He picked at the dirt in the front yard, right underneath the pecan tree. Sennecca’s voice rose and fell with a hymn, as her daughter wrapped Marty’s scales in an LSU flag and gently placed him in a small hole.

“You gon’ get another one?” Jones’ sister asked him as she patted the flag down.

He did — Coco, Jones named it — because through high school and eventual stardom at LSU, the now-Broncos 23-year-old defensive lineman has carried an obsession with bearded dragons that nobody in his circle can quite explain. Jones went everywhere with Marty, the lizard sinking its talons into his shirt and hanging along for the ride. His old high school coach, Robert Valdez, always found it personally unsettling how settled Jones was with a four-legged reptile crawling across his neck.

“He’s a different kid,” Valdez told The Post last year. “His best friend is a lizard.”

Jones is a 6-foot-5, 289-pound young man who plays a violent role in the trenches, but he is “still a kid,” as his mother, Sennecca, said. From the minute he was born, her son has been quiet. He’s comfortable around softer spirits and reclusive around older ones.

But Marty, now, rests under a Louisiana pecan tree. Jones left Coco at home in Vacherie, too, after the Broncos traded up in the third round of the 2025 NFL Draft to swing on his raw talent. And entering his second season in Denver, Jones is staring at a prime opportunity to shed a more reticent skin to make a louder impact at the heart of the Broncos’ defense.

Last fall, former Broncos defensive end��John Franklin-Myers took it upon himself to mentor Jones, despite being acutely aware that Denver may have drafted Jones to replace him. Franklin-Myers is now gone to Tennessee, a considerable loss for a defense that thrived on his and All-Pro Zach Allen’s symbiotic relationship. Jones is perhaps the highest-upside candidate of a mix of veterans and youngsters who will vie in training camp to fill Franklin-Myers’ void, with no clear arrangement sorted on this defensive-line carousel.

“With the way we’re rotating those guys — if it happens to be one individual when training camp comes, great,” head coach Sean Payton said in June, when asked about replacing Franklin-Myers’ snaps. “If it happens to be the sum total of the group, so be it.”

Reserve Eyioma Uwazurike wants it��and is the most logical immediate replacement. Third-round rookie Tyler Onyedim, the Broncos’ first draft pick in 2026, turned heads externally and internally in the offseason program. Veteran Malcolm Roach could veer away from nose tackle to fill some of the void. And after a rookie year in which he played just 39 snaps, the Broncos still believe Jones will be “a player,” as general manager George Paton said in January.

Jones just needs to seize his spot on the board.

“He’s developed at the right pace for us,” Broncos defensive-line coach Jamar Cain told The Post in September. “He’s doing everything we ask him to do. But being a quiet kid, sometimes you forget he’s there. Show up. Let us know that you’re there. Let us know that you’re doing your job. And he is.”

‘God had other plans for him’

Jones has died before. Twice, actually. He still has the mark in his neck, as a reminder only his mother will truly understand.

At two months old, he was diagnosed with a breathing disorder called laryngomalacia, where tissue . Not uncommon. Often harmless. But baby Jones’ condition was dire enough to necessitate a tracheotomy tube in his neck to open his windpipe, and one day his babysitter heard him dead silent and noticed he’d yanked the tube out of his neck.

Seneca was at a party when her family called her, and told her to meet them at the local hospital . She arrived to hospital staff yelling code blue. Her son flatlined. And was resuscitated. And flatlined. And was resuscitated. And airlifted by helicopter to Children’s Hospital New Orleans.

He spent the first year of his life on a heart monitor and an oxygen machine. Sennecca said she still thinks of those days often. Impossible to forget.

“I think about how blessed he is, and how he has a testimony to share,” she told The Post last summer. “Hopefully, one day, he’ll share it and encourage some people. Because, he’s real quiet. He don’t speak much. You gotta pull words out of him. But he’s definitely blessed, and he came a long way.

“He could’ve been dead and gone,” she continued. “But God had other plans for him.”

Her son doesn’t remember, really. But tendrils of memory can sneak through the subconscious. Jones did speech therapy until middle school and would only speak to certain people growing up, his cousin Jontae recalled. In his senior year at St. James High in Vacherie, Jones became the first defensive lineman to win the Sportsline Player of the Year Award, presented by Baton Rouge television station WAFB.

He did not quite ham it up .

“That was a real eye-opening experience … he wasn’t comfortable with that, at the time,” said former St. James defensive coordinator LaVanta Davis.

According to the 2020 U.S. Census, Vacherie is a town of fewer than 5,500 people. Sennecca said her son was “scared” when he first got to LSU. Jones barely played his freshman season. As a sophomore, he was enrolled in a public speaking class. He hated it, his mother recalled. Cain, then LSU’s defensive-line coach, would call Jones’ mother and tell her he was slipping. She’d tell Cain to do what he needed to.

“Sai’vion knew,” Sennecca said, “not to play with Coach Cain.”

Cain helped Jones through that class, Sennecca recalled. And helped him assert his voice, too, in the middle of a stacked LSU defensive line room. The Tigers had several upperclassmen and future NFL players ahead of Jones on the depth chart, and yet Cain would preach to Jones that he didn’t need to simply wait his turn.

“Be a player,” Cain would tell him.

Jones tallied the third-most sacks (4.5) on the roster despite finishing 16th in defensive snaps and leveraged the season into a starting role for two more seasons at LSU.

“I said, ‘You’re better than him — go take his job,'” Cain recalled. “Like, this is on you. Don’t be happy being a backup. And then that����ap when he started taking off.”

Coveted size and speed

He is a different man now, after the LSU spotlight has coaxed Jones’ personality out to reporters. At heart, he is not that different. At the start of last season, The Post asked Sennecca if she had any idea where her son’s head was at as he entered his rookie season in Denver.

“I don’t know,” Sennecca said, laughing. “I have no clue. He don’t talk.”

Jones has had a familiar ally in Cain, though, a highly touted defensive-line mind who jumped to the Broncos in 2023 after that one season with LSU. Their journey picked up right back where it left off three years ago, on a new stage but in a similar situation. And Cain has prodded Jones just the same as when he was in college — a young man who ignites, former coach Davis said, when he realizes he has a legitimate opportunity in front of him.

“100%,” Cain said last fall, asked if he’s encouraged Jones to take others’ jobs in Denver. “I’ve done that with him. ‘Hey, Sai’vion, let’s get going, let’s get going.'”

The Broncos, certainly, did not expect or need Jones to fill an immediate need in 2025. Cain was the architect of a pass rush that finished tied for the fifth-most sacks in NFL history, after all, and Denver knew Jones would need some post-Louisiana seasoning after transitioning from an edge rusher to an interior defensive lineman over the course of his college career.

The promise, though, is simple enough: Jones has the burst of a speed rusher with the frame to put on a defensive tackle’s weight. He ran a blazing 1.59-second 10-yard split in pre-draft testing in 2025 and has the height and arm length (33.5 inches) to shed blocks quickly, as his high school coach Valdez said.

“He’s a big, physical player,” Patriots left tackle Will Campbell told The Post on Jones, his former LSU teammate, during the week of Super Bowl LX in February. “Extremely talented … I know Sai’vion will be ready when his name is called.”

But Franklin-Myers and Jones, both, were well aware of the veteran’s expiring contract amid their mentor-mentee relationship last season. The Broncos specifically chose to let the 29-year-old Franklin-Myers walk for a three-year, $63 million deal in free agency, and have made the explicit decision to turn to internal development rather than pay for external help to fill a rather sizeable hole.

