A week out from the first round of the NFL draft, George Paton sounds like a guy who doesn’t stray too far from a phone charger.
The Broncos general manager knows his team’s draft board is close to being firmed up.
But who will be available at No. 20 next Thursday night when Denver’s first selection arrives? Nobody can forecast that exactly.
So Paton and head coach Sean Payton are headlong into attempting to prepare for most scenarios.
That includes not only who Denver hopes to take at its current slot, but also under what circumstances it’s better to try to trade up or down the order.
“We’ve made calls — this week you make a lot of calls and then next week the more serious calls,” Paton told reporters Thursday. “‘Hey, if this player is here, we want to move up,’ or what have you. I’ve talked to most GMs in the NFL to set the table or set the plan of, ‘Hey, if your player is here and you move up, what’s the range?’
“You start talking parameters. It gets more serious next week and then really draft day. Sometimes, you haven’t heard from a team and someone just really wants to come up and they’re aggressive because their player is there.”
Denver’s got a long wait on its hands once the draft starts, but the way Paton and Payton talked Thursday during their pre-draft news conference, they seem to believe they’re sitting in a good spot.
In fact, though they took nothing off the table entirely, they did not sound like a pair aiming to move up in the draft order.
Asked about a general sentiment around the league that this year’s draft class is light on top-end, true first-round graded players, Payton said, “I think we would agree with that.”
“It’s good to be picking 20 if that’s the case,” the Broncos coach added. “We’ve all heard and read — depending on where you are at and what you need — there is a point where we feel like we can get a similar player at this portion of the first round that you may be able to get maybe seven picks up.”
Paton likes the spot even though there won’t be a run on quarterbacks like last year, when the Broncos made Bo Nix the sixth taken at No. 12 overall.
“That pushed a number of good players down into the 15 (range) and 20s that typically wouldn’t be there,” the fourth-year general manager said. “This year, there’s maybe two or three quarterbacks and maybe one in the top 10. Who knows? We think there’s going to be a similar player at 10 that will be there at 20 in our grades.
“We have more players in that area than we do at 1-10. You just work your board and set your strategy based on that.”
What this draft class lacks in top-end sizzle, though, the Broncos say it makes up for in substance.
“We do think there is some strength in the middle rounds — maybe second, third and fourth,” said Paton, whose team holds picks in each of those rounds at Nos. 51, 85 and 122 overall, respectively.
It’s worth noting, naturally, that this is the time of year when teams posture and smoke screen and try to mask their intentions as much as possible.
Taking Paton and Payton’s sentiment at face value, though, the prospect of trading up a few spots makes little sense for compounding reasons: A player of similar caliber will be there at No. 20, so why part with draft capital from the strong part of the draft to move up the order?
Of course, the draft typically delivers some twists and turns. Last year, the first curveball arrived four spots before Denver when Atlanta took quarterback Michael Penix Jr. No. 8 overall after signing Kirk Cousins in free agency.
That shook up the Broncos draft room and many others around the NFL. Of course, they still landed Nix at No. 12 and watched him help lead Denver back to the postseason for the first time since 2015.
So, whether it’s trading up or back, trading back and then moving back up, making a pick at No. 20 and then considering moving up from No. 51, or just standing pat through the opening rounds, now is the time for laying groundwork.
“You always want an exit plan if your player isn’t there or players aren’t there,” Paton said. “Probably every time we took a player in the draft (last year), we had an exit plan if our player wasn’t there. Those talks a week before or the week of help on draft day because you’ve had those communications.”
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