How Greg Penner’s leadership has steered the Broncos through three completely different offseasons to a bright future

PALM BEACH, Fla. — Greg Penner hasn’t seen everything as Denver Broncos controlling owner. That’s because in the National Football League, when you think you’ve seen it all, something happens that reminds you that you haven’t. The sport and the business associated with it are humbling in that way.

But Penner has seen quite a bit. This is his third offseason — which, for an owner, ends up being just as vital to success as the actual season itself.

Each offseason has taken place under entirely different parameters, with new lessons from each.

In the first, his Broncos navigated a coaching charge, a cultural shift with Sean Payton’s arrival and a dearth of draft capital that forced them to spend heavily in free agency to patch up the roster.

“We had players on the roster that didn’t fit the makeup of the type of players we wanted. We made a change with the head coach,” Penner recalled.

“So, a number of things were just getting the right people in place.”

Two years later, it’s fair to say that mission was accomplished.

Penner’s second offseason saw the Broncos have their first-round pick — but also possess the second-highest single-season, team-wide dead-money figure in NFL history. It forced them to be intentional in their moves — and provided a lesson for the organization.

Yes, the Walton-Penner group has access to cash reservoirs that most NFL teams do not possess. But simply diving into them willy-nilly isn’t wise business.

“Cap constraints actually helped because it did get us focused and applying that, there are other areas where you can just spend — coaches’ salaries, facilities, the health and training room — those areas, you can spend as much as you want. So, then, it’s really — how are we going to make decisions?” Penner said.

“… So, now it’s inserting more discipline into the process, because if you start to run something where everybody just thinks, ‘Oh, we can spend whatever we want,’ you lose focus and discipline.”

When forced into a narrow range, misfires are magnified. You must select precisely. And despite the tight cap, organizational expectations were the same in offseason No. 2: Improve and build on the three-win jump from 2022 to 2023.

After all, the Rams, Eagles, Packers and Buccaneers qualified for the 2023 postseason despite dead-money cap figures of at least $60 million. An estimated $89 million of total dead money was never regarded as an excuse to punt the season.

The 10-7 wild-card finish last season surprised multitudes. It didn’t surprise Penner or anyone within the building. That was the expectation all along.

Offseason No. 3 is, in some ways, the first “normal” one of the Walton-Penner stewardship. But “normal” is relative. And it’s always shifting.

“But then each time you go through a season, it’s thinking, ‘OK, what’s necessary now? What leadership is required?’ And you’ve got to adjust,” Penner said during the NFL Annual Meeting.

“And the message now is, ‘Nobody should be feeling comfortable with where we are just because we made the playoffs, because our expectations are much higher.'”

The pats on the back didn’t last long. Sure, there was some level of satisfaction about the first winning season since 2016 and the first playoff appearance since 2015.

But if the Broncos merely match those accomplishments in 2025, the feeling next January will be far different than the sentiment around Broncos Park Powered By CommonSpirit three months ago.

Any excitement over moving into a new headquarters building would likely be squelched by frustration over failing to build upon the foundation of 2024.

“The good thing is, Sean and I are totally on the same page with that approach,” Penner said. “We need to be competing for Super Bowls, not making the playoffs.

“So, you do have to change the message is, depending on where the organization is at that time.”

But some messages are consistent. One lingers from the second offseason of handling a cap crunch: fiduciary prudence.

“We do a town hall [within the organization] twice a year, and in the last town hall, I spent a lot of time talking about what our values are. And one of those key values is, we’ve got to have financial discipline,” Penner said.

“We’re going to provide the resources that are necessary to win, but at the same time, we’ve got to be disciplined.”

HOW PENNER HELPS LEAD THE ORGANIZATION

The town halls are just one manifestation of how Penner and Carrie Walton Penner guide the Broncos and maintain active presences. In the tradition of the late Pat Bowlen, they are visible and present, but not obtrusive.

They believe in the role of ownership to provide resources fostering a successful organizational culture, while ensuring accountability — manifesting in areas such as the afore-mentioned reminders about financial discipline.

But of perhaps greater importance is leadership tailored to people within the organization. You don’t get that unless you actually get to know the people within the corridors.

Take the coaching staff, for example. It’s full of high achievers working excruciating hours. Of course, as Hall of Fame coach Bill Parcells once said, “Football is not a game for the well-adjusted.”

