As the Broncos cleaned out their lockers following an eighth straight season out of the playoffs, the only player who wanted to directly forecast a fix to the team’s most glaring issue — the giant question mark at quarterback — was the man staking his flag for the job in 2024.
“I’m very confident that I can be the guy for us next year,” Jarrett Stidham said after going 1-1 as a starter over the team’s final two games. “I have no doubts about that.”
To others among the Broncos’ core expected to return in 2024, the situation “is what it is,” as wideout Marvin Mims Jr. lamented.
After Denver benched veteran Russell Wilson for the final stretch of the regular season, everything indicates the Broncos will move on from the perennial Pro Bowler before his $37 million guarantee for 2025 activates in March. That guarantee became a sticking point between the Broncos and the QB this season, when Wilson said he refused to remove it from his contract when the team asked him to during the Week 9 bye.
The seemingly imminent departure for Wilson, who threw for 3,070 yards and 26 TDs in 15 games this year, will put Denver back where the franchise was before GM George Paton orchestrated the massive trade with Seattle for the QB in early 2022: with no proven signal-caller.
Stidham remains under contract for 2024 and could be a frontrunner for the job simply because of circumstances. The team’s draft positioning won’t do the Broncos any favors in selecting a franchise quarterback in April. The No. 12 pick puts Denver out of the running for the draft’s top-rated QBs, such as USC’s Caleb Williams, and perhaps even out of range for Washington’s Michael Penix Jr., whose stock has risen dramatically despite a history of injuries.
With the Broncos currently projected to be approximately $24 million over the cap and having to eat $85 million in dead money if they cut Wilson, head coach Sean Payton’s options on the free-agent QB market are going to be limited as well.
Despite all those variables working against the Broncos solving their latest QB problem, right tackle Mike McGlinchey said who’s under center in 2024 is “not something I’m worried about.”
“I believe in the front office and I believe in our head coach that they’re going to get that right. Whether it’s moving forward with guys we have, or a change, that’s not my determination or my decision,” McGlinchey said. “At the end of the day, everybody else should worry about themselves before they worry about what’s looming over our program, because everybody’s got to improve. It’s not just a quarterback problem. Everybody’s got to get better.”
While Stidham said he felt like “I definitely grew in those two weeks” as the starter, the results were mixed. The fourth-year pro’s performance was variable during the win against the Chargers and in the loss to the Raiders to close the season. He completed 60.6% of his passes and finished Sunday with 29.9 QBR, ranking 29th of 33 QBs in the NFL’s final week.
“(In terms of accomplishing my goal), one game yes, one game no,” Stidham said. “The goal was to go 2-0 in those two weeks, but I thought we did some good things and some stuff to build on. … To be in this system for a year, that’s huge, because when we come back in the spring, nothing is going to be new. It’s all going to be stuff we’ve heard before, stuff we know how to do and why we’re doing it.”
While Stidham heads back to his home state of Texas to train — and to prepare for the arrival of a baby boy — other Broncos pillars, including cornerback Pat Surtain II and defensive end Zach Allen, insist that the unknown at the team’s most important position isn’t going to be looming over their respective offseasons like it will for fans and pundits.
“Guys have to handle their own business (and not worry about who’s the QB),” Allen said.
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