How night in London reveals Broncos OLB Nik Bonitto’s plan for handling superstardom

LONDON — Zayden Gamble broke into a wide smile.

All around the high school junior, postgame festivities buzzed Wednesday night on the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium turf.

More than 100 players and coaches milled around, found their people, gathered into groups for photos and then dispersed. Players from St. Thomas Aquinas High in South Florida and the London-based NFL Academy introduced themselves, talked about a wild game just completed and what a night it had been in the massive stadium.

Gamble laughed with teammates and took in the scene.

Then, through the crowd, he spotted the man he’d been looking for.

Big Nik.

That’s Nik Bonitto, collector of an ever-growing list of descriptors, hardware and status.

A St. Thomas Aquinas alumn himself. Broncos outside linebacker. $106 million man. Budding superstar. Early defensive player of the year frontrunner. And the best pass-rusher on the planet, according to his teammates.

None of that, though, is why Gamble was so happy to see Bonitto on a chance encounter 4,500 miles from Fort Lauderdale.

“He’s basically an idol to me,” Gamble told The Denver Post.

Bonitto’s been that for Gamble, his self-described “godbrother,” for many years.

Much more recently, the Broncos pass-rusher has become many things to many people.

That’s what happens when your star takes off like a rocket ship.

It can be disorienting. Foundation-shaking. Path and process-diverting.

It can be just straight-up mind-boggling.

Just three years ago, Bonitto came here as a wayward Broncos rookie. He logged his first sack at Wembley Stadium and celebrated so hard everything “went black,” he said with a laugh this week. Then he returned to having minimal impact, losing playing time and confidence in concert, and wondering exactly how his career might shift out of neutral.

Now, on his return to London, full-circle moments abound.

On Wednesday, Bonitto talked with teammates about that first sack while sitting on a franchise record-tying streak of three straight games of multiple sacks.

He found out he’d been named AFC defensive player of the week for the first time after racking up 2.5 sacks against Philadelphia in Week 5.

Then he got in a car after a day’s worth of practice and meetings, arrived at Tottenham Hotspur Stadium, walked into the building past a massive photo of himself adorning a wall, down a tunnel and onto the field where his alma mater was playing a football game.

“Life’s definitely changed a little bit,” Bonitto told The Post, “but my approach is still the same.”

‘Big Nik’

Bonitto’s not wild about the spotlight.

He’s not averse to it. He just doesn’t seek it.

Put him on a field full of high school players, though, and he’s right at home.

After STA held off the NFL Academy, 41-38, on Wednesday night, Bonitto and teammates Jonathon Cooper and Delarrin Turner-Yell casually chatted and took photos with anybody who approached them.

“It’s been real cool, just knowing that I was in their shoes once,” Bonitto said. “I would see all the older guys going off to college and doing great things. I would think, ‘Damn, I want to be like that.’ So just trying to lead in that way and show them that it’s possible because it very much is for them.

“They have all the talent and the tools necessary to do what they want to do.”

Four-star outside linebacker Daniel Norman committed to Bonitto’s alma mater, Oklahoma, over the summer. When he did, Bonitto reached out and congratulated him.

“It’s inspirational, first off,” Norman said. “And it’s showing what I can be and what lies ahead of me.”

Gamble and Bonitto go back much further than that.

Their dads were close friends. Bonitto’s father, Vince, is Gamble’s godfather. Gamble’s dad is Bonitto’s godfather.

When Bonitto was a senior in high school, his parents “separated for a bit,” he said. So he and his dad moved in with the Gambles.

Bonitto was doing then what Gamble is doing now: Playing high school football at a high level and sorting through college options. Gamble is considered a four-star prospect in the 2027 class and holds offers from the likes of Miami, Florida, Florida State, Ohio State, Penn State, Texas A&M and many others.

“That’s my guy since I was real young,” Bonitto said. “Obviously, he’s younger than me, but just being able to know him and then see him grow into where he’s at now, being in high school and getting all these offers and stuff, it’s pretty cool.”

Bonitto’s grown, too, even since the last time they saw each other last summer.

“It’s kind of cool seeing somebody I grew up in the same house with become one of the projected defensive player of the year candidates,” Gamble said. “It’s really crazy. But at the end of the day, he’s still just Nik Bonitto in my eyes.

“… I don’t see him as a superstar like everybody sees him. I see him as one of my big brothers. It’s cool that he has all these accolades, but I still see him as ‘Big Nik.’”

Humble and humbled

Gamble’s not alone.

While the rest of the world might see Bonitto as one of the NFL’s up-and-coming stars, seemingly everybody in Bonitto’s world sees him as just about anything but.

Presented with the notion that Bonitto is arriving at true star status recently, Broncos defensive line coach and former OU assistant Jamar Cain agreed, but with a twist.

“My daughter always says, ‘Nik’s been my favorite player for years, Dad. So I don’t see him as that,’” Cain said. “And for me, it’s wild because I don’t see him as a superstar either. I remember him as a 17-year-old kid that we damn near wanted to kick off the team at Oklahoma.”

Back then, Bonitto arrived at college as a teenager who had a lot to learn. About discipline, about going to class, about how to be a good football player and also a good teammate.

He also had a lot of work to do physically.

