Denver Broncos 2020 mock draft: Filling in the remaining gaps
The Denver Broncos have a chance to build around a possible franchise QB with lots of cap space and great 2020 NFL Draft capital.
Four games into the Drew Lock era for the Denver Broncos, it’s apparent this team has something at the quarterback position it hasn’t had in a very long time — a future.
Even with Peyton Manning, we all knew the window was no more than four or five years. The Broncos haven’t had such a promising talent at the quarterback position since Jay Cutler took the reins back in his 2006 rookie season.
When the Broncos traded Cutler away, they traded their best shot at a long-term franchise type of player at the position, but the Cutler trade also set in motion a lot of different moving pieces which ultimately led to the Broncos winning their third Super Bowl in franchise history.
The point is, the Broncos have hope at the quarterback position. Lock has shown himself to be not only physically capable of being an effective starting quarterback in the NFL, but he’s also been doing a good job of adjusting to what defenses are throwing at him, reading things before the snap, identifying coverage tendencies, and showing that the ‘moment’ is not too big for him.
As talented as Lock is, the Broncos only have one game left to play with him at the starting quarterback position that is really without consequence as it relates to the NFL postseason. Next year, the Broncos will begin with a clean slate, not only in terms of their win-loss record, but in terms of the expectations everyone has for them.
As promising as Lock has been, the expectation is going to be that with a fully healthy roster and all of the assets the Broncos have at their disposal this offseason — upwards of $85 million in cap space (when cuts go through) and five top 100 draft choices — this team will actually have a shot at making some noise in 2020.
In order to do that, the Broncos need to get healthy. They need their big-money free agents in 2019 to show up in 2020. They need to nail 2020 free agency.
And they need to nail the 2020 NFL Draft.
We’ll run tons of simulations of the draft and go through many scenarios between now and April, but I really like the latest simulation I ran on The Draft Network’s mock draft machine for all seven rounds (no compensatory picks projected yet).