Have Broncos done enough to replace their biggest offseason loss? originally appeared on The Sporting News.
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The Denver Broncos are on a mission to win the Super Bowl this coming season. That much has been made clear. It’s not a team on the rise or one that is flying under the radar. This Broncos squad feels it could have won it all last year and is preparing to get there this year.
The team’s front office has been preparing for this for some time. A plethora of contract extensions were handed out during the 2025 season to the likes of Courtland Sutton, Zach Allen, Nik Bonitto, Luke Wattenberg, Wil Lutz and Malcolm Roach. Following the season, the Broncos re-signed just about every free agent (unrestricted, restricted, exclusive rights) that it had on the books.
However, since last season, it seemed that defensive lineman John Franklin-Myers would be the one piece the team wouldn’t try too hard to keep, mostly due to cost. This offseason, the Tennessee Titans handed Franklin-Myers a three-year, $63 million deal, worth up to $21 million annually. That was too rich for the Broncos’ blood, apparently.
Assessing how the Broncos have replaced John Franklin-Myers
The Broncos are at least two deep at just about every position on the field. However, the spot once occupied by Franklin-Myers is going to be one of this season’s biggest question marks. The team used its first pick in the 2026 NFL Draft, which didn’t come until round three, to select Tyler Onyedim out of Texas A&M.
Onyedim will join established veteran Eyioma Uwazurike, his former college teammate at Iowa State and second-year player Sai’vion Jones in training camp to see who will assume Franklin-Myers’ former role. It could easily be a committee approach.
Bill Barnwell of ESPN, while examining each AFC teams’ best and worst moves of the offseason, feels the Broncos have not done enough to fill the hole left by Franklin-Myers. Here were his thoughts on the situation:
“The Broncos had a championship-caliber defense last season, and Franklin- Myers was one of the many players who helped Denver come within a quarterback injury of potentially making it to the Super Bowl. After being salary-dumped on the Broncos in 2024, Franklin- Myers put together two excellent seasons in Denver, racking up 14.5 sacks and 33 knockdowns for the Broncos.
It wasn’t a surprise that Franklin-Myers left for former coach Robert Saleh’s Titans this offseason, especially after Tennessee cleared out a space in the lineup by trading T’Vondre Sweat. But the Broncos haven’t done much to replace the veteran, as their only addition so far was third-round pick Tyler Onyedim.
There’s nothing wrong with asking Onyedim, second-year lineman Sai’vion Jones and 28-year-old Eyioma Uwazurike to take on some of Franklin-Myers’ workload, but this is a team with championship aspirations given the Jaylen Waddle trade . General manager George Paton probably was trying to protect the compensatory picks the Broncos earned for losing Franklin-Myers and P.J. Locke in free agency, but with that formula now locked, it’s a surprise that Denver wasn’t more aggressive in pursuing a veteran such as Calais Campbell, who signed with the Ravens, to help become part of the defensive line rotation.”
This is something the Broncos will have to closely monitor this summer as they make their way through camp and the preseason slate. However, if the trio of Jones, Uwazurike and Onyedim isn’t enough, the team could have to look outside the organization at a thin veteran free-agent market for a short-term answer.
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