Broncos Journal: How spender Sean Payton, saver George Paton piece together offseason puzzle will speak louder than words

Sean Payton this week likened each offseason’s roster project to a puzzle. Every year, it’s a different picture with its own sequencing and fitting required. Over 16 years in New Orleans, Payton encountered some difficult ones. Huge salary cap deficits to conquer. Tough choices between important players.

When it comes to roster building and salary cap navigation, sometimes unforeseen circumstances throw a wrench in your plan, whether they’re injuries or surprise attrition or a pandemic that squeezes every team in the league and throws multiple years of planning to the wind. For the most part, though, salary cap management is like your credit card.

You can maximize and be strategic, but you also need discipline. And if you run into trouble, it’s usually of your own making. So as the Broncos set out on a critical offseason with a , the way in which they manage their cap, free agency and the draft will give an indication as to how the club is going to be run by Payton and general manager George Paton under CEO Greg Penner.

“Last year at this time, we were interviewing coaches,” Paton pointed out Tuesday. “Sean and I have been through postseason (evaluations). We’ve been through free agency, the draft, training camp, and now the season. We’ll be able to evolve. We thought the process was really good. We worked really well together, had great collaboration between coaches, scouts and the rest of the building.

“We’ll make some tweaks, and I think we’re going to have a really good offseason.” After a week in which two of the longest running partnerships in football — coach Pete Carroll and GM John Schneider in Seattle and coach Bill Belichick and owner Robert Kraft in New England — ended, the relatively new one between Payton and Paton in Denver is among the most interesting to watch grow from here.

Payton and Paton joked last spring during the draft about being the spender (Payton) and the saver (Paton). Most of last offseason was spent, well, spending. A free agency bonanza. Near league leading spending in total contract value, guaranteed dollars and number of players. Then two trade ups on Day 2 of the draft for receiver Marvin Mims Jr.

and cornerback Riley Moss. This offseason will likely be different, but just how much? That’s up to Paton and Payton to sort through. If the Broncos wanted to create as much salary cap space as possible, they could restructure the deals of last year’s big free agent additions — Mike McGlinchey, Zach Allen and Ben Powers — convert base salaries to bonuses and push the money out into the future.

They could mostly keep a group of high priced veterans together with extensions, void years and, essentially, push as much of the money possible down the road to help curb It might be the most painless route to contention in 2024. But is it wise? Salary cap bills always come due. In New Orleans, the Saints have had a string of offseasons that began with trying to figure out how to move $60 million, $80 million, more than $100 million in cap charges around.

Once a team starts down that road in earnest, it gets more and more difficult to turn back. That’s not how Paton and Penner have outlined the way they see the coming year playing out, but the other routes aren’t going to be particularly pleasant. Or at least they’re not as much fun as opening up the wallet.

“We won’t be in on the first wave of free agency like we were last year,” Paton predicted Tuesday. “You can’t do that every year. We’ll be very strategic and very specific on what positions and what players we try to sign.” The Broncos, obviously, have a lot of work to do. They’ve got roster holes to fill, a draft board to assemble and, yes, at least some money to move around to make the puzzle pieces fit this offseason.

After a Year 1 offseason sprint, Payton and Paton now settle into the marathon. How they run the race will be a fascinating watch. Denver’s final ranking in longtime respected NFL analyst Rick Gosselin’s annual special teams rankings — a major bump up from No. 25 last year. The Broncos not surprisingly finished as the best punt return unit in the league, thanks largely to Mims’ outstanding rookie year.

“We were in the bottom of the league in special teams my first two years here,” Paton said Tuesday before pointing out assistant head coach Mike Westhoff’s own calculations. “Depends on what rankings you look at, but if you look at Westhoff’s, we’re first. But (overall) we’re probably in the top five.

That was a big emphasis.” The season’s finished, so let’s do a scary exercise: Revisiting . It’s going to be a bit of a bumpy ride. First, naturally, the good. 3 5 and 8 9. 3 5 and 8 9. Brilliance at work. What can we say? Except, well, if you take the game by game predictions, the beat writer came out at 9 8.

That won’t make the playoffs in the AFC. Offense 18th, Defense 8th Offense 19th, Defense 27th. Well, if you take out the first five weeks from the defense and that historic struggle, the defensive call might not look so bad. But they all count, man. Greg Dulcich definitely didn’t lead the team in receiving touchdowns with seven.

He actually played in only parts of two games. Courtland Sutton led the team with 10 touchdowns, doubling this reporter’s guess. Oh, and Frank Clark and Randy Gregory combined to play six games and record zero sacks. That made even a relatively modest preseason pick of 22 and 14, respectively, look way too ambitious.

Let’s do it again next year, shall we?.