For the first time in a few years the Denver Broncos will likely have another quarterback competition as they prepare for the 2024 NFL season. With one quarterback already on the roster, the options for Sean Payton to look at have opened up.
Denver Broncos gearing up for QB competition in 2024
Gone are the days of the Paxton Lynch and Trevor Siemian quarterback competitions and the Drew Lock and Teddy Bridgewater competitions. Here are the days of Jarrett Stidham vs. whoever the Broncos decide to add to the position room whether that be in NFL free agency or the NFL Draft.
At the 2024 NFL Annual League Meeting on Monday, the Broncos brain trust of Sean Payton and George Paton were available for interviews. There have been reports out there that suggest the Broncos are comfortable with Stidham as their potential starter, and while that may be true in some context, both Payton and Paton believe in adding to the room.
“He’s definitely competing to be the starter,” Payton said of Stidham on Monday. “I don’t think we have a term ‘driver’s seat’ really. He is going to compete for that position. I know he’s anxious and excited to do that. I’m sure there will be other candidates who will be competing with him.”
The driver’s seat is wide open as the Broncos hope to navigate themselves away from the bumpy ‘ride’ that was the Russell Wilson era the last two seasons. One key term Payton consistently uses to talk about the ‘why’ regarding them adding certain players is vision.
For Payton, the vision with Stidham is still playing out.
“That’s a good question,” Payton said. “Relative to his vision, it’s kind of exactly where we saw it a year ago. We felt like this is a player who can compete, and we felt like he has some upside. [He’s] a young player that has really played a limited amount of snaps relative to the years he has been in the league. Did anything change in those last two games leading to this season? I can’t say in fairness to him or the process definitively that anything did other than we still feel really positive about this player. We’re anxious to see him when he’s getting a lot more snaps and work with the No. 1’s.”
It’s hard to truly measure Stidham’s performance in the team’s final two games, considering he came off the bench cold. In his two games last season for the Broncos he went 40-of-66 passing for 496 yards and two touchdowns, and ultimately going 1-1 as the starter. His production doesn’t contain a large enough sample size to draw a true conclusion on his fit with Payton, so he’ll get the chance to compete in July at training camp.
What is Payton looking for in the next QB?
Whether it’s Stidham or a rookie or veteran player, Payton wants whoever his quarterback is to be able to do a variety of things that translate to how the game is won in today’s NFL.
He’s alluded to the notion that more and more in today’s game, teams need to be able to win from within the pocket. The Broncos offense wasn’t necessarily designed around that last season, and it’s one of the factors that led Payton to move on from Russell Wilson this offseason.
“If you really watch our game and the completions in the framework of our game, it’s decision-making, accuracy, footwork and the ability to improvise,” Payton said. “We don’t always get to play in a clean pocket. Those are just some of the things that we’ll look closely at and then kind of make our own decisions on them.”
If Denver’s plan is to roll with a rookie in the 2024 season, there are things that Payton wants to know in the evaluation process and buildup for the NFL Draft that allows him to understand his potential quarterback better.
“I’d like to find out how they process, how quickly it comes,” Payton said on Monday. “If we send him information at 5 p.m. the prior day, we send him more than we think they’re going to have a chance to study. We’ve all been in that position. It may not have been football. But 5 p.m. on a college Thursday, test on Friday and more than we have enough time to study. How do they handle that? Where’s the break point the next day? Is there one? Do they handle it really well? Do they really struggle? What time are they at the facility? Have they been preparing? Are they early? It’s interesting; it’s fascinating. These guys—they’re not kids—but it’s a good group when we’re talking about some of these younger quarterbacks that—man, certainly they’re prepared. They’ve been well-coached. They’ve been well-coached in college relative to the game. You see the success on the field. It was a harder position 20 years ago. It was a harder time to evaluate the QB and the left tackle and the right tackle. It was an easier time to evaluate the inside linebacker. We’ve kind of gone full circle. We can see plenty of opportunity for us to evaluate what we’re going to ask them to do in the quarterback position. It’s hard to evaluate the inside linebackers. They may not be playing inside linebacker; they may be playing at a different position. So the game has changed, so our exposure to certain positions has gotten cleaner, and then some positions has gotten cloudier.”
The clock is ticking, and the Broncos will be on deck here soon, whether that involves them picking at 12th overall or moving up via trade in the NFL Draft.