Taking a trip down memory lane as we get ready for an offseason in 2023, once again loaded with intrigue for the Denver Broncos. The last handful of years since the Denver Broncos won Super Bowl 50 have been mostly sad for Broncos Country. The team has not been overly competitive, although they were close to making the playoffs in 2016 with Trevor Siemian at the helm of the offense and Gary Kubiak in charge of the team.
Through the years, even some of the darkest, the Broncos have been quite aggressive in attempting to upgrade the roster to remain competitive not just in the AFC West, but to try and compete to be the best team in the entire league as often as possible. It seems like that would be the goal of every team every year, but the Broncos had set a different standard in the 1980s and 1990s that carried into the 2000s with Mike Shanahan as the team’s head coach, then obviously again in the 2010s when Peyton Manning came aboard.
The team has made some of the biggest moves in NFL history, including making the deal with the Colts once upon a time for John Elway, a deal with Washington to acquire Champ Bailey, and obviously the signing of Peyton Manning in free agency.
But some other massive moves never got made, although they might have been very close at one point or another. Let’s take a trip down memory lane for a moment and revisit three potentially franchise-altering moves the Denver Broncos almost, but never, made.
1. The Denver Broncos almost traded for QB Tony Romo in 2017
Flashback to the 2017 offseason where the Denver Broncos had just narrowly missed the playoffs after winning the Super Bowl in the 2015 season. This team had just drafted Paxton Lynch in 2016 and Trevor Siemian obviously vastly out-played his 7th-round draft status, but the Broncos were in the market for QB upgrades if the right guy became available.
The right guy in 2017 was apparently Tony Romo, just one year after the Broncos tried (very hard) to get Colin Kaepernick away from the 49ers in a trade.
Romo, at the time, had just been Wally Pipp’d by Dak Prescott and was contemplating whether he would be playing football or leaving the game completely. There were rumors swirling for a while in the 2017 offseason that Romo was considering the Broncos, the Houston Texans (this was the year Houston later drafted Deshaun Watson), and TV opportunities.
In terms of his best long-term options, Romo made the right decision going to CBS and calling games alongside Jim Nantz. He’s very good at it, and became known early on in his broadcasting career for predicting things out loud before they ended up happening.
It sounds like the Cowboys were willing to work with Romo to facilitate a trade of late-round picks to send him to his next NFL destination, and if Romo had his choice, it sounds — in hindsight — like he would have picked the Texans at the time. Perhaps the Broncos just didn’t offer enough money to Romo and they were confident that if they couldn’t get him, they could somehow still develop Paxton Lynch.
One way or another, the fact that we never saw Romo in orange and blue is pretty crazy considering the fact that Mike Shanahan — a fellow Eastern Illinois alum — wanted to sign Romo as an undrafted free agent when he came into the league in 2003, and given the team’s QB situation at the time, it’s sort of shocking he didn’t take him up on that.
So, twice Romo was pursued by the Broncos, and twice, he turned them down. How different could things have been if Romo had said yes to Denver? We’ll never know.