“We got a lot of good guys, and that’s going to create a lot of opportunities for people,” Allen said in June. “And we came close to the sack record last year, and we fully expect to break it this year.”

Easier said than done without Franklin-Myers, who finished with a career-best 7.5 sacks in 2025 and had a larger impact than simple raw numbers. According to film charted by The Post, the Broncos’ three best pass-rushers — Allen, Nik Bonitto and Jonathon Cooper — all had more sacks last season when Franklin-Myers was on the field as opposed to off (even as Franklin-Myers had just a 49% snap share in 2025).

The room is well aware, as Roach said, that it needs to find a way to fill Franklin-Myers’ shoes.

“After watching the cut-ups, you kind of realize what you’re missing there,” defensive coordinator Vance Joseph said in June. “We’ve drafted to that position fairly well, so we have some young guys that we expect to step up and play. That����ap their job. That����ap why we drafted those guys … you can’t pay everyone. So we chose to let JFM walk and draft to his position. So those guys have to play well.”

In Uwazurike, Onyedim, and Jones, the Broncos have three suitors for Franklin-Myers’ snaps who have completely different body types yet are cut from the same cloth. The 28-year-old Uwazurike and 23-year-old Onyedim, in fact, overlapped for a season at Iowa State in 2021. And when the Cyclones were recruiting Onyedim out of Richmond, Texas, then-Iowa State defensive line coach Eli Rasheed went to then-senior Uwazurike and told him he wanted him to serve as Onyedim’s “big brother.”

The similarities run deeper, beyond a shared Nigerian background. Uwazurike played his entire high school career at��Southfield-Lathrup, a campus in Michigan,��. He left high school underdeveloped, and left Iowa State with untapped upside, as former defensive coordinator Jon Hancock would tell NFL scouts that Uwazurike’s best football was still ahead of him. And Uwazurike is still raw in NFL terms, with just 637 career defensive snaps after a full-season gambling suspension in 2023.

Onyedim, Hancock told The Post, is the “same guy” in football terms — carrying raw upside into Iowa State and beyond.

“Enyi is, now, still tapping on the ceiling that’s growing,” Rasheed said. “Tyler is the same human in a twitched-up, faster body.”

In June, discussing Uwazurike’s development, Joseph made clear that all three in this triumvirate could cycle in to fill Franklin-Myers’ absence. Sometimes, even, all within the same set of downs.

“Maybe it’s a first-and-second-down run-stopping role,” Joseph said, “and Sai’vion takes over the pass-rush role.”

That name-drop means something and carries expectation. Jones has always lived on his own wavelength, his cousin Jontae said. He has been a young man comfortable in his own shell, family members said, only cracking when his frame got too large for him to remain hidden away.

And the Broncos want him — and maybe need him — to fully break through.

But when legalized sports betting debuted in Colorado in 2020, another tradition took hold at those Lot W tailgates: sports gambling. Now, when the family assembles before the home games, they discuss parlays and point spreads almost as much as they talk about Bo Nix and Sean Payton.

On a warm January day, while partying outside their late-model Winnebago painted with blue-and-orange stripes, they figured out the wagers they planned to put on the Broncos’ final regular-season game, against the , and other NFL matchups.

They weren’t alone. Sports betting and fantasy football dominated conversations throughout the parking lots as tailgaters speculated how much they might win.

The gameday bets — putting a little money on the line — are all part of the fun of football Sundays, said Joe Canales, a family friend who joined the tailgate.

“We all get excited when somebody wins,” he said.

Legalized sports betting is changing the face of sports and fandom in Colorado as people wager billions annually on games and on the athletes who play them. In the six years since voters approved Proposition DD, the state’s gamblers have wagered more than $30.6 billion on sports, averaging $425 million a month.

For years, sports betting was taboo within the professional leagues as commissioners and team owners kept gambling at arm’s length for fear of scandal. Now, leagues and teams promote their partnerships with gambling companies. Fans watching games on TV are inundated with sports-betting ads, and those in the stands can see gambling companies’ names painted on courts and fields.

Bettors often care more about individual athletes’ performances than about their hometown teams as they wager on how many three-point shots a basketball player will make or how many touchdowns a quarterback might throw, multiple people told The Denver Post. Athletes feel the pressure, whether it’s because they receive angry messages on social media from people who lose money or from gamblers seeking an edge from inside information.

Legalized gambling is also threatening the integrity of sports, with fans fearing athletes, coaches and referees may alter calls or plays to influence the outcomes of bets. Just before the NCAA’s March Madness basketball tournament kicked off, Sacred Heart University in Fairfield, Connecticut, that found a majority of Americans — almost 60% — believe sports betting affects the integrity of college basketball.

“It����ap ruining the relationship between a player and their sport, and it����ap ruining the relationship between fandom and the athletes,” said Montee Ball, a former Broncos running back who leads the , which focuses on athletes’ mental health.

All of that is forcing coaches and administrators to incorporate gambling and mental health awareness into athletes’ training, with education now starting as early as high school for athletes in Colorado.

In the past six years, sports betting scandals have rocked professional and college leagues, ensnaring Colorado athletes such as hometown basketball legend Chauncey Billups, who was implicated last fall as an unnamed co-conspirator in a rigged NBA betting scheme.

This story, which examines how gambling is changing sports, is the third in The Post’s series about legalized sports betting’s impact on Colorado. The first story looked at an alarming rise in gambling addiction, while the second installment covered how sports wagering’s tax revenue benefits water projects in Colorado.

Sports betting has existed in America as long as athletes have laced up their high-top sneakers.��In the past, gamblers sought bookies in secret to place bets, collect winnings and pay debts. Gamblers turned to offshore sportsbooks once the internet became accessible.

Now, sports fans place bets from their phones, often in the middle of games, thanks to a that overturned the , allowing states to set their own laws regulating sports betting. Colorado acted quickly, putting the question to a ballot referendum in November 2019; voters allowed sportsbooks to open for business in May 2020.

And, almost as quickly, Denver’s professional sports teams announced business deals with gambling companies.

An evolving relationship

Just a little more than a decade ago, the was so antagonistic toward sports gambling that the league’s commissioner threatened to suspend Dallas Cowboys quarterback Tony Romo over his plans to attend that was being organized by a company he owned.

The NFL prohibited players from participating in any event sponsored by a gambling-related company, and the league so narrowly defined gambling that fantasy football was included, even though those games pit people against each other rather than the house, which keeps the profits.

Players are still not allowed to bet on the NFL, play daily fantasy games or visit sportsbooks during football season. But the league and team owners have embraced sports betting.

Denver’s major sports teams are reluctant to talk about those new business relationships, with every professional team as well as the University of Colorado Boulder and its football coach Deion Sanders declining The Post’s interview requests.

The Broncos and the Colorado Rockies sent prepared statements via email, declaring that they follow the rules while protecting their players and the games’ integrity.

“In compliance with the NFL’s gambling policy, all members of our organization undergo comprehensive training on the subject,” the statement from Broncos spokesman Patrick Smyth said. “For players, this includes mandatory in-person education as well as in-season communication and other resources from the team and league.”

The Broncos inked their first business deal with sports-betting app in June 2020 — one month after Colorado’s sportsbooks opened for business.�� The team also partnered that summer with , which opened a now-shuttered luxury lounge inside the stadium, and . Today, BetMGM is the team’s lone sports-betting partner.

