Denver Broncos Hidden Gems: 3 Secret Superstars on the 2025 roster

The 2025 Denver Broncos may have as much talent as any team in the NFL. Here are three Secret Superstars who can help them reach their postseason dreams.

Do the 2025 Denver Broncos have the NFL’s best overall roster?

There is a credible case to be made. The 2024 Broncos ranked seventh overall in DVOA — 16th in offense and fourth on defense — and the ceiling isn’t there just yet. The offense will ostensibly improve in Bo Nix’s second season, and Nix showed more than enough in his rookie season for everyone to be confident that head coach Sean Payton found his man at the game’s most important position after the Russell Wilson misfire. Payton’s offense is incredibly complex and detailed, and Nix took to it like a proverbial (Oregon) duck to water.

Of course, if you were lucky enough to watch tape with Nix before he was selected 12th overall in the 2024 draft, as myself and Greg Cosell of NFL Films and ESPN’s NFL Matchup were, this wouldn’t come as a surprise. Not only was Nix misclassified as a chuck-and-duck thrower by some analysts when he actually had (and has) a great deep arm, but his mind for the game blew us away. Rarely have I spoken with a college quarterback with this much on the ball in an NFL-transferrable sense.

And when you get to that defense under Vance Joseph… hoo, boy. Patrick Surtain II is widely recognized as the NFL’s best cornerback, Riley Moss has become a credible bookend, and when the Broncos took Texas’s Jahdae Barron with the 20th overall pick in the 2025 draft, it’s my opinion that they got themselves the next Brian Branch. Like Branch, Barron can play just about everywhere on the field, and he can lock it down from wherever.

Add that to a pass rush that was the NFL’s most disruptive in 2024, and the possibilities of the healthier versions of safety Talanoa Hufanga and linebacker Dre Greenlaw (two former San Francisco 49ers stars acquired in the 2025 offseason), and nobody will want to deal with these guys.

Sean Payton is well aware of the expectations in his third year as the Broncos’ head coach. It’s great to be a preseason darling, but the 2024 postseason saw the Buffalo Bills beat up on his Broncos to the tune of a 31-7 thrashing in the Wild Card round, so he’s all about pumping the brakes until he sees what he really has out there.

“The one thing we have to avoid is this idea that we are going to pick up where we left off,” Payton said in late February at the scouting combine. “I don’t like that because our league has shown that the season ends, and you take the proverbial game board, you take all the pieces and dump them, and you start again. Certainly you are more confident, the experience has helped a number of players, but the journey begins. We don’t shy away from it. Our expectations are high, I am encouraged with some of the things that we did this past season, and yet we are still hungry for more.”

More would be a better record than the 10-7 mark the Broncos put up last season, the third-place finish in the AFC West, and getting past Phase 1 of the playoffs, where you’re more than just a young team looking to put it all together.

These Broncos would seem to have what it takes to get all of that done. In the continuation of our “Hidden Gems” series, we look at three Secret Superstars on the roster — one underrated veteran, one underrated free-agent signing, and one underrated draft pick — who look to be part of the brand new day in Denver.

Underrated Veteran: Safety Brandon Jones

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When you lose a safety with two Pro Bowl nods and four second-team All-Pro designations, that’s generally not a great thing for your defense. The Broncos experienced this when Justin Simmons signed a one-year, $7.5 million deal with the Atlanta Falcons in the 2024 offseason. Simmons was still bringing it in 2023, but the Broncos saved $14.5 million in cap space by releasing him on March 7, 2024, and that was that.

To replace Simmons as the epicenter of their safety group, Denver went after Brandon Jones, who had put up some really good tape with the Miami Dolphins (the team that selected him with the 70th overall pick in the third round of the 2020 draft), and the best was yet to come. Denver stole Jones on a three-year, $20 million contract with $11 million guaranteed, which made him the NFL’s 27th highest-paid safety in terms of Average Annual Value.

