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.
2. Terrell Owens was a trade target of the Denver Broncos in 2006
In the 2006 offseason, Mike Shanahan was ready to make wholesale changes to his roster. The Broncos got crushed on their home field in the playoffs by Ben Roethlisberger and the Steelers, something that undoubtedly didn’t set well with Mike or Pat Bowlen at the time, because that loss to the Steelers caused the Broncos to miss a golden opportunity against a rather weak Seattle Seahawks team that might have gotten housed by any AFC team in hindsight.
Shanahan was ready to go all-in on some championship-caliber moves, and he ended up doing so, but one move he wasn’t able to make in the 2006 offseason was landing superstar wide receiver Terrell Owens.
Owens’ final game of the 2005 season was a three-catch, 154-yard performance against Champ Bailey and the Broncos before he was suspended and made inactive by Philadelphia. The Eagles were going to dump him, and Shanahan was always more than willing to take on big personalities to try and maximize their talent in his system. And oftentimes, it worked.
Unfortunately, exciting January trade rumors and reports of the Broncos seriously considering the star receiver never came to fruition. Owens ended up getting released by the Eagles in March and to stick it to them, he signed with the Dallas Cowboys where he played three seasons, had over 1,000 yards in each of them, and 38 total touchdowns.
Mike Shanahan had to be sick watching Tony Romo and Terrell Owens thrive in Dallas when he wanted them both so badly.
Although we never got to hear Owens say, “That’s my quarterback,” in orange and blue, we did see the Broncos make some massive moves in that 2006 offseason, including trading for Packers wide receiver Javon Walker, who had a tremendous 2006 campaign with the Broncos.
Still, although the Walker trade was exciting at the time, the much better long-term investment (or short-term, for that matter) would have been Owens.
3. Peyton Manning tried to convince OT Joe Thomas to force a trade to the Denver Broncos
During the 2015 NFL season, the Denver Broncos were one of the best defenses in the league and simultaneously one of the luckiest teams in the NFL. The Broncos were masters of winning close games in 2015, but the offense was not good.
Peyton Manning was both playing hurt and not looking like his usual self. The offense sputtered but the team kept on winning. John Elway was cut from the Mike Shanahan cloth of aggressiveness when it comes to upgrading the roster and making deals, so the Broncos were frequently a team that popped up in trade rumors every year, whether we are talking about the offseason or during the season.
Although blockbuster deals at the NFL trade deadline during the season are rare, there was significant steam building in the 2015 season for the hapless Cleveland Browns to potentially be willing to trade All-Pro left tackle Joe Thomas for the right price. Of course, every Denver Broncos fan wanted that to happen as the offensive line had gone through injuries and bouts of terrible play.
The Browns were asking a lot for Thomas, but frankly, there probably wasn’t a price the Broncos would have scoffed at during that time. They needed offensive line help badly, and for someone of Thomas’ caliber to even be the subject of trade talks? Well, that was exciting.
As Thomas himself recalls, it was Peyton Manning who called him during the season and tried to convince him to force a trade out of Cleveland, even if slightly in jest…
I definitely had the best stories in the podcast game @Thomahawkshow pic.twitter.com/GwdmqViZTF
— Joe Thomas (@joethomas73) August 30, 2018
Although Thomas states he was happy in Cleveland, where he finished his NFL career, he potentially missed a chance to win a Super Bowl in Denver by not finishing his career in orange and blue. If nothing else, he got a great story out of it.
Who knows how different things would have been for Denver had they been able to pull off that trade for Thomas. It would have likely cost the Broncos their 2016 first-round pick (and then some) which was eventually spent on Paxton Lynch. Maybe the Broncos would have waited to draft a quarterback until later in 2016 and taken Dak Prescott, or perhaps they would have waited until 2017 and taken a certain gunslinger out of Texas Tech.
We’ll never know.
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At the end of the day, the Broncos did win the Super Bowl that year, so it’s hard to complain too much.