Denver Broncos did right during free agency legal tampering period Monday

The Denver Broncos lost defensive end Dre’Mont Jones to the Seattle Seahawks when he agreed to a 3-year, $51 million deal to move on. They ended up spending $139.5 million on two offensive linemen over the course of their contracts.

Those linemen were former San Francisco 49ers right tackle Mike McGlinchey (five years, $87.5 million), and former Baltimore Ravens guard Ben Powers (four years, $52 million).

The offensive line now currently looks like this:

LT: Garett Bolles
LG: Ben Powers (Dalton Risner a free agent)
C: Lloyd Cushenberry
RG: Quinn Meinerz
RT: Mike McGlinchey

Once again, the offensive line shuffles. It shuffled several times during last season because of injuries, with Garett Bolles suffering a broken leg, Cushenberry with a groin injury (they kept him on injured reserve even when healthy), and Billy Turner with a knee injury.

At first, I was hesitant that the team handed out $17.5 per year and a $13 million per year deal to offensive linemen given the team’s recent history of injuries but I also do agree that if you’re going to go all out and get two of the top players on a unit, that’s what you have to do—pay them handsomely. That was a much better move than, say, giving that sort of contract to a single player.

It does hurt that the team moved on from Dre’Mont Jones but they did replace him with Zach Allen, formerly of the Arizona Cardinals, to a 3-year, $45.75 million contract. Ultimately they did cut that difference at the position by $5.250 million. Allen had 5.5 sacks last year and has 11.5 sacks over the last three years after recording zero in his rookie season in 2019 with the Cardinals.

So ultimately, instead of overpaying for a single player (no offense to Dre’Mont Jones whatsoever), the Broncos opened up the checkbook to three separate contributors going forward and filled holes left by the unknown nature of the right tackle position, the free agency status of Dalton Risner, and the departure of Jones.

We’re going to have to wait and see the results, but it appears that Broncos Country is happy. There is hesitation when it comes to the performance of the offensive line. We’ve been scarred when watching it over the last several years. Many years. It’s natural to be cautiously optimistic here.

Denver also re-signed some of their own free agents, the most notable being Alex Singleton.

I would have liked to have seen the Broncos go and get a running back such as Miles Sanders or David Montgomery during the legal tampering period, but there is still time to address that position.