The Colorado Rockies partner with Denver-based , allowing the company to have a sign on the outfield wall.

also partners with bet365 as a sponsor for the and . That , which allows bet365’s logo to be placed under the Avalanche’s ice and on the Nuggets’ baseline, is in place through the 2028-2029 season.

Courtney Brunious, an assistant professor at the , said he was not surprised Denver’s teams did not want to talk about their business relationships with gambling companies.

“There’s still a certain stigma attached to it,” said Brunious, who teaches sports business. “It’s still — I don’t want to say an uneasy relationship — but it’s an ongoing and evolving partnership. It’s not necessarily something they want to put a spotlight on.”

The gambling companies are eager to associate with professional sports because it puts their names in front of enthusiastic fans, Brunious said. The teams benefit from sports gambling because people who bet money on games are more likely to watch them on television, boosting coveted audience numbers.

The sure thing, Brunious said, is that those relationships will not dissolve. There’s too much money at stake.

“It’s not going away,” he said. “It����ap going to require adjustments to make sure all parties are protected as much as possible.”

The sports teams and betting companies are entwined with each other’s success.

Every decision a team makes is analyzed by gamblers and can move a betting line up or down, changing the fortunes of those who wager and those who make money off of it.

When the Los Angeles Rams on June 1 traded for reigning defensive player of the year Myles Garrett, that team became Las Vegas oddsmakers’ favorite to win the next Super Bowl. Meanwhile, the odds for Garrett’s former team, the Cleveland Browns, dropped to 200-to-1 from 115-to-1, according to a news release from Circa Sports.

Peter Jackson, the chief executive officer of , FanDuel’s parent company, explained in a February how “player narratives” impact his company’s revenue. When the NFL’s most popular players are not in the playoffs, the fans bet less money, he said.

“There was one player we had on our books over the course of the year that had more money bet on him in the course of the season than the Pats did,” Jackson said, without naming the player. “This player stuff is super important, and when we don’t have those key players making the playoffs or the Super Bowl, it really does impact player engagement and betting volumes.”

Pressure and harassment

Players are well aware that fans’ interest in their performance is more intense when money is on the line.

They already face performance anxiety because players are super competitive and want to win, said Ball, who played for the Broncos during the 2013 and 2014 seasons. Professional athletes also know that an injury or a bad game can cost them playing time and shorten their careers. Now, they also have pressure from fans who want to win money by betting on whether they throw a touchdown pass or catch an interception.

“The athletes can’t escape it,” Ball said. “They shouldn’t have to turn everything off because John is screaming on Twitter, ‘I hope you tear your ACL.’ ”

Athletes in all sports are reporting an increase in harassment since sports betting became legal.

Nuggets guard Bruce Brown brought it up on Oct. 23 in the wake of an NBA sports-betting scandal, telling reporters, “Obviously, after every game, we get DMs about not hitting people’s parlays. There’s been games where I’ve been called every name in the book, just because I didn’t hit a three or two. I mean, that����ap just the state of the game we’re in, since sports betting got legal. So I mean, just kind of deal with it. Not think about it. Don’t check your DMs after games.”

Cory Fox, senior vice president of public policy and sustainability at FanDuel, said the company banishes gamblers from its app if they are caught harassing athletes. The other legalized sports books have similar policies.

“First and foremost, we find the harassment of athletes abhorrent,” Fox said.

In June 2025, FanDuel who heckled Gabby Thomas, an Olympic gold medalist in track. The fan, who goes by “Mr100kaday” and describes himself as “The Track and Field Bully,” posted a video of himself hurling insults as Thomas signed autographs and claimed that his heckling caused Thomas to lose the race and allowed him to win a $1,000 parlay bet.

FanDuel is working with sports leagues to develop a process to identify and investigate harassers so they can be banned from the app, Fox said.

“It’s also true there has been an increase in bad behavior,” he said. “This is something we’ve seen globally and it has a lot of factors involved.”

Temptation lurks

There is another dark side to sports gambling — rigged performances.

A major betting scandal rocked the NBA in October when the Terry Rozier, a former Charlotte Hornets point guard, who stands accused of participating in an illegal sports-betting scheme using inside NBA knowledge to defraud sportsbooks and for checking out of a game early to benefit bettors. He has .

And the city of Denver was shocked when Billups, who was then the head coach of the Portland Trail Blazers, was linked to the Rozier scandal as an apparent unindicted co-conspirator. Billups was also for allegedly participating in a Mafia-backed illegal poker scheme to defraud unwitting players during card games. He has also pleaded not guilty.

Other sports-betting scandals involving athletes with Colorado ties:

• Denver Broncos defensive lineman Eyioma Uwazurike was suspended for the 2023 season for gambling on NFL games, including five involving the Broncos
• Colorado Rapids midfielder Max Alves was removed from the team in 2023 in the wake of a match-fixing investigation in his home country of Brazil
• Jontay Porter, the brother of former Nuggets starter Michael Porter Jr., was banned from the NBA in 2024 after he disclosed confidential information to sports bettors about his health and limited his participation in one or more games for betting purposes while playing for the Toronto Raptors

Sports betting scandals are almost as old as sports themselves. Think of the Black Sox scandal during the 1919 World Series, when multiple team members conspired with professional gamblers to throw games.

, who played in the NBA for eight years and overseas for three, said gambling is part of the culture for professional athletes.

During his 11 years of pro ball, teammates would bet on anything — trick shots during practice, card games on the road, even which referees would call a playoff game, Funderburke said. It’s the nature of being competitive and confident.

“You’re taught at an early age to bet on yourself,” he said. “You’ve overcome the odds, right? Little League, high school, college, now in the NBA, you’re playing against the best in the world. You always feel like you can overcome the odds. And with athletes, they feel like they can win at just about anything.”

Funderburke, who now works as a financial adviser, speaks out against gambling and tells his clients there are better things to do with their money. He traveled to Colorado in May to encourage lawmakers to pass a bill that would establish guardrails on sports betting in an attempt to curb addiction rates.

“Here’s the problem with the culture,” he said. “Most of the guys that I know — and I won’t say names — who had issues with gambling, not only end up having financial constraints and issues, but their marriages and their families deteriorate at the same time, which I think is much worse than any type of financial problems.”

The professional leagues and universities know the temptation is there and they are working to combat it.

But they are not always successful.

The controversy surrounding Texas Tech quarterback Brendan Sorsby serves as the latest example.

‘A source of heartburn’

Days before the NCAA March Madness basketball tournament, sent a warning to all of its athletes: Sports betting is against the rules.

“It is still to a large degree one of the worst violations you can have,” said , CSU’s associate athletic director for compliance. “With sports wagering, the door pretty much gets shut down. Like a positive drug test too many times, your eligibility is just shot.”

However, the Sorsby case upended that policy for college football.

Sorsby made thousands of impermissible bets worth at least $90,000 on college and pro sports, including some on his team when he was a freshman at the University of Indiana. The NCAA suspended Sorsby after he was caught and admitted to gambling, but he sued in an attempt to play his senior season.

A Texas judge ruled June 8 through a temporary injunction that Sorsby should be allowed to play during the upcoming season after serving a two-game suspension. The ruling could overturn NCAA rules, and it propelled college football into uncertainty as to what happens if other student-athletes bet on their own games.

The decision undermined a longstanding NCAA policy that forbids college athletes from gambling on sports and bans them if they’re caught betting on their own teams.

