How Zach Strief, Broncos built offensive line development machine and why it might decide their AFC West fortunes

Zach Strief heard the play call and jumped on the radio.

The Broncos offensive line coach figured Sean Payton knew, but he wanted to be sure.

The fourth quarter had already delivered chaos, after all, and it just kept coming.

Justin Strnad had just logged the biggest defensive play of the game last Sunday against the New York Giants. Denver’s offense took over at New York’s 19-yard line with 4:47 remaining and trailing by 10.

On first-and-10, quarterback Bo Nix and running back RJ Harvey couldn’t link up down the sideline. Behind the play, though, right tackle Mike McGlinchey had his right ankle rolled up on by Giants defensive tackle Dexter Lawrence and had to be attended to by trainers.

Payton called his next play in to Nix. It featured the quarterback in the gun, empty formation. No help for the offensive line.

Strief buzzed the line coaches use to communicate throughout the game.

“Hey Coach, you’ve got Frank Crum in at right tackle. His first play,” Strief said.

“What?” Payton responded.

“You’ve got Frank in,” Strief reiterated.

With the stoppage, Payton had a beat to consider his next move.

“Right,” he said.

Payton doubled down.

Crum, the second-year undrafted free agent out of Wyoming, jumped out of his stance at the snap, threw his hands at Kayvon Thibodeaux and then anchored down when the 2022 No. 5 overall pick tried to bull rush him one-on-one.

“Didn’t get anywhere near the quarterback,” McGlinchey said proudly.

Nix calmly stepped up in the pocket and hit Troy Franklin for 5 yards. Then Crum held his water as Nix hard-counted and Tibodeaux jumped offside. First and goal. One more quality pass set followed, and then Nix threw a 2-yard touchdown to Harvey.

McGlinchey returned the next series and finished the game through pain.

The Broncos, of course, came back and beat New York, 33-32.

“I texted Frank after the game and just said, ‘Hey, we don’t win the game without that drive,’” McGlinchey said. “Impressive, impressive stuff.”

“You’re fresh off the bench with nothing,” right guard Quinn Meinerz marveled at Crum, who had been inactive the first six games of the year and had played a total of three garbage-time snaps at right tackle in his pro career.

“It was phenomenal,” said Alex Palczewski, who would normally be the next man in at right tackle except he’s now the Broncos’ starting left guard after Ben Powers tore his bicep in Week 5 and Matt Peart tore his MCL in Week 6.

It was more than that.

Crum’s brief appearance combined with Palczewski’s stout debut at left guard against a terrific Giants front provided a stress test for one of the most important elements of Payton’s building project in Denver: An offensive line development operation that’s hummed, often in the background, for most of the last two-plus seasons and now looks like it will play a vital role in whether the Broncos can make a run at an AFC West title.

“It’s always been valued in Sean’s programs,” Strief, who played for Payton for 12 years and is now in his fourth season coaching for him, told The Post. “Ongoing skill development. …  The great thing and the fortunate thing for us is we have a room full of guys who really care, and they work their tails off, and it’s important to them.”

Continuity tested

The Broncos’ top offensive linemen have forged a deep bond over the past two-plus seasons.

They’ve played together. A lot.

Denver’s only seen one starter depart the roster since Payton took over: center Lloyd Cushenberry after the 2023 season.

That fall, the same quintet started the first 16 games of the year and played 86% of the season’s snaps together before McGlinchey broke ribs in a friendly fire incident and missed the finale.

Last year wasn’t so fortunate on the injury front. McGlinchey and center Luke Wattenberg each did a stint on short-term injured reserve. But the starting five played 56.1% of the team’s snaps together, and, because of the way the injuries lined up, they usually had four preferred starters available.

They got off to a hot start this year, too, as the top five played all but a handful of late-game, garbage-time snaps against Cincinnati and two reps against Philadelphia together through five weeks.

Over Payton’s first 40 games here, the Broncos played 70.6% of their snaps with all five preferred starters on the field and 97.3% — all but 70 snaps, not counting end-of-game sequences in blowouts — with at least four preferred starters, according to analysis done by The Post.

The only exceptions came in 2024: 10 snaps in Week 5 and all of Week 6.

Until Sunday.

