Denver Broncos 2026 Coverage Report: Right About the Division, Five Wins Short on the Number

Denver has 628 tracked takes, which puts the club 16th of 32 by raw volume — dead middle. The graded picture is different: only 182 of those takes have a settled grade, which is 26th of 32. The Buffalo Bills have 527 graded takes. The median club sits at roughly 222. Denver is about 40 short of the middle and about a third of the league leader.

Some of that gap is timing, not neglect. The three biggest Denver-heavy publishers in our index are the ones with the least settled: Locked On Broncos shows 89 tracked takes and 4 graded; Sports Illustrated shows 84 tracked and 10 graded. Meanwhile The Herd with Colin Cowherd has 80 tracked Denver takes and 45 of them graded, at 67.3 accuracy. In other words, the local, roster-level coverage we ingest is voluminous and mostly still open; the national, outcome-level coverage is what has actually been scored.

What has been scored has gone well for the pundits. Denver's graded takes average 68.9 accuracy and a skill delta of +33.9 over the naive baseline, which is the eighth-best team-level skill figure in the league — behind Seattle (+56.5), New England (+45.3), Miami, Chicago, the Rams, Jacksonville and Carolina.

The club's results were worth the attention. Denver went 14-3 and made the playoffs in 2025, after 10-7 in 2024, under head coach Sean Payton.

The cutdown: 76 calls, 14 grades, net skill of exactly zero

The 53-man deadline is the news hook for this series, and here the honest answer is that Denver's roster-spot file is barely graded. There are 76 tracked roster-spot calls on the Broncos. Fourteen carry grades as of September 7; the other 62 are still pending. Fourteen is not a sample you can rank anybody on, and we won't.

Within those fourteen, the arithmetic is stark: average accuracy 85.7, average skill delta 0.0. Two calls beat the baseline by 200, two missed it by 200, and the other ten scored 100 accuracy for zero skill — because the naive rule ("he was on somebody's 53 last season, so he makes one again") already had them right. J.K. Dobbins, RJ Harvey, Evan Engram, Karene Reid, Kris Abrams-Draine, Jordan Turner and Devon Key were all called correctly and all graded at zero skill.

The two calls that actually carried information:

• Zack Kelberman on August 18 wrote that Denver "may only end up keeping three RBs on their final, 53-man roster when it's finalized at the end of the month — Dobbins, Coleman, and Harvey being locks." Jonah Coleman had no 53-man baseline; the call graded 100 accuracy, +200 skill. His two other names in the same sentence graded 100 for zero.
• Bob Morris on August 16: "The same holds true for Dallen Bentley, whose play against Atlanta showed the Broncos might want to keep him on the 53-man roster." Also 100 accuracy, +200 skill.

The two zeros both come from one column — Chad Jensen's six-veterans-who-could-be-surprise-cuts piece of August 25. Tycen Anderson ("I'll be surprised if he survives the final roster cuts") made the roster: 0 accuracy, -200. The Troy Franklin entry also graded as a predicted cut at 0 accuracy and -200, though the quoted evidence hedges the other way — "Again, I believe Franklin is making this roster... Don't count on Franklin being waived." Read the grade next to the quote before you hold that one against him.

Jensen's Broncos record is 6 graded takes at 66.7 accuracy and -66.7 skill, and his site profile is flagged provisional at that volume. Cody Roark has the largest Denver roster file we track — 36 calls — and 4 grades so far, all at 100 accuracy and zero skill. That file will be the one worth revisiting when the rest of the grades land.

The rest of the record: the outcome was easy, the size of it was not

Denver's graded claims break down like this.

The strongest single finding in the whole file: division winners, 15 graded calls, 15 hits, average skill +184.2. Every tracked pick of Denver to win the AFC West was correct, against a naive baseline that said Kansas City. Chris Brockman filed the earliest one on March 17, 2025 — "The Broncos are gonna win the AFC West" — for +200. Colin Cowherd ("I think the Broncos have the best roster"), Manti Te'o, Jamie Erdahl, Matt Hasselbeck, Jason McIntyre and Rich Eisen all landed the same call. Playoff picks are 15 graded at 93.3 accuracy; game outcomes are 51 graded at 86.3.

And then the number itself. Season win totals: 8 graded, 22.5 accuracy. Denver won 14 games in 2025; the six tracked 2025 calls were 11, 10, 10, 9, 7 and 7, and the field's collective miss was 5 wins — tied for the second-largest under-projection in the league that season alongside New England and Seattle, behind only the Chiefs (-6.3).

Nick Wright filed two of the sevens — "it is more than on the board that this team goes seven and ten. They are more likely to go seven and ten than ten and seven" — and a Broncos under 9.5, all graded 0. Brady Quinn had "Broncos at seven and ten," also 0. The least wrong was John Middlekauff, who owns three of the six calls and whose most bullish version — "they're gonna win eleven twelve games" — graded 40 accuracy, +70 skill. His floor argument ("if you have a dominant defense with an offensive coach who's proven... your floor is immediately like ten wins") graded 20 accuracy, +30.

So the field got the shape of Denver's season right and the magnitude badly wrong. Mock drafts on Denver sit at 39.1 accuracy over 25 graded picks. Pro Bowl and All-Pro calls are 4 graded at 0 accuracy, -75 skill — a real result, but four takes is four takes.

Who has a named record here

Thirteen pundits clear five graded Denver takes. Nobody clears 12. These are records, not rankings — at this volume the ordering would flip on one call.

The pattern worth carrying forward: Denver is a club our tracked outlets talk about at league-average volume and grade at well below league-average volume, and the 62 open roster-spot calls are where that gap closes next. Full scoring rules are on the methodology page.