College sports are rapidly changing, with athletes able to earn money from their schools, booster clubs, television commercials and social media feeds. They have more money in their pockets now — in some cases, millions of dollars, Siemer said.��The temptation to bet on sports lurks, he said, especially for high-level athletes who believe they know more about their sport than anyone else and can predict wins and losses on sports-betting apps.

“That’s a source of heartburn for us,” he said. “We don’t want to legislate morality, but they have more money now than when they just had a scholarship, and we want them to be smart with it.”

Every student-athlete signs a gambling agreement, acknowledging that they cannot place bets and cannot provide insider information to others, Siemer said.

Each year, CSU brings in experts to talk to students about the risks of gambling and to educate them on the NCAA’s rules that prohibit gambling. The athletics department wants them to understand how important it is that they do not leak tips about injuries or game strategies to others, who might benefit from the inside knowledge, Siemer said.

Last year, a presentation to students revealed just how much money was bet on each sport during a single season, and while Siemer said he could not remember the specifics, he recalled that it was “jaw-dropping.”

While football is the most popular sport for gamblers who bet on CSU sports, other teams also see healthy amounts of wagers, he said.

“I think the presumption is everyone is betting on football,” Siemer said. “Well, it’s not just football. It’s all of the sports. These sports-betting companies will put a line on anything. It doesn’t matter. Women’s tennis. Women’s soccer. The presumption that it’s all on football and basketball should be put to bed.”

Nip it in the bud

Aside from talking to athletes about the pitfalls of gambling, the leagues and teams are turning to professional monitors for help.��The NCAA’s major conferences contract with , a company that specializes in sports compliance and integrity.

Matt Heap, a former deputy director, manages IC360’s , a program that monitors betting among athletes at more than 150 universities and more than 25 professional sports leagues.

“That monitors every game, every goal, every pitch,” he said.

Prohibet coordinates with sportsbooks to detect irregular gambling patterns, Heap said. The colleges also provide identifying information — dates of birth, driver’s licenses, phone numbers — on every student-athlete, making it easier to detect prohibited bets. Prohibet also monitors coaches, trainers, administrators and referees to identify irregular betting patterns.

The program can even find crossover bets from different internet addresses that can connect student-athletes to accounts owned by friends and family, he said. Word is spreading among college athletes that they can get caught, he said.

“It nips it in the bud,” Heap said. “The ones that continue to do it and push it are the ones they need to keep an eye on.”

IC360 also works with NCAA athletic departments to educate athletes on the rules surrounding gambling and to warn them about the pitfalls surrounding them. Even telling a friend, family member or classmate about a team member’s injury can sway bets, Heap said.

“Something that seems as innocent or innocuous as that can be the first sign someone is trying to get a hook into a player,” he said. “You guys are targets because someone who wants to manipulate a game outcome has to have a player, a ref or some other game official.”

Those who work with athletes believe education about sports betting must start at a younger age.

Last year, the paired with the to start a gambling awareness program for high school athletes.

CHSAA officials wanted players, parents and coaches to understand the rules and the consequences of violating them, commissioner Mike Krueger said. It’s becoming a national issue at the high school level.

Legal sportsbooks don’t take wagers on high school sports because it is prohibited by state laws, but offshore betting sites accept those wagers, as do emerging prediction markets. People must be 21 to open a legal sports betting account in the U.S., but young people access them through family members and older friends.

“It’s recognizing the reality,” Krueger said. “That’s where we’ve got to have the awareness. While sports betting continues to expand across our society, our responsibility remains unchanged. We look at it as a student well-being issue and not just around rules enforcement.”

READ MORE FROM THIS SPECIAL REPORT: Colorado’s gamble on sports betting

In a good way, of course.

Yes, the Texas A&M staff believed they were getting a good player when Onyedim transferred there after four years at Iowa State.

Yes, they were banking on him playing a sizable role on the Aggies’ interior defensive line.

Yes, they thought he had upside moving from the Cyclones’ 3-3-5 defense to their even front.

Still, once A&M hit the field for spring ball, the defensive coaches quickly decided those expectations had been too modest.

“We kind of were like, ‘Oh damn. We got one,’” A&M defensive coordinator Lyle Hemphill told The Post.

One year later, Onyedim is set to start working in front of new coaches again, this time in Denver after the Broncos made him the No. 66 overall pick in last month’s draft.

Hitting the jackpot in the transfer portal

When Onyedim and the rest of Denver’s rookie class begin work Friday at the team’s rookie minicamp, he will do so as a player the Broncos front office fell in love with because of the season he put together at A&M.

The Texas native was a sturdy and quality starter at Iowa State, but never put up huge counting stats in what pro and college coaches and scouts call a unique defense.

Onyedim was asked to control multiple gaps on many snaps, read, react and play from there.

“You’ve got to be a big boy in there to do some of that stuff,” Hemphill acknowledged, noting that ISU helped Onyedim grow into a high-quality player. “That, when it����ap all said and done, is probably the harder skill to develop.”

The Aggies, though, were after something different. When they looked for help in the transfer portal, they did something Denver head coach Sean Payton talks about frequently: They isolated subsets of tape to try to zero in on whether Onyedim fit their specific vision.

“There were times at Iowa State where you knew he was in pass-rush mode or just kind of go mode because of down and distance,” Hemphill said. “We cut those clips out and watched those clips on the side and we were like, ‘Oh, wait, this kid can be something more than this defense allows him to be.’ …

“When you watched him in that light, he became a different player.”

Even with that picture on tape at Iowa State, though, Onyedim surpassed what the Aggies thought they were getting. When he first arrived at the SEC school, Hemphill — promoted to coordinator this offseason after spending 2025 as the team’s associate head coach/defense — and others thought Onyedim would be an early down player who didn’t provide much pass-rush juice.

By the time the season went along, they were instead building what would become the nation’s best third-down defense in part around Onyedim.

“He became the third-down big guy that we kept on the field,” Hemphill said. … “ Next thing you know, we’ve got this really good third-down defense and we can put (him) to the overload side and you can create havoc. I’ll be honest, we went from being OK at that position to being dominant at that position and that allowed our third-down defense to really take off.”

After logging 12 tackles for loss and three sacks over four years and 40 games at Iowa State, Onyedim collected 8.5 TFLs and 2.5 sacks in his lone year at A&M.

The NFL noticed.

When scouts came through practice, they asked about No. 11. Most had him as a Day 3 guy, fifth- or sixth-round, before the season began. By the time Onyedim’s campaign ended, the league — and the Broncos — had a much different view.

“The 3-3 scheme at Iowa State is a little different,” Broncos assistant general manager Reed Burckhardt said after Denver selected Onyedim in the third round. “And then he gets in a different scheme that fits ours a little bit more and — there’s always going to be differences, but we felt more comfortable seeing the evidence that he was playing in a scheme similar to ours. He had a really good year. His skillset is as a three-down player.”

Physically, the Broncos like the way Onyedim plays with his hands. He’s got a frame similar to departed free agent John Franklin-Myers, including arms that are 34-plus inches and an 81-inch wingspan.

The same abilities that impressed A&M are what drew the Broncos’ attention — and eventually marathon film sessions from GM George Paton and head coach Sean Payton.

“The tape was good at Iowa State,” Paton said, “But we really liked it at A&M.”

Onyedim, Hemphill said, played anywhere the Aggies wanted him to up front.

“He can play inside the tackle, he can 3, he can play 2i, he can play shade,” Hemphill said, noting they also had a package against multi-tight end sets where Onyedim played on the edge. “He can play 5 against big personnel groups and be pretty good. I think he’s going to kill a tight end if they try to block him.”

