The Broncos continued adding to their offensive line depth and continued adding former New Orleans Saints to their roster Monday.
They checked both boxes when they agreed to sign veteran interior lineman Calvin Throckmorton to a one-year deal. The team announced the agreement Monday afternoon.
Throckmorton went undrafted out of Oregon in 2020 and signed with New Orleans as a free agent. He spent his rookie year on the practice squad, then started 14 games for Sean Payton and the Saints in 2021. He was with the team again in 2022 after Payton resigned and started six more games
Throckmorton in 2023 spent nine games with Carolina and started seven. Then he finished the season as a reserve in Tennessee.
The 27-year-old has appeared in 46 games and started 27 over the first four years of his pro career.
In Denver, he provides depth to an interior group that has questions at center and mostly young players behind starting guards Ben Powers and Quinn Meinerz.
Payton said last week at the NFL owners meetings in Orlando that Alex Forsyth and Luke Wattenberg are the team’s first options to replace Lloyd Cushenberry at center. Denver also brought back trusted reserve Quinn Bailey on a one-year deal.
Throckmorton, like Forsyth, played his college ball at Oregon. He played several positions in college including center and tackle, but has been a guard in the NFL.
Throckmorton is the second offensive lineman Denver has added in free agency, joining Matt Peart, a 26-year-old tackle who spent the first four years of his career with the New York Giants.
Neither has a clear track to a starting job at this point, but the Broncos must also be realistic about the fact that they’re unlikely to stay as healthy up front this fall as they did in 2023. Offensive line coach Zach Strief rolled out the same starting quintet in each of Denver’s first 16 games before fractured ribs kept right tackle Mike McGlinchey out of the Week 18 lineup. That was a dramatic departure from 2022, when Denver used 10 different starting combinations.
The typical NFL season up front usually falls somewhere between those two extremes.
Throckmorton is the sixth outside free agent Denver’s signed this spring.
Performance-based pay. Nobody’s going to complain about receiving a bonus. A pair of Broncos players got sizable ones Monday.
Meinerz and outside linebacker Jonathon Cooper each checked in among the NFL’s top 25 recipients of performance-based pay, a bonus distributed by the league to players based on a formula that weighs salary against playing time.
Meinerz got $747,505 on top of his $1.095 million base salary (No. 22 in the NFL) while Cooper received $738,916 in addition to his $940,000 base salary (No. 25). The distributions do not count against a team’s salary cap.
Meinerz, a 2021 third-round draft pick, blossomed into one of the NFL’s best guards in his third professional season and started all 17 games despite a mid-season hospitalization for an elevated heart rate. Cooper, a seventh-rounder in 2021, started all 17 games in 2023 and logged a career-best 8.5 sacks.
Also among the top Broncos recipients: Nickel Ja’Quan McMillian, cornerback Fabian Moreau and defensive lineman Jonathan Harris.
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