Perhaps Parcells was being a bit blunt and over-the-top, but any football staff blends a fascinating cocktail of personas.

Penner knows it’s part of his job to understand them and facilitate their success.

“I think part of being a good leader is figuring out what is the right approach,” Penner said. “Everybody’s got individual personalities and different needs.

“I think all these coaches, what makes them great is they’re so passionate about the game and they work like crazy. And with that comes some ups and downs, and it’s my job to figure out the right way to work with them on that.”

THE UNIQUE CHALLENGE OF INHERITING A LEGACY

Penner also faced something unique in settling into his role as controlling owner of the Broncos — following a Hall of Fame owner, while not being the scion of one.

Now, Penner, Carrie Walton Penner and the Walton-Penner group didn’t immediately succeed Pat Bowlen, because the trust in Bowlen’s name administered the team for eight years prior to the completion of the sale in August 2022.

But the Broncos were still very much Bowlen’s organization after he stepped away in July 2014 due to Alzheimer’s disease, and after his death in June 2019 due to the illness.

One could fill a library with words written about the difficulty of replacing a Hall of Fame quarterback, and certainly the Broncos know this well from their experience trying to succeed John Elway and Peyton Manning.

It might be a more difficult task to properly succeed a Hall of Fame-caliber owner, which was part of the unique challenge that befell Penner and the Walton-Penner group.

But while the overarching Bowlen commitment remained, Penner realized that adjustments to bring the Broncos forward into the 2020s were necessary.

The day after dismissing Nathaniel Hackett late in the 2022 season, Penner pointed to the team’s injury rate as a cause for concern, revealing that a review of the Broncos’ catastrophic injury rate was already in progress; he’d already consulted with the NFL’s chief medical officer, Allen Sills.

An outgrowth of this came through Sean Payton installing Beau Lowery to supervising training and nutrition, and the Broncos went from one of the most-injured teams in the NFL to the league’s least-injured team for two successive years.

“The training room is good,” Penner said, noting that before 2023, ‘They hadn’t been investing a lot of things on the medical side, and now we’ve got that.”

BLENDING A NEW VISION WITH INSTITUTIONAL KNOWLEDGE

Still, there was a line to be walked upon taking the helm — to make changes, but not to clear-cut the organization.

Today, 12 Broncos executives at the vice-president level or higher hold Super Bowl rings that boast the inscription “This one’s for Pat,” emblematic of being around for the Super Bowl 50 triumph a decade ago. Such institutional knowledge is invaluable for bridging the past to the future.

It’s similar to what Bowlen did four decades ago. For example, on the personnel side, Penner inherited George Paton; Bowlen had John Beake already on hand.

Just as Beake proved invaluable in the 1980s and 1990s, eventually helping build two Super Bowl winners, so, too, did Paton, and one need only look at the collection of Pro Bowlers and All-Pros added despite the dearth of recent draft capital to find evidence of the wisdom of keeping Paton in the GM’s chair.

Contrast how Penner has handled his stewardship of this Colorado treasure with the last time the estate of a similar caliber of owner to Bowlen sold an NFL team. That was 26 years ago when Washington’s NFL franchise was sold.

Under Jack Kent Cooke’s ownership, Washington won three Super Bowls — just like the Broncos did with Bowlen. With Cooke, Washington poured every possible resource into supporting football operations, giving a fervent fan base a team in which it could have immense pride.

Then Dan Snyder bought the team in 1999.

Where Penner observed, learned and then operated with a skilled surgeon’s precision, Snyder recklessly wielded a chainsaw. Two decades of chaos, tumult and scandal followed, turning one of the NFL’s crown jewels into a punchline.

Snyder and Washington showed how this type of transition could careen toward oblivion.

Nearly three years after the sale, Broncos Country can breathe easy. The team got the right people to run the show.

And now the Broncos might have something never before seen in the NFL, a transition from one Hall of Fame owner to another of equal standard who wasn’t from the same family.

This isn’t like the Rooneys of Pittsburgh or the Maras of New York, of course. But from Bowlen to Penner, it appears to have the same effect: a standard of excellence in governance and high standards.

Whether the on-field success is similar is to be determined, but early signs of progress are favorable.