Horse Tracks: Broncos turn sights toward the Draft as former first-round pick Pat Surtain is honored again

Good morning, Broncos Country!

Pat Surtain II, a Broncos’ team captain and NFL’s Defensive Player of the Year, was honored last week at the Colorado Sports Hall of Fame’s 60th annual banquet.

Surtain, who helped lead the Broncos to their first playoff berth since 2015 while also earning his second career-high four interceptions in a season, was one of the three honored Professional Athletes of the Year alongside Nuggets’ Nikola Jokić and Avalanche’s Nathan MacKinnon.

Surtain was also the first Broncos player to receive Pro Athlete of the Year recognition from the CSHOF since Phillip Lindsay in 2018.

After the ceremony, Surtain spoke with denverbroncos.com about receiving yet another accolade.

“It’s a huge honor to be mentioned as one of the Colorado greats,” he said, noting it was another award “to add to the trophy case.”

But as voluntary workouts are just around the corner for players, Surtain is setting his sights on 2025 and building off the turnaround Denver experienced last season.

“The mindset (in OTAs) is to continuously get better — get stronger in the weight room, get in the playbook, meet with the coaches,” he said, adding that it’s also a time to build camaraderie with the new guys — whether that’s rookies or new free agents. “It’s a time to build camaraderie so we can go on a run next year.”

Goal is ‘always to get better’

GM George Paton picked up several defensive pieces in free agency last month to help Surtain and the Broncos do just that.

“The goal is always to get better,” Paton said, adding that building on a strength is always the goal. “We had a really good defense last year. How can we take it to the next level? It’s really important to build off of strength.

That’s why Denver re-signed DJ Jones and added Dre Greenlaw and Talanoa Hufanga into the mix.

Surtain loves the new additions and believes those guys will make the Broncos even “more dominant” on defense.

“Man that’s huge,” he said last week. “DJ is a key piece toward our defense. He’s one of the anchors, and adding Dre and Hufanga? Man, it’s a huge addition.”

And in less than two weeks, the Broncos will add some rookies, no doubt a few who may be key defensive weapons. Maybe one of them will even “be a Nik Bonitto” (aka, breakout player in year three), Payton pointed out.

“Last year at this time were any of us expecting Bonitto to be an All Pro player?” Paton said, adding that the development of young players has been a credit to Sean Payton and the coaching staff. “No, I don’t think any of us would have said that.”

Do the Broncos move up in the Draft?

History tells us that if Sean Payton is making any moves on Draft Day, it will not be to move down.

In fact, Paton doesn’t even think about talking trade-down options with the head coach until the draft day has begun.

“I don’t hit Sean for the trade-back (option) until like the day of (the draft),” Paton said with a laugh at the NFL league meeting last month. “It’s just no use.”

With the Broncos the past two years, Payton has moved up in the draft four times. None has been with a first-round pick, but there’s always a first.

As head coach of the Saints, Payton was involved in three trades with first-round picks — and all of them were deals to move up.

So the precedent is there...could he be enticed enough with a player to make a move? Maaayyyybbbbeeeeee.

Running back Ashton Jeanty said the Broncos were one of two teams who “were heavy on him” during the Combine interviews.

Unfortunately, the other team was the Raiders, and they are also running back-needy, so Payton would have to spend a lot of capital to jump ahead of the Raiders in sixth.

But while the prospect of this is unlikely, it’s still fun to think about.

And to bring this post full-circle, the last Draft where the Broncos had a first-round pick and didn’t need/plan to use it on a QB) was 2021 when they chose Pat Surtain II.

At the time there was a lot of hand-wringing over taking the defensive player instead of Justin Fields at QB, but you’d be hard-pressed to find a fan now who still feels that way, especially after this season when the All Pro couldn’t have made a bigger difference.

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