Ready to ‘learn from the best’

That versatility should serve Onyedim well in Denver, not just because the group he’s joining is deep and talented but also because of the way defensive coordinator Vance Joseph and defensive line coach Jamar Cain like to deploy their linemen.

“When you’re talking about a 3-technique, you want a guy that can get on an edge, loop and game,” Burckhardt said. “‘V.J.’ does a ton of that stuff. He fit the total package of what we’re looking for inside with the versatility.”

The day he was drafted, Onyedim said his mindset arriving in Denver and joining a group that includes All-Pro Zach Allen, veterans like D.J. Jones and Malcolm Roach, a close friend in former ISU teammate Eyioma Uwazurike and more was to learn as much as possible.

“Don’t be an arrogant person,” he said. “Just learn. Sit back and learn from the best. That����ap my mindset, just learn from the best and cramming everything so I can be the best player I know I can be.”

Hemphill cited that ability as one of Onyedim’s foremost off-field strengths. The Broncos, Hemphill said, will be able to ask him to play whatever role at whatever time and be confident in it because Onyedim is a quick study.

“He understands what you’re trying to accomplish defensively and it just comes easy to him,” Hemphill said. “We really, truly bounced him all over the d-line and he had no issues with it. I think he’s the type of kid that enjoys that. ‘Challenge me a little bit, I’m good with it.’

“Never bitched, never complained. Really solid. He’s just a grown man.”

Texas A&M’s staff learned that and more quickly last spring.

Now, Onyedim will try to author a repeat performance at the game’s highest level.

Or, at least for the Broncos, the 2026 offseason program kicks off Monday.

This is in many ways the start of the long march toward September and the start of the season, though players and coaches still have a five-week break to look forward to this summer.

Denver head coach Sean Payton decided to start this spring’s program later than usual and later than everybody else in the NFL, citing a Broncos 2025 season that lasted until late January.

Payton is also a longtime believer that running and lifting are more important this time of year than getting on the field for football-related activities.

So, players start the voluntary part of the offseason program Monday, but outside of a rookie minicamp May 8-10, Denver will abstain from on-field work until the first week of June.

“All of May will just be weightlifting,” Payton said earlier this year. “You’ll see us on the field in June. We’ll have two weeks of OTAs and a week of mini camp, but I don’t want them to feel like they were just here.”

Payton has also said in the past that he doesn’t want his players feeling like they’re going to football practice in the spring.

Still, Monday morning will feature the Broncos’ first 2026 team meeting, the first messaging about starting over and building toward a title run this fall. It’ll feel like the start of something in the building.

With that in mind, here are four questions about the coming months in ����apountry.

When will Broncos QB Bo Nix be back in action?

The likely answer now: Not for a while. Nix will likely still be around��for Phases 1 and 2 of the offseason program over the next several weeks, but he’ll be rehabbing from the��recent clean-up procedure on his surgically repaired right ankle rather than doing the full lifting and running regimen his teammates will be on.

OTAs and minicamp are still a month-plus away, but from here, sources expected Payton and Denver’s medical and training staffs to be cautious with Nix through those weeks. The start of training camp is still nearly three months away. Having Nix back to full go then is the new priority for the staff.

There is still no clear understanding of what the recent procedure entailed for Nix, but sources indicate the cleanup work was going to have to happen at some point — if not now, then likely after the 2026 season. Nix’s rehab from the initial fracture repair in January went well enough that Dr. Norman Waldrop III, Nix and the Broncos decided they had a window to get it done now. It will cost Nix most of the early stages of the offseason program, but in return, he enters the year without the prospect of another procedure hanging out there somewhere on the horizon.

Could Denver add a veteran free agent of note?

It����ap always a possibility.

Denver signed RB J.K. Dobbins in June last year. In 2023, the club signed OLB Frank Clark around the same time.

For a time, the Broncos looked like they could perhaps use a veteran defensive lineman. Then they used their top draft pick, No. 66 overall, on Tyler Onyedim. There’s a long way to go to late August, but right now Denver looks like it could again easily take seven defensive linemen into the season: Zach Allen, D.J. Jones, Malcolm Roach, Eyioma Uwazurike, Onyedim, Sai’Vion Jones and Jordan Jackson.

If there’s a spot to add a Dobbins-esque veteran, what about outside linebacker and what about Cam Jordan? The 37-year-old has a decade of history with Sean Payton, he’s still playing well even after 15 years in the NFL and, while the Broncos are by no means short at outside linebacker, they don’t have huge numbers there after sliding Jonah Elliss inside. Now, Denver’s top line is among the best in the business with Nik Bonitto and Jonathon Cooper. The club is high on Que Robinson and Dondrea Tillman provides quality depth. Denver could always kick Elliss back outside if it needed. But Jordan had 10.5 sacks a year ago and, critically, is hardly a situational pass-rusher. He’s still a force against the run and could be used creatively both on third down and early downs. The Broncos have one of his biggest fans in Payton and also a New Orleans native in Vance Joseph as their defensive coordinator.

Are there any big contract extensions on the table?

Not like last year, where the Broncos had a laundry list of mega deals to do with cornerstone players like Courtland Sutton, Allen and Nik Bonitto.

The biggest decision to make is in the secondary, where nickel Ja’Quan McMillian and corner Riley Moss are each entering contract years and 2025 first-round pick Jahdae Barron is waiting in the wings.

Other starters and key players entering the final years of their contracts include safety Brandon Jones, left guard Ben Powers, receiver Marvin Mims Jr. and tight end Evan Engram.

Overall, there’s far less certainty about who from that group will end up in Denver long term than there was a year ago, when it seemed all but certain that the big three would get deals done eventually.

Denver typically has done offseason extensions closer to training camp (Quinn Meinerz in 2024) or during (all three last year and Pat Surtain II in 2024) rather than in the spring.

What else is on the spring cleaning list at Broncos Park?

A handful of other projects. Now that the NFL draft is in the rearview mirror, an extension for general manager George Paton moves closer to the batter’s box. CEO and owner Greg Penner has made it clear Paton’s wanted long-term and has essentially said a deal is a matter of when, not if. Most front office movement of all kinds comes after the draft and into the summer. On a related note, Paton’s front office is highly regarded and has been raided repeatedly over the past two offseasons, so more movement on that front cannot be ruled out.

Denver also has a major move ahead in June, when the club relocates from its current headquarters to its new building across the practice fields, which is nearing completion.

Jonah Coleman looks like he could be the second coming of C.J. Anderson: A short, tanky back with big-time pass protection skills. It looks like we’re going into 2026 with J.K. Dobbins as RB1 again, but can he beat out RJ Harvey for that RB2 slot? Thanks.

— Ryan Smith, Commerce City

Hey Ryan, thanks for writing and getting us going this week.

The other Broncos running back that Coleman has drawn early comparisons to: Dobbins himself. In fact, head coach Sean Payton brought it up during the draft and assistant general manager Reed Burckhardt after the draft called the comp “very valid.” That����ap a pretty good starting point for the fourth-round pick out of Washington.

Dobbins will indeed lead Denver’s running back group into the 2026 season. It����ap early to know exactly how roles shake out, but to my mind the early blueprint is essentially Dobbins and Harvey in similar roles to what they did last year and then Coleman as the third-down back plus maybe a little more.

Let����ap just make the overarching disclaimer once, since most of the questions this week are about guys who have not yet stepped on an NFL practice field, let alone played in preseason or regular season games: It����ap April. Every rookie has a lot to do to get onto the field and there are months of work, development, signings, injuries and all the rest before we even get to the season’s starting point.

