5 former Broncos quarterbacks competing for jobs elsewhere in 2024
The Denver Broncos have had about 175 different quarterbacks since Super Bowl 50 when Peyton Manning and one of the best defenses in league history led the franchise to its third Lombardi Trophy. Finding a franchise quarterback is difficult, and what makes it even harder is when another team in your own division has hit on a legendary player at the position.
The Broncos have seemingly tried a different quarterback every year since 2015, and a lot of those guys are still floating around the league competing for starter or backup positions.
It's always interesting to see what old flames are up to, so let's look at what a handful of former Broncos quarterbacks have going on in the 2024 offseason.
1. Russell Wilson: Competing for Steelers starting QB job
It feels like the Denver Broncos truly just traded for Russell Wilson. Oh wait, that's right -- they did. The Broncos traded for Russell Wilson just over two years ago, and they moved on from him before his big contract with the team even kicked in.
The Broncos are paying Wilson nearly $38 million in cash this season and are taking on $53 million in dead cap this year. That means that 20.75 percent of the salary cap this year will be occupied by Wilson, and the Broncos have had to build their roster working with 79.25 percent of the NFL's official salary cap.
It's not uncommon for a quarterback to take up that significant of a percentage of your salary cap, but it is extremely uncommon for a quarterback to take up that significant of a percentage of your salary cap and not be on your team. The Broncos are paying Russ this year because they have to, not because they want to. It became abundantly clear that the trade was not going to work out throughout the course of the last two years, and Wilson will now be competing with former Bears first-round pick Justin Fields for the starting job in Pittsburgh.
At this point, it feels like Wilson is the obvious odds-on favorite to win the job, but you can tell that the NFL itself isn't sure if he's going to be able to keep that job based on this year's schedule. The Broncos will play the Steelers in Week 2, and the league didn't schedule that game in prime time. They got the Broncos and Steelers on the docket early in the season because they probably feel like Wilson is going to have the job to open the season, but they weren't confident enough to put that in a primetime slot.