The first text, after Alex Singleton agreed in March to sign a contract for the largest sum of guaranteed money in his life, was not to his family. Or his friends. Or his Broncos teammates.
Instead, it went directly to representatives of Special Olympics Colorado — waiting to see if he’d be back in Denver so .
“Or else, I might’ve been having it in some other city,” Singleton said.
He spoke to reporters Friday very much present and accounted for in Denver, on-site at his second annual cornhole event with Special Olympics Colorado. Two months earlier, the Broncos captain received $11 million in guaranteed money on a new contract. The Special Olympics team got the green light. But for a brief period, this was all far from a certainty.
At February’s NFL Combine, Broncos general manager George Paton said point-blank they’d “love” to re-sign Singleton and fellow ILB Justin Strnad, both impending free agents. Words that drift through the haze of NFL contract negotiations, however, rarely equate to actions. Strnad told The Post on Friday that he “wasn’t nervous to go to the market.” Hours into free agency opening March 9, Singleton remained unsigned — and had a skeleton deal lined up with another NFL team in free agency if negotiations with the Broncos fell through, according to a source familiar with the process.
Paton’s word never wavered, though. Denver finalized multi-year deals with multi-year mainstays Strnad and Singleton, cut 2025 signee Dre Greenlaw, and immediately set the precedent for an offseason of unprecedented veteran retention.
Broncos head coach Sean Payton may hate the term “run it back,” as he said at the start of April. But his linebackers, for one, appreciate the sentiment.
“I think it’s everything,” Singleton said Friday. “Coaches say it all the time, like — ‘Ah, if we could just run it back, we could go be better.’ And then they let half the guys go, and sign all these free agents, and you’re just like, ‘Well, were they lying to us? What was the upstairs thinking?’
“But instead,” Singleton continued, “we’re in an organization right now that, what they’ve said is completely true. What Sean has said since Day 1 — he’s going to keep the guys here, they’re going to win football games for us — he’s done that. And now, we’ve had a year of winning where we got close. Instead of trying to fix something that isn’t broken with new pieces, we just kinda put together the band. And we’re going to see what happens.”
The heart of a defense that is the heart of these Broncos, then, is back to try to climb through a Super Bowl window everyone in Denver knows is open. Everyone across the NFL, too, if you ask Singleton.
“We’re not chasing targets anymore,” Singleton said Friday, asked about the team’s self-expectations. “We’re the target, now, I think, in the AFC. So we need to know that.”
Beyond a blockbuster trade for Dolphins receiver Jaylen Waddle, the Broncos placed a rather massive offseason bet on retaining their own pieces to successfully dodge that target. That begins with Singleton and Strnad, two veteran buddies who’ve been handsomely rewarded for their efforts and will now be tasked with rewarding the organization’s faith.
For years, Broncos fans have argued across social-media keyboards that the middle of coordinator Vance Joseph’s defense is, in fact, broken. Joseph himself has acknowledged that opposing offenses have attacked his scheme with tight ends across the past two seasons, and Singleton and Strnad have both had spotty records covering TEs in space. The two, however, also happened to be the two best inside linebackers on the NFL’s No. 3 defense in 2025, and Joseph has attached Singleton to his hip as his on-field defensive play-caller.
The Broncos could’ve easily signed a different linebacker in free agency for a similar cost. They did not. They could’ve drafted an early-to-middle-round linebacker, even as Texas’s Anthony Hill Jr. was ripped away two picks before the team’s second-round selection in April. They did not.
“We feel really good about Alex and Justin,” Broncos assistant general manager Reed Burckhardt said post-draft, on evaluating draft ILBs. “And so, it wasn’t a gotta-have-it.”
Singleton’s floor and ceiling are both obvious: a 32-year-old captain who struggled in coverage situations but put together arguably the best year of his career against the run in 2025 (just a 7.5% missed tackle rate, according to Pro Football Focus). Strnad, though, may have another leap to take entering his first season as a clear starter.
Entering his sixth season as a Bronco, the 29-year-old Strnad has still only started 21 games. He filled in capably for the oft-injured Greenlaw in 2025, and made himself impossible to take off the field in obvious coverage and pass-rushing situations even when Greenlaw was healthy.
Strnad told The Post Friday, at Singleton’s tournament, that it was “awesome” to see the organization “take care” of him after years earning his stripes. And Singleton said he thinks Strnad will take a “huge leap,” now that his role is finally set.
“Because you have that confidence where a team finally gives you what you deserve,” Singleton said. “You have that confidence all offseason. So he’s had that already. There isn’t that question of, ‘Oh, what snaps am I going to play?’”
The organization’s confidence in the locker room’s pre-established culture has even trickled down to offseason scheduling. At Payton’s behest, the Broncos will start Phase Three of its offseason program (organized team activities) later than any other NFL team, on June 2. Singleton, though, said Friday he believes the Broncos are weeks and months — if not years — ahead of “a lot of teams in the league.”
They’ll need to be, to reach Super Bowl heights.
“I don’t think we like, really get too caught up in the, like, whole ‘window’ thing,” Strnad said. “But I definitely think itap obvious that itap time for us to do what we want to do.”