The Broncos would of course love it if Harvey took a big step in Year 2 and added every-down rushing efficiency to his obvious talent and explosiveness catching the ball and working in space. They would love it if Dobbins plays the entire season for the first time in his career. They’d love it if Coleman made himself difficult to keep off the field.

Coleman’s going to have to prove he can pick up Denver’s protection plan — not an easy task for a rookie — in order to lock down the third-down job, but the Broncos like his ability in that department. Add in 51 catches over the past two years at Washington and there’s a chance he can essentially consolidate the roles of Tyler Badie and Jaleel McLaughlin. In an ideal world, Coleman and Harvey can perhaps take a bit of the load off Dobbins and complete the orbit of needs around him and then also serve as complementary options should Dobbins miss time.

On paper, it looks good. If everyone is healthy going into the season and Harvey looks poised to take a leap, Coleman’s role right out of the chute might be third down only. But even that����ap an important spot, and the rookie could push for more.

Hey Parker! What do you think of our draft class? I like Jonah Coleman and I think he can be a contributor this year. But how do you feel about Tyler Onyedim? And what’s up with us not going for an inside linebacker until literally the last pick in the draft?

— Mark, Arvada

Hey Mark, thanks for writing and, more importantly, for agreeing with me on Coleman.

Onyedim, too, is going to have a real chance to carve out a role, even if it����ap not a massive one. Basically, he’s going to get thrown into the mix of players attempting to replace John Franklin-Myers, who got more than $20 million per year from Tennessee in free agency.

It����ap worth saying there’s no guarantee that Denver will play its defensive rotation exactly like it did a year ago. Franklin-Myers played very similar rates each of his two years in Denver — 46% in 2024 and 49% last year. That doesn’t necessarily mean the Broncos will see those 517 snaps as the exact shape of the hole. They could use Malcolm Roach even a bit more (career-high 50% play time in his 12 games last year) and Eyioma Uwazurike (36% playing time) figures to be a key in the equation, too. If Denver keeps Roach in essentially the role he excelled in last year, then it has three options to replace JFM’s approximate snaps: Uwazurike and Onyedim — former teammates at Iowa State — and 2025 third-rounder Sai’Vion Jones.

Uwazurike has the most experience, even after missing 2023 due to suspension and playing just 63 snaps in 2024. Overall, though, that����ap a good battle going into this summer. Plus, Uwazurike is entering the final year of his rookie contract this fall.

As for the linebacker conversation, there’s never a good way to say exactly how or why a team didn’t draft a position during a particular draft. Burckhardt made it clear afterward that Denver wanted a linebacker, but didn’t see it as a critical need after re-signing Justin Strnad and Alex Singleton earlier this spring. It����ap also worth considering how the second round developed.

Remember, GM George Paton said the club had a group of six players targeted as options at No. 62.

“They all started going,” Paton said Friday night after selecting Onyedim while noting that the defensive lineman was in that group of six.

Combine that with the fact that five ILBs (and four TEs) went in the 19 picks before Denver’s original slot. ILB Anthony Hill Jr. and TE Max Klare were selected in the spots immediately preceding Denver. It����ap not difficult to figure out where, at least in part, the Broncos were initially looking.

Do you think either of the tight ends we drafted will do much this year? I don’t know much about them.

— Phillip K., Denver

Hey Phillip, thanks for the question. They’ll each have a chance to contribute early, but I’m not sure you look at either as a surefire rotation member right out of the gate.

They are different kinds of players. Justin Joly, the fifth-rounder out of NC State, is a pass-catcher first and foremost. He’s, in positional parlance, an “F” who will move around the formation, play from the slot or wing and factor in the passing game. Dallen Bentley, the seventh-rounder out of Utah, is a “Y.” He’s the classic tight end who can line up in-line, attached to the tackle on either side of the formation.

The shorthand: Joly begins as an Evan Engram-type and Bentley begins as Adam Trautman-type.

Those aren’t Denver’s only tight ends, of course, though injuries limited the rest of the group in terms of playing time in 2025. That trio came in this way: Nate Adkins (199 snaps in nine games), Marcedes Lewis (81 snaps in five games) and Lucas Krull (53 snaps in three games).

Trautman’s 57% playing time checked in between 2024 (52%) and 2023 (70%). Engram played less in Year 1 with the Broncos than any healthy season previously in Jacksonville and with the New York Giants.

The Broncos need to figure out how to get more production out of this group. If that����ap via Joly or Bentley right away, great. Maybe they can help Denver play heavier or feature more TE variety. If it����ap as simple as unlocking Engram more, that����ap more than fine. As a starting point, I’m not sure there’s a massive role for either rookie right away, but perhaps one or both can make some summer noise and alter that conversation.

What can you tell me about this Red Murdock kid? I’ve been watching videos about him and it feels like we found a gem that fell through the cracks. He owns the NCAA record for most career forced fumbles! How did he not get drafted higher?

— Walter, Pueblo

Hey Walter, thanks for writing in. First thing, make sure to catch Sean Keeler’s column from early this week. It����ap a good one and will tell you a lot about Murdock the person. He’s a smart, interesting guy.

The stats are indeed wild. Murdock forced 17 fumbles over 34 games at Buffalo. He was credited with 298 total tackles in the past two seasons. So on and so forth.

Not only that, but plenty of services thought Murdock would go sooner than No. 257. The Athletic’s Dane Brugler, for example, had him graded as a fourth or fifth-round pick and the No. 138 overall player in the class. Murdock checked in two spots behind Boise State OL Kage Casey on Brugler’s overall list. The Broncos drafted Casey No. 111 overall.

As for why Murdock was available late, teams see players in increasingly disparate ways as the draft enters its latter stages. Murdock also doesn’t have a huge wingspan and isn’t a top-shelf athlete, comparatively speaking. He also dealt with a foot/ankle injury last year that he played through but which lingered long enough to cut his pro day short this spring.

Which of the undrafted free agents do you think will have the best shot at making the team?

— K.J., Cheyenne, Wyo.

Hey K.J., good question and definitely one to revisit after rookie minicamp, which will be next weekend. There’s always somebody who jumps out when reporters get a chance to watch guys on the field. That doesn’t always equate to making the 53-man roster, but it����ap always an interesting exercise. Plus, it����ap hard to complain about seeing football-related activities in May.

The first guide is typically money. If you see a big guarantee for an undrafted free agent — some teams committed as much as $300,000 in total guarantees this spring — that means the team believes that player will at least be on their practice squad. The base practice squad salary for a rookie is $13,750 per week, totaling $247,500 for the season. So some players are essentially being guaranteed an entire PS salary plus a little.

By that measure in Denver, you’d look to players like ILB Taurean York (Texas A&M), OLB Dasan McCullough (Nebraska) and OT Tyler Miller (Iowa State). Of course, offensive line and outside linebacker are going to be two of the toughest position groups to crack, assuming good health. So let����ap say York as an early candidate, but see what happens once the guys have been on the field a couple of times, too.

General manager George Payton and Sean Payton love their roster. They could pretend that jobs are open, that vacancy lights are flashing. But in reality, there is roughly one starting position up for grabs: defensive end.

John Franklin-Myers, who loved talking, sacking and eating Uncrustables, left as a free agent to the Titans. The Broncos wanted to keep him. But after they signed players to in-house contract extensions for more than $400 million over the last 18 months, JFM had to leave to cash in.