Jones was not the NFL’s 27th best safety in 2024; he was quite a bit better than that. In his first season with the Broncos, he allowed 33 catches on 51 targets for 299 yards, 184 yards after the catch, one touchdown, three interceptions, seven pass breakups, and an opponent passer rating of 62.5, which was the lowest opponent passer rating allowed among all Denver starting defensive backs. Jones was especially important and effective when he played in the deep third, which he did on 67% of his snaps. Every great defense needs that deep safety who can roll in two-deep looks or as the last resort in single-high coverage, and that’s what Jones proved to be.

Jones also led the defense with 94 solo tackles, he had 28 stops, and he even picked up five quarterback pressures as a blitzer.

“He’s healthy,” Payton said of Jones in January. “He’s athletic. He works his tail off. He can overtrain at times. He’s a good teammate. He’s been a good addition. Quietly, there have been a number of these guys — I don’t want to say under the radar — that’s not the right term, but important additions outside the draft class that may not have been as higher-profile signings but have found real good roles.”

A Secret Superstar, indeed. Maybe 2025 is the year when everybody outside of the Mile High City realizes how good this guy is.

Underrated Free-Agent Signing: TE Evan Engram

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Throughout his time in the NFL as a play-caller and head coach, Sean Payton has never been a huge fan of multiple tight end sets. Not that he hasn’t benefited from great tight ends — Payton had Jeremy Shockey in 2002, his final season as the New York Giants’ offensive coordinator, and Shockey was productive for Payton’s New Orleans Saints from 2008-2010. Jimmy Graham was obviously a force multiplier for the Saints at the peak of his career, and Benjamin Watson got a lot done in New Orleans from 2013-2015 and again in 2018, but generally speaking, Payton had preferred to have three receivers or two running backs on the field — especially the two-back philosophy, which Payton tends to scheme up as well as anybody.

Which makes the Broncos’ signing of former Jacksonville Jaguars and New York Giants tight end Evan Engram to a two-year, $23 million deal with $16.5 million guaranteed pretty interesting. Last season, the Broncos lined up in 12 personnel (one back, two tight ends, two receivers) on 13% of their snaps, the sixth-lowest rate in the NFL. Adam Trautman was the primary target at the position with 22 catches on 35 targets for 204 yards and three touchdowns, and Lucas Krull, Nate Adkins, Greg Dulcich, and Chris Manhertz rounded out the group.

Not exactly Murderer’s Row, but here’s the thing: When Bo Nix had two tight ends on the field in his rookie season, he completed 51 of 77 passes for 614 yards, 376 air yards, eight touchdowns, one interception, and a passer rating of 119.7, which was the league’s fifth-highest among qualifying quarterbacks. Payton liked to align his tight ends (usually Trautman and Adkins) tight to the formation to one side of the field, or put one tight end on either side of the formation, and the mismatches would begin in Denver’s favor. Payton calls his mismatch tight ends “Jokers,” and he can draw up those plans for his Jokers all day long.

Engram, who caught 47 passes on 62 targets for 365 yards and a touchdown in an injury-shortened season in 2024, could be for the Broncos what he was for the Jaguars in 2023, when he bagged 114 catches on 140 targets for 963 yards and four touchdowns. Even the great numbers from two seasons ago tell you that Engram isn’t a highlight player per se, but that’s not the point, and the Broncos already have vertical receivers on the roster. What Engram brings to Payton’s offense is a veteran’s understanding of how to sink into zone openings, and make all the contested catches in tight areas. Once in a while, he’ll get upfield for a big play, but his real value will be as a security blanket for Nix.

“He’s doing well,” Payton said of Engram in mid-June. “He’s smart. He really works at it. I would say the one thing that’s hard to grade on film is how good someone’s football instincts are. I think he’s showing us each day that he has a real good savvy for the game.”

Engram is very excited to work with Nix, who has as much developmental talent as anyone who has thrown him a football.