McGlinchey has practiced this week and is in line to be back in the lineup against Dallas, but with Powers and Peart out for extended periods and Palczewski now playing full-time, this will be the longest stretch so far under Payton in which any injury means dipping down the depth chart. That, naturally, means having to rely on less-proven and less-heralded players.

The Broncos planned to lean heavily on their veteran, expensive offensive line to get where they want to go this fall. They have a still-young quarterback and a set of skill position players who are good but not overwhelming. This is a team built to control the line of scrimmage and win from there.

All of Bolles, Powers, Meinerz and McGlinchey are among the top-10 paid at their position. Only Wattenberg is on his rookie deal.

Behind them are a pair of undrafted tackles in ‘Palcho’ and Crum, 2023 seventh-rounder Alex Forsyth and journeyman Calvin Throckmorton.

That the returns on depth so far are good, Meinerz says, is a testament to Payton and the front office, but perhaps Strief more than anybody.

“Signing my contract, signing Ben’s contract and Mike and ‘GB,’ there’s not going to be a ton of draft picks that are going to be given to the o-line coach to pick guys,” Meinerz told The Post. “So he’s done an incredible job of evaluating talent in the undrafted space and some of the late-round picks. Not only evaluating talent but also building a culture and a foundation that allows for those types of players to build and become technical.”

‘Palcho’ power

After Powers got hurt in Philadelphia, Peart was a natural replacement.

He’d played the left side throughout camp, while Palczewski manned the right side.

Once the Broncos got home from London and realized the severity of Peart’s knee injury, though, the conversation turned to “Palcho.”

The simple goal, given Powers is looking at missing somewhere in the neighborhood of 6-8 more games, is to get the five best players on the field.

So Strief came to him and asked him to switch sides.

Mind you, it’s not like Palczewski’s been playing right since training camp. He’s been almost exclusively on the right side in the NFL and through six years and 65 collegiate starts at Illinois.

“I don’t know that there’s a harder thing to ask a lineman to do than go from — he’s a right tackle, OK — to go play left guard,” Strief said. “It’s about as hard as it gets. The conversation about him and making that call to have him play was, we knew he’s mentally as tough as can be. He’s physically tough, and he’s going to go fight. Smart, tough, physical is a really good combination for offensive linemen.”

Meinerz flipped back and forth some his rookie year and understands the challenge. During Wednesday’s practice last week, he checked on Palczewski a couple of times just to make sure he wasn’t getting bogged down.

“I knew what he was going through mentally,” Meinerz said.

Imagine trying to drive a car on the other side of the road. Or going through your day seeing only via a mirror.

Or, the offensive line room’s preferred analogy: “It’s like trying to wipe with the other hand,” Meinerz said. “You can get the job done, but it feels weird.”

“Might need to wash your hands a couple times,” Palczewski chuckled.

The Broncos tapped him for the job, though, because they know he can handle some mess.

“It just shows the trust that they have in me,” Palczewski said. “Another big thing for me that I just kept writing in my notebook was, ‘Be you.’ Like, there’s going to be a lot of stuff. I’ve only played this spot for a week. So just play with aggression. Play hard. Play with high effort. Play to the echo of the whistle.

“A lot of stuff will work itself out.”

Under the radar

The Broncos landed Palczewski and Crum in post-draft free agency consecutive years in 2023 and 2024, respectively.

Both made the 53-man roster as rookies, but each had inauspicious first seasons. Palczewski spent most of his first year on injured reserve.

Crum had such a rough go his first training camp that, after he made the team, general manager George Paton acknowledged, “He’s still raw,” but added, “you don’t get many 6-7 guys or whatever he is that can bend like he does and has the power that he does.”

There was a natural explanation for the struggle: He hardly had to pass-protect at Wyoming.

“The drop-back passing game was somewhat foreign to me,” he told The Post this week.

Crum had all the physical attributes a team could want, but his senior year tape at left tackle was dotted with him getting pushed backward.

Strief, though, liked what he saw earlier in Crum’s Laramie tenure when he played right tackle. He could brace — get himself squared up with his rusher — and he could anchor down.

“So you start saying, OK, he’s got that natural ability,” Strief said. “Palcho has that natural ability. Now we just refine it, teach them how to move and get to it. None of it’s magic. It’s basic body mechanics and fundamentals. But it’s just processing it so that they can understand it.”

