Broncos believe their methods can keep their big free-agent pickups healthy

The Denver Broncos have a common thread connecting their three most prominent free-agent signees: recent significant injuries.

Not every team would be comfortable with this sort of dice roll on a trio of players who missed a combined 34 games to injuries last season, as was the case for Dre Greenlaw (15 games), Talanoa Hufanga (10 games) and Evan Engram (9 games).

But the confidence Sean Payton and the club have in their training, strength and conditioning and nutrition staff makes this possible.

The confidence comes from results.

For starters only, Denver had just 31 man-games lost in the 2024 season to injuries. This follows a 2023 campaign in which the Broncos had 33 man-games lost by first-teamers — with more than half (17) belonging to Tim Patrick alone.

You could double the total number of man-games lost by starters in the last two seasons and not reach the astronomical total absorbed by the Broncos in 2022 — when their intended first-teamers collectively lost 133 games to injuries.

“When you have 134 players miss games because of injury, something’s wrong,” Payton said in January. “And then when you have 30-something two years in a row, something’s right.”

 

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INJURIES PROBABLY HELPED MAKE THESE PLAYERS AVAILABLE

It’s doubtful Hufanga would ever have been available to the Broncos had he not suffered a torn ACL in 2023 — which was followed by torn ligaments in his wrist 11 snaps into his second game back last year.

San Francisco would have likely tried to re-sign him — or, failing that, found a trade partner last year willing to offer more than the fourth-round compensatory pick that they could be poised to receive for losing him this week.

Engram was a different case, as his salary-cap figure for 2025 — $19.75 million — forced a decision on the Jaguars. His hamstring and shoulder injuries played a role in Jacksonville’s decision, but the organizational reset had a greater impact.

Had the Jaguars finished last season 10-7 and kept status quo with coach Doug Pederson and general manager Trent Baalke, a simple restructure might have been in order — even after his per-catch average dropped to a career-low 7.8 yards. But with a 4-13 finish, a clean sweep of the head coach and GM offices and 18 losses in their past 24 games, the Jaguars opted for $5.98 million in cap savings.

With Greenlaw, words such as 49ers general manager John Lynch’s assertion in December that San Francisco was “interested in keeping him here for a long time” didn’t become action with a contact extension.

Dee Winters stepped in for Greenlaw, starting a majority of the games last season, so the 49ers got a glimpse of life without Greenlaw. San Francisco’s run defense declined, which is part of the reason why it seemed up until last Monday as if the 49ers would keep him off the market.

But with a potential Brock Purdy contract looming, San Francisco appears to be planning for life without the luxury of a cost-controlled quarterback. Considering that Greenlaw dealt with soreness upon his late-season return from the ruptured Achilles, the 49ers determined it wasn’t worth the risk.

Meanwhile, the Broncos’ calculus with Greenlaw — as it is with Hufanga and Engram — is different.

Their calculation is based on cutting the number of games lost by starters down by 71.3 percent compared with the two previous years. With their data and their methods, the Broncos believe they’re playing a different game than most of their competition — and thus, they can take chances others would not.