After Denver Broncos legend John Elway stepped out of the front office and handed the team's personnel decisions over to someone else, the hiring of general manager George Paton was met with a lot of excitement.
The team had conducted a thorough search and landed on Paton, who came in starting with the 2021 season after spending six years in the front office of the Minnesota Vikings. But as the Broncos continue to spiral downward and sit at 1-3 on the 2023 season, Paton's ability to perform the job well is seriously in question.
He has made some poor decisions since being the man in charge and the list of good decisions is currently not very long. When the Broncos went under new ownership in the summer of 2022, it was a bit of a surprise that Paton wasn't already relieved of his duties after the team suffered through two poor seasons under his direction.
Paton was allowed to stay on in 2023 but the leash is clearly short and because of these four decisions, I predict that Paton will be relieved of his duties following the 2023 season, if not sooner.
The signing of Randy Gregory
This is fresh in the news as the Broncos chose to surprisngly release Randy Gregory on Wednesday. It's only a surprise because of the amount of money the team gave him, it's not a surprise at all considering how poorly he played.
On top of the poor play, Gregory looked like a guy who didn't even want to be on the field. Paton took a chance on the pass-rusher despite a turbulent tenure with the Dallas Cowboys. Still, when the team signed him in March 2022 to a five-year, $70 million deal, it appeared to be a real feather in the cap for Paton, as the Cowboys clearly wanted him back.
I can't deny it, I was a big fan of this signing, as evidenced by the grade I handed out when the deal was made.
The Broncos will still owe Gregory another $10.9 million for the 2023 season and in total, he played in just 10 games for the team and had a total of three sacks. That will lead to him being one of the worst free-agent signings in team history.
What will make this deal unforgivable for many Broncos fans is the fact that it seems Von Miller was interested in a reunion after being traded to the Los Angeles Rams in 2021. Rather than entertaining that idea, Paton never considered Miller and instead signed Gregory.
Bad move and since all of the other moves on this list happened earlier, this may be the one that ends up being the final straw.
Too many marginal draft picks
Paton has not presented himself as a draft guru, to say the very least. This is an area that every GM needs to hit on more often than not.
In 2021, he was able to land Patrick Surtain with the No. 9 overall pick. He also found Quinn Meinerz, Baron Browning, Javonte Williams, Caden Sterns and Jonathon Cooper in that class.
Meinerz and Cooper have been productive players. Williams has had injury issues and Browning has yet to play at all in 2023 due to an injury. Caden Sterns is out for the season with an injury. None of those players should be considered a bad pick, but they certainly haven't been great.
Surtain is considered by many to be the best cornerback in pro football. That is debateable, and still many Broncos fans grilled Paton for not drafting Justin Fields with that pick. For me, he is never getting off the hook for not drafting Micah Parsons, who was the best player in that entire draft, no matter what Surtain ever does.
The 2022 draft was just bad. Paton took Nik Bonitto, who is all the rage right now after finally having a good game, Greg Dulcich, who has been hurt for much of his career and Eyioma Uwazurike, who is suspended indefinitely for violating the league's gambling policy.
He also drafted Damarri Mathis and Delarrin Turner-Yell, two players who have absolutely struggled in their second year in the league.
Paton only had five picks to work with in the most recent draft, but that was due to some poor roster management as well (more on that later).
Marvin Mims appears to be a great pick but the jury is certainly still out on every other player drafted this past spring: Drew Sanders, Riley Moss, JL Skinner and Alex Forsyth.
It could have been worse, but the drafting by Paton could have, and needed to be, much better.
Hiring Nathaniel Hackett as head coach
After deciding to part ways with Vic Fangio, Paton interviewed multiple candidates for the position. But the allure of landing Aaron Rodgers at quarterback, a rumor that had started around the draft in 2021, seemed to hard for him to ignore.
With that, Paton honed in on and ended up hiring Nathaniel Hackett, the offensive coordinator of the Green Bay Packers. This was done, many believe, as a way to get Rodgers to come play in Denver too.
But of course, that didn't happen. The Packers ended up signing Rodgers to a new deal and the Broncos were left with Hackett and Drew Lock at quarterback. Rather than seeing how that working relationship could blossom, the team then traded for Russell Wilson.
Hackett did not even get through his first year as head coach, becoming one of just four coaches in NFL history to be fired before their first year was complete. This led to Paton having to make another drastic move, trading draft picks to the New Orleans Saints to get Sean Payton back on the sidelines.
Though Payton is now facing scrutiny for putting his foot in his mouth about how bad Hackett was, he wasn't inaccurate with what he said. Hackett was one of the worst head coaches of all-time.
The Russell Wilson trade
Broncos fans were so desperate to get a quality quarterback in Denver that it seemed like many of them were dancing in the streets when this deal was made. But as with any major decision, time will be the biggest tell.
Wilson was disastrous in his first season with the team, but in year two, he is undeniably better. One has to wonder where the team would be if he would have played this way last year. But he didn't, and it forced a major coaching change.
That move, coupled with what the Broncos had to part with to get Wilson, set the team back. Sure, they got a future Hall-of-Fame head coach and quarterback that will also be in Canton, but the chain reaction of events that has followed these two decisions, which also go hand in hand, have been less than ideal and have greatly set this franchise back.
The bottom line question one would have to ask is how has this franchise improved from the time Paton took over? And the answer would be that it hasn't, in fact it has gotten considerably worse. There has been one bad decision after another and it is quite difficult to be optimistic about the future.
Paton has put together a very subpar roster and he has handcuffed himself by trading away too many precious assets while also not hitting on free-agent signings and draft picks. Unless the Broncos go on an asbolute tear the rest of the way in 2023, there will be some housecleaning this offseason and Greg Penner will likely be interviewing candidates for an open GM position.