On the first day of Denver’s offseason, a bitter Monday following an AFC Championship Game loss, Garett Bolles looked to the future and identified a need for his team.
“We have everything we need,” he said Jan. 25, standing just down the hall from the Broncos’ team meeting room-turned-draft room. “We just need a couple more playmakers and the sky’s the limit for this team.”
It wasn’t the only thing the Broncos’ veteran left tackle mentioned, but it stood out after a season in which Denver at times lacked explosion on his side of the ball.
As the final day of the NFL Draft proceeded Saturday, it stood as the final big milestone on the league’s calendar before Denver starts its official 2026 offseason program a week from Monday. Most of the past three months felt quiet around the Broncos’ building, but suddenly it looks as though coach Sean Payton and general manager George Paton have indeed outfitted their offense with substantially more playmaking potential.
Quarterback Bo Nix, dubbed by Paton earlier this offseason as someone who “sometimes considers himself a quasi GM,” was almost certainly smiling as the actual GM did his thing on Day 3 of the draft.
“We feel really good about the past couple of days and about the team in general,” Paton said Saturday. … “We our depth and helped our team in a lot of areas. We wanted to get younger on both lines and felt like we did that.
“We wanted to get some offensive help, as well. More explosion. I think we helped ourselves at running back and tight end.”
Denver jumped right into action Saturday morning and drafted running back Jonah Coleman out of Washington with the No. 108 overall pick, then snapped up Boise State offensive lineman Kage Casey three picks later. Faced with a long wait to No. 170 overall, Paton and Payton used the sixth-rounder they acquired Friday night from Buffalo and sent both to Cleveland to move up to No. 152. That allowed them to pick North Carolina State tight end Justin Joly. They added another tight end at No. 256 overall in Utah’s Dallen Bentley, an in-line option to go with the pass-catcher Joly.
It was a flourish on the finish of the last big piece of the player acquisition season. Roster building never really ends — Denver signed running back J.K. Dobbins in June last year — but the Broncos now head into offseason workouts and a rookie minicamp early next month with several new pieces offensively.
The biggest, of course, is Jaylen Waddle. The Broncos happily sat on the sidelines during the draft’s first round Thursday night and watched after dealing the No. 30 overall pick plus a third-rounder to Miami last month for the star receiver.
After that, patience paid off.
Denver kept its pair of picks at the top of the fourth round and still landed a pair of players with exceptional versatility.
Coleman is a powerful early down runner, but he also caught 51 passes over the past two years at Washington and is also considered one of the class’s best pass protectors. He’s a complementary add to Dobbins and RJ Harvey — and potential early down protection considering Dobbins has never finished a full season healthy — but is also a strong candidate to begin his career as Denver’s third-down back.
The Broncos, a source told The Post, believe Casey has the traits and the smarts to play any position on the offensive line. He’s likely to start his career as a reserve, but could end up the heir apparent to left guard Ben Powers, left tackle Garett Bolles or right tackle Mike McGlinchey.
Then there’s Joly, a pass-catching threat at tight end who does not have much of a blocking resume but was also used essentially as a big slot receiver at N.C. State.
“I always feel like my hands work really well and I’m a security blanket for my quarterback,” Joly said Saturday. “When you have a great quarterback like Bo Nix, you live life a little bit easier. Overall, just getting better at the run game. I’m just here to do whatever they need me to do.”
He will get plenty of opportunity to earn playing time in the coming months, though Evan Engram is entering the final year of his contract and it’s much cleaner to project a big role for Joly in 2027. Bentley, meanwhile, jumps in as more of an in-line tight end to compete for a roll behind Adam Trautman.
“There’s a little bit of a different vision for those players, but feel like they really add to the depth of the tight end room,” Broncos assistant general manager Reed Burckhardt said Saturday afternoon. … “(Joly)’s ability is run-after-catch, in the scramble drill and then to win one-on-one. And so he fits a lot of those things that Sean’s looking for. He’s got to develop and he’s got a ways to go like all of our rookies to, but he has upside in those areas.”
However it shakes out over the coming months, this is what Paton meant when he said Friday night that Day 3 is about building the roster depth that’s made Denver one of the best teams in football over the past two seasons.
“We felt really good about it,” Burckhardt said of buffeting the offensive depth chart.
Coleman, Casey, Joly and Bentley don’t figure to be Day 1 starters unless injury strikes at their positions. At the same time, Coleman and Joly add tangible talent, upside and youth to positions that needed it. Casey is the Broncos’ highest-drafted offensive lineman since they took Quinn Meinerz at No. 98 in the 2021 draft and has multiple routes to a starting job over the next 12-24 months.
Waddle is the offseason acquisition meant to help Denver’s offense find another gear right out of the gates this fall. This Day 3 quartet, though, is part of the plan to keep the unit in good shape long after Nix becomes eligible for a massive extension next summer.
Given the Broncos’ needs and the players they managed to find on Saturday, however, this group might be called upon to make noise much earlier than that.
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