Why the Broncos are waiting a month to do their player evaluations

ENGLEWOOD, Colo. — In most years, the Broncos wasted no time making final evaluations on their player performances of the season they just completed. Some years — such as 2016, in the wake of Super Bowl 50 — they had no option, having lost a month of the offseason to the playoffs.

But this year, with the extra time, they’ll wait. They’ll focus on other things, with some in football operations set to go to the practices of the East-West Shrine Bowl, Senior Bowl and other practices for all-star games featuring college talent.

“The personnel side will look at it, get together early February and really get a good objective view of what our team’s going to look like next year and what we need to do,” general manager John Elway explained. “I think that’s why we’ll take the time and evaluate everything.”

When Elway mentioned this Monday, he did so in response to a question about Joe Flacco and what decision the Broncos would make regarding his contract. The Broncos restructured his contract to reduce his 2019 outlay against the salary cap to just $4.9 million by converting $17 million of salary into a signing bonus. The restructure created $13.6 million of cap space in 2019 that will be dead money if the Broncos cut him this year, but the $14.93 million of cap space the Broncos can carry over from 2019 effectively cancels this out and makes the accounting on his deal the same.

So the Broncos will weigh Flacco’s season, his potential value as a backup behind putative starter Drew Lock and the financial ramifications when they evaluate him.

The one-month gap gives the Broncos a chance to free themselves from the emotions stirred up by a season, which coach Vic Fangio says leads to some players being “mis-graded.”

“You make a better objective grade after you watch the entire season again in a logical manner,” he said.

Exacerbating what the coaches and executives might feel now rather than in February is the fact that a season like the one the Broncos completed inflicts an emotional toll that is different than the 5-11 and 6-10 campaigns of the previous two years.

“We’re digging out of a hole the whole year, and that’s a lot more energy starting 0-4 than it starting 4-0 and where we had been the last couple of years starting fast and fading as we went, to dig that deep hole that we dug early, it’s a lot of emotional things as well as physically trying to dig out of that,” Elway said. “I think that’s what made this year so much tougher than most, because of the slow start and trying to do everything we can to get out of it and dig out of that hole.”

The month can also allow Elway, Fangio and the coaches and personnel executives to step back and view a player’s performance over the season as a whole. For those with a burst of positive play in the final four weeks, it offers a chance to have full-year context, which could allow the Broncos to better determine whether a player’s December surge is the sign of more improvement to come or, in the parlance of Fangio, a “false positive.”

This could impact the evaluation of players such as left tackle Garett Bolles. According to Pro Football Focus, Bolles allowed just five quarterback pressures in the final seven games after surrendering 26 in the first nine.

Will the Bolles of 2020 be the one who found his footing late, or the one who struggled early and still led the NFL in holding penalties over the course of the year?

The Broncos feel they can get a better grasp on this by waiting before they make the call and evaluating their own players “like we evaluate free agents or college kids coming out,” Elway said.

“That gives us more time to do it the right way,” Elway said.