Both players came to Denver for pre-draft visits. Strief, Payton and the Broncos put the hard sell on.

Here’s what you do well. Here’s what you don’t. If you don’t get drafted, you’re going to have options. But sign here and you’ll get coached hard and put on a plan we believe in.

“What’s fascinating to me with both of those guys being available is they’re both good athletes — above the line athletes,” Strief said. “Frank’s an exceptional athlete. They’re both gritty as can be. So I don’t know how a guy like that slides. I just know that our job in the building is to make everyone feel the desire.

“We had high grades on both of those guys — way higher than undrafted free agents.”

It’s taken time, but both are starting to show that progress, present value and future upside.

So much so, in fact, that Payton told reporters after the cutdown to 53 players in August that three teams called to inquire about trading for Crum.

“That ceiling is high,” he said then.

A developing situation

There is a simple truth to life on the line of scrimmage, Strief says.

If the man across from you can power through you, he’s going to.

That’s why it came as no surprise Thibodeaux bull-rushed Crum on the first snap Sunday. A smart opening test, but also a basic law of the trenches.

“We love guys that can anchor,” Strief said. “If you don’t get bull-rushed in this league, you’re 80% of the way there.”

That is the physical bedrock for playing offensive line in Payton’s system.

In fact, when linemen report for offseason workouts each spring, they start in the same spot.

On the grass without their shoes.

“We want them to understand where weight should sit in their feet, where they can create power,” Strief said. “It starts literally that elementary. Every season. I tell the vets all the time, I know you wish you could come back and just be where you were at last season, but it doesn’t work like that.”

McGlinchey arrived here in 2023 with five years under his belt as a 2018 first-round pick and a new $87.5 million contract. Bolles had already made multiple Pro Bowls. Meinerz was an ascending player heading into his third year.

They quickly bought what Strief, a first-time leader of an offensive line room, was selling.

“He’s helped everybody see a clear picture of what he’s looking for, what works in this league and then not only ferociously coaching the technique and the body positions and all that stuff, but he coaches the mind,” McGlinchey said. “You don’t really get that a ton at the NFL level because there’s so much (stuff) going on that you have to cover in a day.”

Strief knows the time crunch, too. So he decided early on he needed to prioritize. It might sound strange, but with smart players, he figured there was a simple part of the process he could slim down considerably: Snap-to-snap assignments.

“I don’t want to spend all my time telling you who to block,” he said. “I can tell my mom — I could teach my mom who to point to and who she’s supposed to block. I can’t teach her how to do it. So we spend a lot of time on technique. We assume they know who to block.

“And so we spend a lot of time learning the fundamentals and mastering the fundamentals.”

Fundamentals and mentals.

“You realize that all the work you do and the positions you put yourself in, your body is ready for it,” McGlinchey said. “Your body is always ready for it. And your technique is always there. The only thing that gets in the way of that is if your mind gets in the way of that.”

It doesn’t matter if you’re McGlinchey in your eighth year with 105 games under your belt or Crum getting thrown into a hot spot for the first time.

“There’s a pretty detailed process of developing those guys,” Strief said. I think if they commit to it, it’s all technically sound and fundamentally sound. If they commit to it and invest in it, it creates a guy who can withstand the NFL.”

It’s helped create depth that the Broncos think can withstand the attrition of an NFL season. Perhaps they’ll still survey the market as the trade deadline approaches in a couple of weeks. They certainly hope Crum can wait in the wings as a swing tackle without actually being forced into extensive action.

At the very least, Denver looks like it has short-term depth and intriguing long-term options in a pair of undrafted tackles who have taken teaching, learned from veterans and now might have a big say in the club’s fortunes this fall.

“At the end of the day, how you get into this league is irrelevant,” Strief said. “It’s what you do once you’re here. Both of those guys — I know there was interest in Frank coming out of the preseason. People probably didn’t even bother with Palcho because they know we’re not going to let a player like that out of the building.

“Both of those guys, I think, when we look back at their careers, they’re each going to have really successful careers.”

Continuity up front

The Broncos offensive line has operated with relative stability during the Sean Payton era, with their five preferred starters playing a majority of the snaps together. That will change now with Ben Powers out for an extended period. Here’s a look at the percentage of snaps the Broncos have had their preferred starters play together since 2023:

* Minus end-of-game subs in blowouts

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