After winning 10 games and showing they were well ahead of schedule on a roster rebuild in 2024, the Denver Broncos are going to have much higher expectations and aspirations in 2025. This team is still young and hungry, but they are no longer playing with house money in the 2025 season. The pressure is on, and fans will be expecting another step forward from this group in 2025.
Of course, the primary focus is always on which players you've added to the roster helping you get to the next level, but there are always going to be in-house breakthrough players who help take a roster to another level.
In addition to banking on the players the team has added to the roster through free agency and the NFL Draft, if the Broncos can get breakouts from guys already on the team at a handful of positions, this team is going to make way more noise in the AFC this year than anyone really expects.
3 positions Broncos desperately need breakout players in 2025
1. Running Back
Yes, the expectation will be that RJ Harvey plays a major role in the offense after the Broncos picked him 60th overall in the 2025 NFL Draft, but we can't sleep too hard on the players already on the roster at the running back position, either.
Specifically, I've got my eyes on two second-year players for the Broncos who could bring the element of surprise to the offseason fun: Audric Estimé and Blake Watson.
At this point, the team seems to have put a ton of confidence in Estimé, whose scouting report from last year is still alive and well even with one year in the NFL under his belt. Estimé was absolutely awesome at Notre Dame at creating yardage after contact thanks to his body type and physical nature. Unfortunately, as a rookie in the NFL, we saw Estimé struggle with ball security, and it got him in the proverbial doghouse.
The team's confidence in Estimé hasn't waned and they are going to give him a new chance to really seize a "starting" role in tandem with Harvey in 2025.
The other guy I really like is Blake Watson. Watson didn't get many chances last year for the Broncos but flashed enough for them that he made the 53-man roster after the preseason. We saw maybe Watson's most extensive work last year against the Chargers, but I see him taking over that RB3 job this coming season. He's the only holdover at the position from last season who has the "joker" qualities for Sean Payton's offense.
2. Linebacker
If there's one position group to be worried about defensively at this point in the offseason for the Denver Broncos, it's the linebacker position. The near-disaster that was a report of Dre Greenlaw having a quad injury really exposed an area of weakness for this Denver Broncos team that wasn't addressed in the 2025 NFL Draft.
The Broncos are confident in the guys they have at linebacker, apparently, even though they were poaching guys off the street last year to help them out. When you're rotating in guys like Kristian Welch, Kwon Alexander, and Zach Cunningham, you're not in great shape.
The only substantial addition at this position in 2025 was Dre Greenlaw, and to be fair, that was quite a substantial addition. As much as you might worry about Greenlaw's health, he's an absolutely perfect addition for what the Broncos needed.
Otherwise, we're rolling with the incumbents. There is one player, in particular, who could break out for the Broncos at linebacker and really set the defense off: Drew Sanders.
Sanders was a 3rd-round pick in the 2023 NFL Draft and was hurt most of last year. He's a big, long, explosive athlete at the position who can attack the line of scrimmage. If he can take the next step in his game in 2025, this Denver defense won't have a single hole. He's going to have to beat out Alex Singleton and Justin Strnad for starter snaps.
3. Wide receiver
If there's one position where the Denver Broncos desperately need young guys to step up on this roster, it's at wide receiver.
We saw a nice breakout last year from Marvin Mims Jr., but it didn't come until after the NFL trade deadline when the Broncos actually started properly getting him involved in the offense. Both Troy Franklin and Devaughn Vele -- draft picks the team loves -- took their lumps as rookies in 2024.
If the team can continue to involve Mims properly and get a breakthrough from either (or ideally both of) Franklin and Vele, this position could be absolutely set off in 2025. The Broncos used the 74th overall pick in the 2025 NFL Draft on Illinois receiver Pat Bryant, and Bryant should round out this receiver group nicely, but this team is banking on young guys similar to the way we saw back in 2010/2011 with Eric Decker and Demaryius Thomas.
But do these guys have that same level of chops?
The Broncos are believing so. They clearly have taken the approach that no veteran was truly needed on this roster up to this point and we'll see if that opinion holds as the offseason progresses. The issue for the team now is that the veteran market is all but dried up. They need breakout players in the worst possible way at receiver.