So when the Broncos finally got around to picking in the NFL draft — they had no selection in the first or second round for the first time since 1995 — they plucked Texas A&M defensive lineman Tyler Onyedim.

He might not be a dancing bear. But he can play anywhere up front. Just ask him.

“Man, I feel like I am a versatile player. I can play anywhere on the line,” Onyedim, voice still excited after realizing his dream of reaching the NFL as the 66th selection overall. “I have a good first step. I feel like I am a true defensive lineman.”

The numbers add up for him to push for playing time. He is 6-foot-3, 292 pounds with go-go Gadget arms and a thirst for stopping the run. He provides depth and youth, the type of athlete capable of competing for snaps with Sai’vion Jones, who was taken in the third round last season.

He is also familiar with the Broncos Orange Rush. Before transferring to Texas A&M, Onyedim was a teammate of Denver’s Eyioma Uwazurike at Iowa State. The two have remained close, with Onyedim saying they would be in each other’s weddings.

“That’s my big bro. That’s my dog,” Onyedim said. “I have studied all of those boys, you feel me. I can’t wait to learn from the best.”

It is sure not like it used to be, back in the days of desperation, when the Broncos’ draft felt like an expensive game of pin-the-tail-on-the-donkey. In previous seasons, we would start talking about positioning for picks in October.

This spring, we have groused about the free agent yawnfest — they brought in special teams safety Tycen Anderson — and their desire to keep the band together. This could be a bad thing. But there’s no denying that it is a byproduct of a team that has become really, really good.

The Broncos went 15-4 last year, testing the expiration dates on miracle finishes, while suffocating opponents with a relentless defense.

The loss to the New England Patriots remains burned into memory because there are so many scenarios in which they should have won. Had Bo Nix not broken his ankle, had Jarrett “It ain’t pretty, it’s Stiddy” Stidham not turned the ball over inside the 20, had the Broncos run more successfully than a democrat in Wyoming, had Mother Nature not flexed its muscle with the only snow storm that would appear in months, Denver would have advanced to its ninth Super Bowl.

Instead, the Broncos were left with their noses against the windowpane, two wins shy of the most improbable season in franchise history.

They are banking on players improving, believing success through this path is more likely and preferable to adding outside influences to the locker room. Onyedim is, by all accounts, a good teammate who will fit in their culture.

What happened to Thursday and Friday? Jaylen Waddle. And the AFC Championship Game.

The Broncos chose to be strategic, their offseason a laser, not a crabbing net.

They sent away their first-rounder, 30th overall, to the Dolphins in exchange for an explosive, proven receiver. Waddle is everything the Broncos needed, a receiver capable of stopping and starting more effectively than a New York cabbie.

Indiana wideout Omar Cooper ultimately went to the Jets in that spot. No matter how much you like the Hoosier, there is zero chance he would have had Waddle’s impact this season.

In a Super Bowl window, the Broncos have very specific needs.

Now, this does not make them immune to second-guessing. Could they have packaged picks — there is no way seven new players make their roster — to move up in the second round for Vanderbilt tight end Eli Stowers (Philadelphia traded up and took him at 54), Texas linebacker Anthony Hill Jr. (61st to Titans) or Ohio State’s Max Klare.

With the Rams taking Klare, they now have seven or eight tight ends — lost count — better than anyone on the Broncos. Denver traded back last year and bit them when R.J. Harvey fizzled as J.K. Dobbins’ replacement, making it clear they would have been better off with TreVeyon Henderson.

Listen, I would have preferred they take an offensive player. Payton likes the unit more than the rest of us. And clearly, the Broncos did not think enough of the tight ends to be aggressive. It puts pressure on them, however, to land a running back on Day 3, somebody like Nebraska’s Emmett Johnson or Washington’s Jonah Coleman.

The reality is that the Broncos are now smart and have earned trust. Now that they are a legitimate contender, ����apountry is willing to give the benefit of the doubt.

They are counting on the Broncos to win a Super Bowl in the next few years. With a roster as stacked as it has been since 2015, these are the expectations.

It also means that Paton and Paton don’t see many open competitions.

So, on Friday, after a nearly hour wait, you get Tyler Onyedim.

It is boring. It is also a byproduct of winning.

It doesn’t always come with a Jaylen Waddle-sized splash or the exhilaration of taking Bo Nix at No. 12 overall in the 2024 draft.

Sometimes, it����ap meat and potatoes.

Sometimes, it����ap patience — or something like it.

Sometimes it����ap waiting 61 picks, trading back four more and then taking a player at what was arguably your deepest position the past two years.

That����ap where the Broncos found themselves Friday night when they used their first pick of the draft at No. 66 on Texas A&M defensive tackle Tyler Onyedim.

Everybody else in the NFL made a selection in the first 56 picks. Denver waited 10 more.

Of course, the Broncos’ big offseason fireworks came more than five weeks ago when they traded their first and third-round picks for Waddle, the explosive wide receiver.

That, combined with their late selections in each round, put them among the teams with the least overall capital in the league.

They committed to waiting it out for No. 62 to roll around. General manager George Paton said last week that Denver had six players it was targeting for its first selection.

That alone took patience.

The Broncos watched all of Thursday night — “that was a boring day,” Paton said — and then saw players at other positions of need come ripping off the board in the middle of the second round. Between picks 43 and 59 alone, four inside linebackers and three tight ends heard their names called.

Then the two picks preceding Denver: Inside linebacker Anthony Hill Jr. to Tennessee, which traded up, and tight end Max Klare to the Los Angeles Rams.

“It’s a typical draft — there’s a run at different positions, which we figured there would be,” Paton said. “It fell like we thought it would. I think I mentioned we had six players and they all started going. Tyler was one of those six, but it fell kind of like we thought it would.”

The Broncos were aware the Rams loved Klare, a source told The Post on Friday, so they either did not like him enough to jump in front of L.A. or thought the Rams would look elsewhere. Tennessee general manager Mike Borgonzi, a former Kansas City executive, explained trading up to No. 60 for Hill by talking about pro scouting and understanding the needs and potential interest of the teams in your part of the draft board.

When Denver’s pick arrived, Paton and head coach Sean Payton��decided to move back, trading No. 62 to Buffalo for Nos. 66 and 182.

In Onyedim, they leaned into a roster belief they often espouse.

“He plays a position that’s always hard to find at defensive tackle,” Payton said Friday night. “His strike, his shed, the athlete, makeup, those are traits.”

At 6-4 and 292 pounds, Onyedim played four years at Iowa State and then in 2025 for the Aggies. In Denver, he joins All-Pro Zach Allen, veteran D.J. Jones and a room that also features Malcolm Roach, Eyioma Uwazurike, Jordan Jackson and 2025 third-round pick Sai’Vion Jones.

Roach and Uwazurike each are expected to help fill the gap left by John Franklin-Myers, Denver’s lone high-profile free agency departure, but Sai’Vion Jones and Onyedim are the kinds of pieces the Broncos are betting play key roles at some point in the future.

“We typically like to draft high-trait players,” Paton said earlier this month. “Maybe they lack a little bit of polish and it����ap going to take some development. We’ve done a great job with the coaches in developing these types of players. … Sure, we’d like somebody to come in and start right away, but that����ap not always realistic no matter where they’re picked. It����ap just hard.

“With the way our team is built now, it����ap going to be hard to come in and start Day 1.”

That is true of Onyedim, too. His versatility — he called himself “a true d-lineman” capable of playing every spot — is a virtue and in the Broncos’ mind maximizes the chance he’ll find a home somewhere along the front at some point, whether it����ap in 2026 or beyond.

