th overall pick.
Greenlaw and Hufanga have played in a Super Bowl, so they know what it takes to get there.
“We added some key additions obviously in those guys,” Surtain said. “They’re going to come in and bring that winning atmosphere. They’ve been at Super Bowls. They know how to win at a high level. So, adding that to our team will only make our team greater.”
System Arbitrator Christopher Droney had no choice but to find that the NFL tried to get its teams to collude regarding guaranteed contracts, given the black-and-white clarity of the evidence. Regarding whether the teams followed the league’s lead, Droney ignored strong circumstantial evidence.
Plenty of the evidence comes from the negotiations between the Broncos and quarterback Russell Wilson.
Wilson testified that, early in his discussions with the Broncos, he requested a seven-year, fully-guaranteed contract that would pay “around $50 million a year.” The Broncos, said Wilson, “didn’t blink.”
The trade that sent Wilson to Denver became official on March 16, 2022. In the following days, something changed.
“I would say shortly after [the trade], maybe within the next ten days or so, they started getting cold feet on this fully guaranteed thing,” Wilson testified in the hearing.
Coincidentally — or not — “the NFL Management Council, with the blessing of the Commissioner, encouraged the 32 NFL Clubs to reduce guarantees in veterans’ contracts at the March 2022 annual owners’ meeting,” as Droney concluded. The encouragement happened on March 28, only 12 days afer the Wilson trade was announced.
Is it really a surprise, then, that the Broncos backpedaled?
The backpedaling continued through August, when the team was sold to the Walton-Penner group. After the sale became final, a deal with Wilson was pursued.
The Broncos, despite Wilson’s testimony that the team “didn’t blink” at the prospect of a fully-guaranteed deal, took the position that a fully-guaranteed contract like Deshaun Watson’s “was a non starter.”
During the talks, Broncos owner Greg Penner told other members of the Denver ownership group that “there’s not[h]ing in here that other owners will consider off market (e.g. like the Watson guarantees).” Later, Penner told his partners that G.M. George Paton “feels very good about it for us as a franchise and the benchmark it sets (versus Watson) for the rest of the league.”
Those comments are as powerful as the smoking-gun text exchange between Chargers owner Dean Spanos and Cardinals owner Michael Bidwill regarding the Kyler Murray deal. They are circumstantial evidence of the existence of an agreement among owners to hold down guarantees, and of a desire by Penner and the Broncos to comply with it.
Why else would Penner care about other owners and other teams when negotiating a contract with Wilson? When Penner was the CEO of WalMart, did he care about the impact his decisions regarding key employee pay may have on Target’s compensation structure for similar employees?
The evidence of collusion was right there. Droney blew it. There’s no other way to put it.
And the NFL Players Association continues to blow it by not publicizing the contents of the 61-page ruling.
The Broncos made Bo Nix the sixth quarterback off the board in the 2024 NFL Draft, but his ranking was a bit higher after his rookie season.
Nix piloted the Broncos to the playoffs while throwing for 3,775 yards and completing two-thirds of his passes over the course of the regular season. That performance quieted most of the debate about whether Nix would continue playing at a high level as a professional and it sparked some about how good he will get in the coming years.
Broncos left tackle Garret Bolles isn’t putting a cap on that upside or on how much he enjoys being part of the plan to keep Nix upright in 2025.
“Bo’s a tremendous football player,” Bolles said on NFL Network. “I’m so grateful I get to protect him and being his blindside protector, giving him all the time in the world. He’s a freak of nature. You look at the numbers that he put up last year, between him and [Jayden] Daniels, those were the two young quarterbacks in the league that’s gonna be very successful, and I have one of them behind me. His demeanor, his composure, his work ethic, just always wanting to get better, his arm talent and just the way he sees it, he has swag, man, he really does.”
Ending a long playoff drought meant that no one paid much mind to the Broncos bowing out of the playoffs after one game, but they’ll need to keep moving up in order to show real progress in the future. If they do that, Bolles will have plenty of company when it comes to admiring Nix’s talent.
The 61-page ruling in the collusion grievance contains plenty of fascinaring details. Several of them relate to the contract signed by Broncos quarterback Russell Wilson in 2022, after the trade that brought him to Denver from Seattle.
A deeper dive on the Watson negotiations and eventual deal is coming. For now, it’s important to applaud the instincts of then new-owner Greg Penner.
In contemporaneous notes created by Penner at the time, he wrote this: “2 years left on contract, why not wait?”
It would have been the smart move. Wilson always received new contracts with one year left on his existing deal. The Broncos could have given Wilson a year to prove that he can still cook, before burning millions on his next contract.
But the Broncos didn’t wait, committing $124 million to Wilson in full guarantees from 2022 through 2024. And they cut him in March 2024, before his $37 million injury guarantee for 2025 became fully guaranteed.
Still, the Broncos ultimately gave Wilson $124 million (minus the league-minimum $1.21 million he earned in Pittsburgh last year) for two seasons of so-so football. While not the same degree of disaster as the Deshaun Watson contract for the Browns, it was a very bad deal for the Broncos.
And the Broncos could have avoided it, if they’d simply acted on the instincts of their new owner and waited until after the 2022 season to fashion a new contract (if any) with Wilson.