“I would always joke with Nik in college, like, ‘Bro, you cannot be 200 pounds and not have abs,’” longtime trainer and mentor Jovan Gopie said. “He wasn’t a super chiseled guy. He was just a guy. Most people who saw him then wouldn’t have thought much.”

Bonitto blossomed into a high-quality college player and a likely Day 2 dFL Draft pick. He told scouts and general managers, who largely worried about his size and ability to play against the run, that he wanted to win Super Bowls and someday don a gold jacket at the Pro Football Hall of Fame.

Broncos general manager George Paton and company were thrilled to land him at No. 64 overall in the second round of the 2022 draft, but Bonitto started his career slowly under a doomed Nathaniel Hackett-led coaching staff.

“When he was a rookie here, I was still coaching in college and we’d talk periodically,” Cain said. “He’d call and I’d pull up his film and I’d be like, ‘Bro, what the (heck) are you doing? You look awful.’ It’s, like, embarrassing. I told him, like, ‘I feel embarrassed I told the Broncos to (freaking) take you. You look awful.’”

Midway through the season came the sack in London. Two days later, Denver traded star edge rusher Bradley Chubb.

Dominoes started slowly tipping.

Bonitto had arrived in Denver thanks to one of the picks acquired in the Von Miller trade. The first-rounder Chubb netted helped the Broncos land the rights to head coach Sean Payton.

He brought a culture of discipline, and he also hired Cain.

“When I first got here in the spring (of 2023), I was like, ‘Dude, this is not the player that I know,’” Cain said. “So it was him just building confidence. I remember having a conversation with George when I first got here about when Nik was at Oklahoma, it took like two years for him to get comfortable in his skin and comfortable in the environment. Once he got comfortable, he took off. That’s what happened in Year 3 here. Once he got comfortable in his environment, he took off.”

‘All-time high’

Bonitto’s on-field exploits are obvious at this point.

He leads the NFL with seven sacks, 1.5 more than anybody else, and the most by a Broncos player ever through the first five games of a season.

He’s terrorizing tackles with speed, anticipation and savvy, but he’s also playing the run better than at any point in his career.

Teammates and coaches are asked on a weekly basis to try to find some new way of describing what Bonitto is doing, and at this point, simplicity does the job best.

“If he gets a one-on-one, he’s winning,” defensive tackle Zach Allen said.

Payton? “He’s a super pass-rusher.”

“You know his game has developed when he can go out there and just say, ‘I’m going to make a play’ and he makes it,” reigning NFL Defensive Player of the Year Pat Surtain II said. “It’s just that easy now.”

There are plenty of reasons for the ascension. Bonitto’s bigger and stronger. He’s developed his pass-rush repertoire. He’s become a student of the game, internalizing opposing quarterbacks’ cadences and searching for tackles’ tendencies.

But there’s a more basic factor, too.

“His confidence is just at an all-time high right now, man,” Gopie said. “I love it for him. I don’t think it had to do with anything outside of himself. I don’t think there were any external factors that needed to motivate him. He’s just confident.”

No more Costco

The explosion of attention and a fresh $100 million-plus extension will change life for a 26-year-old.

Fast.

“He used to be able to go to Costco,” Cain said. “Now he can’t go to Costco.”

Those closest to Bonitto, though, don’t see any change in the person.

“He hasn’t changed — he’s become more of a professional, but he hasn’t changed at all,” his running mate Cooper said. “I can’t say enough good things about him, honestly. He’s a brother, and he’s somebody I’ve been rooting for since he got in this league. We’ve grown together and we’ve created this bond together and everything he’s getting, all the accolades, I couldn’t be more proud.”

Surtain experienced something similar a year ago.

He had already been a first-team All-Pro, but in 2024 he was named defensive player of the year and became a bold-face name in the league. What followed, as he described it, was his busiest offseason to date.

“I think it’s natural once you play good, you get that recognition and you get that certain amount of status,” Surtain said. “There’s a way how to handle it. You just keep being yourself, be humble about it and understand that all of this is based on your play.

“The way he’s transcending, he’s going to be even more popular as things go on. His approach is just to be humble about it and to give it back toward his play.”

Toward his play and toward his people.

Bonitto started the Bonitto Family Foundation in recent months, following several Broncos luminaries like Surtain, Miller and Justin Simmons.

He decided during a busy week amid a long road trip to go see Gamble and his high school play.

“It’s literally priceless. It really is,” longtime STA coach Roger Harriott said. “You can’t put any value on that. It’s worth beyond currency. He’s somebody that others look toward and for them to have a direct connection and feel his presence, knowing that he wore the same uniform and came from the same area, it’s an inspiration to these young men to think that somebody who walked the same hallways and is from their community is having an unbelievable experience.

“That’s what allows other people to evolve and do extraordinary things.”

Bonitto himself is evolving and doing extraordinary things.

His first and second London trips are separated by three years, 28.5 sacks and what must feel like an Atlantic Ocean of change.

His high school days are not that far in the past, and yet he’s already become a symbol for what’s possible.

He’s a household name, and yet he’s also still just Big Nik.

“All the stuff I’ve done and accomplished so far has been really cool,” Bonitto said, “But there’s so much more out there for me and for this team that we’re still trying to accomplish.”

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