ENGLEWOOD, Colo. — The Broncos’ 53-man roster is set… for now.
“You will see in the next 10 days—there is still a lot of shuffling with teams, and we will be one of those teams,” head coach Sean Payton said on Tuesday.
NFL teams had until the 2 p.m. deadline on Tuesday to trim their 90-man offseason rosters to 53-man in-season rosters. More chaos will come as NFL front offices comb through the more than 1,200 NFL players who have been released in recent days.
Payton said he and his staff will be watching tape until 2 a.m. Wednesday morning.
“I think there are 1,400 and something players on that wire that we’ll sift through tonight,” general manager George Paton said. “Sean said we’re staying until 2. He hasn’t done this before. Usually we stay until 5 [a.m.]”
Any player with less than four years of service time will be subject to waivers, where any team can bring him in if they claim his contract within 24 hours. If multiple teams want a player, the team with the worst season-long results last year gets him.
“We claim fifth this year which is high,” Payton said on Saturday. “That’s a good spot to be in. You don’t want to be in that spot but that’s what it is.”
News broke that the Broncos planned to release speedy tight end Albert Okwuegbunam Tuesday morning, just a couple of days after he put up 109 yards and a touchdown in the Broncos’ season finale. The Eagles caught wind of the news and wanted to snag Okwuegbunam, but realized they were unlikely to land him through waivers because, as the reigning Super Bowl loser, they have 31st priority. So they sent a 2025 sixth-round pick to the Broncos in exchange for Okwuegbunam and a 2025 seventh-round pick. The Eagles got their man, and the Broncos improved one of their draft selections.
While cutdown day is behind us, the chaos isn’t over yet.
“The first week and a half or two weeks of this season is very noisy,” Payton said. “It isn’t until about Week 3 where the transaction numbers in our league become fairly consistent.”
For the Broncos, some of the next steps appear to be clear. Paton said that the team has three players to release on Tuesday that are procedural moves. That means they’ll be released on Tuesday and brought back shortly thereafter, probably on Wednesday.
Here’s why: any player who is placed on injured reserve before cutdown day is ineligible for the rest of the season. But any player placed on injured reserve after making the 53-man roster is eligible to return after four weeks.
Cornerback K’Waun Williams is one of the three players who made the roster but will be placed on injured reserve on Wednesday. The other two are unknown, but cornerback Riley Moss and safety PJ Locke haven’t practiced in weeks, making them likely candidates. Rookie tackle Alex Palczewski wasn’t at practice on Tuesday after injuring his hand in Saturday’s preseason game. He, too, could be a candidate.
The three players the Broncos released as procedural moves on Tuesday were defensive tackle Mike Purcell, cornerback Fabian Moreau and offensive lineman Quinn Bailey. All three are expected to be re-signed in the near future to their previous contracts, barring an unlikely hiccup.
One other veteran, wide receiver Lil’Jordan Humphrey, will be back with the Broncos but not on the active roster. According to 9News’ Mike Klis, Humphrey will sign with the Broncos’ practice squad on Wednesday.
Recent changes to NFL rules allow teams to carry 16 players on their practice squad, including four veterans. Practice squad players are allowed to participate in three games during the season, but they need to be added to the 53-man roster in order to play more.
Humphrey spent the second half of last season as a free agent. While he had a good preseason, he probably didn’t catch enough eyes for the Broncos to be worried about him being poached. He can participate in the first couple of games in the season without counting against the 53-man limit. (For what it’s worth, practice squad players earn the minimum salary for players on the active roster in weeks they participate in a game.)
After releasing Humphrey, the Broncos are left with four receivers on the active roster. One of them is Jerry Jeudy, who is expected to miss the beginning of the season with a hamstring injury. But with Humphrey on the practice squad, they should have enough bodies for Week 1.
The rest of the Broncos’ practice squad will take shape over the next few days. The majority of it will probably be young players who were with the Broncos in training camp.
One of those young players is quarterback Ben DiNucci. The reigning XFL passing leader joined the Broncos this offseason as their third quarterback. Typically, NFL teams are allowed to dress 46 players in each game, but a new rule allows teams to dress out 47 players if they keep three quarterbacks on their 53-man roster and all three are active for the game. The rule was changed after the 49ers lost both of their quarterbacks to injury in the NFC Championship game. The Broncos declined the free gameday spot for the third-string quarterback, opting to save the 53-man spot for another position.
“What you had in Philadelphia versus San Francisco was a once in every four-year occurrence,” Payton said. “We like the two guys who are on the roster, and we think we are going to have a good practice squad quarterback. That’s the approach we are going to take. Now, there are some teams that will keep a third on their active. It’s really just your decision on how you want to handle your 53.”
Maybe the biggest quirk in the Broncos’ 53-man roster is that it includes four undrafted free agents. An undrafted free agent has made the Broncos’ roster in 19 of the past 20 seasons, but they haven’t had four on the team since 1997.
“I think it’s important for your team that the best players are getting to the roster regardless of how they got here,” Payton said. “I don’t know any other way to do it.”
Jaleel McLaughlin is the most hyped of the undrafted rookies. He set the all-time NCAA rushing record while playing Divinsion II and FCS ball, and then popped with the Broncos this offseason.
“We were recruiting him. We were hoping he would be undrafted,” Paton said. “You start recruiting these guys early in the process, especially the guys that aren’t going to get drafted. It’s part of the interview process.”
Tight end Nate Adkins is another former FCS star, but he finished his career by transferring to South Carolina. He started slowly, but he provided 140 receiving yards in his final two games, which came against Notre Dame and Clemson.
“The versatility, the toughness, the smarts; he’s a football player,” Paton said. “He’s a guy we had targeted throughout the process just like Jaleel. We almost drafted him. It just didn’t fall. We didn’t have a lot of picks. We were really fortunate to get him as an undrafted free agent.
Tackle Alex Palczewski was a six-year starter at Illinois, and was an All-American last season.
“Tough and smart,” Payton said of Palczewski earlier in camp. “He’s played a lot of football. It’s not always pretty, but there is this quality of ‘he gets the job done.’
Outside linebacker Thomas Incoom finished seventh in the nation with 18.5 tackles for loss last season at Central Michigan.
The final surprise on cut day was a trade. The Broncos decided to ditch kicker Brett Maher and send a seventh-round pick to the Saints for Wil Lutz. Lutz played five seasons under Payton in New Orleans. He was a Pro Bowler in 2019, but was average in 2020, missed the 2021 season with injury and struggled last season.
“Obviously, his numbers dropped off a little bit,” Payton said. “He had a really good training camp for them. We have seen all of his kicks and we got pretty good information on how his practices went. A lot of it was a young player who we think in extremely talented. This is a place where kickers want to be with the altitude and the conditions. We’re excited about that.”
With cutdown day in the books, the Broncos are nearing their season-opening roster. But more work remains.
“If I loved where I was at, then I would probably go home for dinner at six [p.m.],” Payton said.