“From afar, I paid attention to the Broncos,” he said on June 5. “Me and [Offensive Pass Game Coordinator/Quarterbacks Coach] Davis Webb had a really good relationship. We got drafted together in New York. So even just watching and supporting him, I was always really observant of Bo Nix. It was kind of obviously as a rookie, kind of a slow start last year. He was learning the game, but once he turned it on, you can see it all over the tape. Flying around for the [free agent] visits, [I] got to download some games on the laptop and watch some film.

“The potential is through the roof, and even better is just the way he is as a man, as a worker, as a leader. It’s been really great to get to know him on and off the field. I just love the way he approaches each and every day. I love the way he builds relationships with his teammates. I had lunch with him on my visit here. So he made it a point to be here and meet me. Even that lunch, I was able to just kind of listen to his process and things that he’s working on. Just really impressive young guy. Like I said, the potential is through the roof, and I like to see myself as someone that can come in and help his development and take this team to another level.”

Sounds like a happy marriage already.

Underrated Draft Pick: DL Sai’Vion Jones

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Broncos defensive coordinator Vance Joseph isn’t exactly hurting for pass-rushers. Last season, Denver led the NFL in sacks with 63 AND total pressures with 195. With all the justified talk about the greatness of Patrick Surtain II, the Broncos’ pass rush is a sneaky nuclear weapon, and the guys responsible deserve more national attention. Edge defenders Nik Bonitto and Jonathon Cooper each had more than 10 sacks and more than 60 total pressures last season, and Zach Allen is absolutely the best every-gap pass-rusher nobody ever talks about — Allen’s 14 sacks and 81 total pressures in 2024 were both career highs.

Now, there’s even more spice to the rice with the addition of LSU’s Sai’Vion Jones, selected with the 101st pick in the third round. Like the 6’4, 285-pound Allen, the 6’ 5⅜, 280-pound Jones can get to the quarterback from multiple spots, and he did so at an impressive rate in 2024 — five sacks and 43 total pressures in 349 pass-rushing reps. Jones also had 25 solo tackles, 27 stops, three tackles for loss, and two forced fumbles, so it’s not as if he’s a one-trick pony.

Moreover, with his 82⅜” wingspan (81st percentile for defensive linemen at the scouting combine since 1999), Jones can bull through opposing blockers, and with his agility, he can jump multiple gaps to edge his way into the backfield. And when he gets to the ballcarrier, chaos ensues more often than not.

And though he played on the edge 88% of the time last season, he also created pressure as an interior guy, and Jones intimated that his positional versatility was a primary reason the Broncos wanted him.

“Absolutely,” Jones said on his post-draft conference call. “I feel like I have that ability to be able to play all over the place. I felt like that was one of the main things that the Broncos see in me. When you pick me, you’re drafting a couple of players. I’m not just an edge player. I can play a 4-[tech], a 3-[tech]… I can play across the line. I felt like that’s the reason why they felt like I was a person they should draft.”

General manager George Paton did not disagree.

“He kind of fits our mold of defensive line,” Paton said after the pick was made. “The size — 6’6, 280. We feel like he can continue to grow in that role. He’ll play end for us, but he has flexibility down the line of scrimmage. This guy is long. He’s strong [and] plays with really good leverage. Then, he’s improving as a rusher. You could see that throughout the season, then you got to the Senior Bowl. We thought he had a really good week and played really well in the game. So he’s just going to keep getting better. [Defensive line coach] Jamar Cain has coached him [Cain was LSU’s defensive line coach in 2022], so again, we had insight on him.

“I think what sticks out with him is just how hard he plays. The motor — he goes 110 miles per hour every play, so he fits in with our group. He’ll have time to develop as well as he has good guys in front of him.”

Jones played primarily inside during Senior Bowl week, and he showed that the traits transfer… in any language.

So yes, the Denver Broncos have even more stuff to throw at opposing quarterbacks than they did in 2024. A scary thought, and yet another reason the NFL had better watch out for this team overall.

(All advanced metrics courtesy of Pro Football Focus and Sports Info Solutions).