The true honey hole of this year’s NFL draft, as Broncos head coach Sean Payton so effusively put it Thursday night, lay in the second round.
But the Broncos, evidently, didn’t find a sweet enough fit at No. 51.
As time ticked away on Day 2 in Green Bay, with a slew of top skill targets flying off the board, the Broncos elected to move back from their second-round slot in a flurry of pick-swaps with the Carolina Panthers, ultimately moving back to No. 57. In return, they moved up 11 spots in both the third and fourth rounds, a slight bump up in a class that’s been widely bemoaned for its lack of top-tier options but praised for its sheer depth.
But they weren’t done.
In subsequent minutes, Payton and Denver dangled that No. 57 to Detroit, as the Lions pounced to move up three spots to No. 60. And the Broncos ended up landing another prized fourth-rounder for their trouble, sending away a late-rounder in return.
Deep breath. Let’s recap. Denver started the evening with picks No. 51 (second round), No. 85 (third round), No. 122 (fourth round) and No. 208 (sixth round). After making a deal with Panthers and leveraging with Detroit, they ended up with No. 60 (second round), No. 74 (third round), No. 111 (fourth round), and No. 130 (fourth round).
Thusly, the Broncos essentially elected to drop nine spots in the second round and jettison a sixth-rounder to move up in the third and fourth and add another fourth-rounder — a solid value that hones in at the meat of this year’s draft class.
Payton and general manager George Paton, already, had elected against trading up and selling the farm for theorized fits like Ohio State’s TreVeyon Henderson, who went at No. 38 to the New England Patriots. Other potential Day 2 fits, like LSU TE Mason Taylor or Oregon TE Terrance Ferguson, had long flown off the board. And no obvious skill-position fit had fallen into Denver’s lap at No. 51, a logical spot to trade back after a majority of the fanbase had clamored for the Broncos to move up in Day Two.
“Now in the stretch tomorrow and in the next two rounds, there are a lot of football players that would be, as you went around the league, would have similar grades,” Payton said on Friday.
And Denver, evidently, had similar enough grades on a second-round crop to feel comfortable moving back and targeting the middle rounds, their first draft trade in this 2025 cycle a jumbled but ultimately calculated approach.
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