One source said the club believes Onyedim can play, “across the board.”

They have two players like that, now, that they’ve picked in the third round each of the past two years. They moved up for Jones and back for Onyedim. Each has versatility and traits the Broncos like. Either could be a key for Vance Joseph and defensive line coach Jamar Cain as soon as this fall or either could be insurance while veteran players chew up almost all of the snaps in Denver’s regular rotation.

Either way, the Broncos set themselves up for a draft weekend like this. They may well find flashier help at tight end, running back or linebacker with their now seven slated selections on Saturday. There are starters to be found every year — though clearly at a lower hit rate — in rounds four through seven. Particularly so at the positions that Denver still needs to fortify.

Regardless of what happens over the course of Saturday, Payton, Paton and the players in Denver’s locker room believe the roster is already in a place where it can compete for a Super Bowl.

They made their big splash earlier in the spring. The brass knew it’d be tough to find a player on Day 2 who would step right in and start.

That, Paton said, is particularly true on the defensive line.

“Just going into it, we feel pretty good,” he said a month ago. “We have Sai’Vion and we have our four guys coming back. Our starters and then Eni really came on. Then Sai’vion and Jordan Jackson.”

In the NFL, though, the reality is there is almost no such thing as too much depth on the line of scrimmage.

“We’re looking closely at the grade and at the stack,” Payton said. “We’re never trying to worry about the splash.”

Broncos draft previews
Offense: Quarterbacks | Running backs | Wide receivers | Tight ends | Offensive line
Defense: Defensive line | Outside linebackers | Inside linebackers | Cornerbacks | Safeties

Broncos’ in-house offseason moves:��Re-signed Matt Henningsen to a one-year, vet-minimum deal; re-signed Jordan Jackson to a one-year exclusive-rights deal; re-signed Kristian Williams and Jordan Miller to futures contracts.

Under contract:��Zach Allen, D.J. Jones, Malcolm Roach, Eyioma Uwazurike, Sai’vion Jones, Jackson, Henningsen, Williams, Miller

Need scale (1-10): 6. There is a 7.5-sack hole in the middle of Denver’s front, after John Franklin-Myers signed with the Titans in free agency. Replacing Franklin-Myers is a near-impossible task given his symbiotic effect on Allen and Denver’s No. 62 slot in this draft; that being said, it’d make a lot of sense for Denver to bring another body into the room. Uwazurike could reasonably compete for a starting job, and Denver needs to see what it has in Jones, last year’s third-round pick. But there are plenty of solid names available in this crop on Day 2 and Day 3, and George Paton and company will be looking.

The Top Five

Kayden McDonald, Ohio State

A nose tackle, through and through. The 6-foot-2, 326-pound McDonald is a force in the run game, with 65 tackles and nine tackles for loss in an All-American season last year for the Buckeyes. Will he be a truly impactful pass-rusher in the NFL? Unclear. But McDonald should grade out as an immediate starting-ready force in the trenches.

Peter Woods, Clemson

Woods’ production declined this fall after a monster 2024 season, but he still profiles as a versatile havoc-wreaker with plenty of NFL upside.��He hasn’t run a 40-yard dash, but����He’ll be a fun piece for a late-first-round defensive coordinator to shift around in their scheme.

Lee Hunter, Texas Tech

NFL insiders generally pinpoint a pretty clear gap between the McDonald-Woods tier and the next crop of interior defensive linemen in this class. Hunter’s profile is rather complicated, carrying plenty of power (6-foot-3, 318 pounds) but not much speed (a 5.18-second 40-yard-dash, second-to-last among all defensive linemen at the combine). He’s racked up more than 9.5 tackles for loss in each of his last three seasons between UCF and Texas Tech, though, and the Broncos should be able to piece together a strong evaluation on him after drafting UCF RB RJ Harvey last year.

Christen Miller, Georgia

Here’s a potential Broncos second-round target. Denver hosted the powerful Georgia defensive tackle on a top-30 visit. Miller has a great frame at 6-foot-4 and 321 pounds, and has graded out extremely well as a run defender the past two seasons. Again, though, this is a projected nose tackle in the NFL, and Denver already has two starting-caliber options there in Jones and Roach.

Caleb Banks, Florida

A potential upside play for Denver in the second round, if Banks falls that far. A year ago, it would’ve been a ludicrous proposition for Banks to land anywhere outside Day 1; he’s endured a rocky 2025, though, as he missed all but three games of his final season with a foot injury and then suffered a broken foot at the NFL Combine. If he’s healthy, though, the 6-foot-6 Banks has as much pass-rush upside as anyone in this interior defensive-line group. Denver hosted him on a top-30 visit, too.

More Broncos fits

Chris McClellan, Mizzou

A general pre-draft riser for good reason, McClellan racked up six sacks during his senior year at Mizzou and was one of Denver’s first top-30 visits this cycle. The Broncos scout Mizzou well, as 2023 All-American running back Cody Schrader and longtime Mizzou DT Williams are both on Denver’s roster on futures deals. McClellan would be a strong option to supplement Franklin-Myers’ loss — but he might not be around in the fourth if the Broncos pass on him at No. 62.

DeMonte Capehart, Clemson

A six-year alumnus of Clemson and Woods’ teammate on the line, Capehart didn’t have explosive production in college, with just 16 pressures combined in his last two seasons (according to Pro Football Focus). The raw athleticism here, though, is bonkers: a 4.85-second 40-yard-dash and 33.5-inch vertical, both in the top four at his position at the combine. Denver swung on Alabama’s Que Robinson as a developmental prospect in the fourth round last year on sheer upside, and Capehart could be a similar interior fit in this class.

Landon Robinson, Navy

Denver’s shown some interest here, meeting the 287-pound Robinson at Navy’s Pro Day. He stands 6-foot-0, which isn’t exactly ideal. But Robinson has jaw-dropping strength that stood out from even his military compatriots: squatting 665 pounds and benching 465, . He bulked up from an outside linebacker to a defensive lineman across his collegiate career, and could offer pass-rushing potential in the NFL.

Gary Smith III, UCLA

The Broncos have three seventh-round picks, and could spend one of them here. Broncos general manager Paton is a noted UCLA alumnus, and the 319-pound Smith III could be a run-stopping fit at the next level. He’s been a productive player for three seasons in a Bruins jersey, and his tackle production skyrocketed in 2025.

Uar Bernard, International Pathway Program

Here’s the most athletic player in this draft class. Period. Bernard, a 306-pound prospect discovered at a camp in Lagos, Nigeria, through the NFL’s International Pathway Program, rocketed onto the pre-draft scene thanks to a 4.63-second 40-yard dash and a 39-inch vertical. The only problem? He’s never played a snap of professional football in his life. The upside here, though, is too tantalizing for some team to not swing on Bernard.

They’re moving forward with Alex Singleton and Justin Strnad atop the room after signing both to extensions at the outset of free agency in early March.

They released Dre Greenlaw with a post-June 1 designation after one year, $11.5 million and a pair of injuries that limited him to eight games in the regular season.

Denver could have made a splash in free agency, but general manager George Paton offered a simple explanation Monday for why his team opted for retention.

“Singleton and Strnad are really good players,” Paton said. “Dre — we couldn’t keep the three of them. Dre helped us win a bunch of games, he helped our culture. We wish him the best, but we’re really happy to have Strnad and Singleton.”

Paton, a month ago at the NFL Combine, said he hoped the Broncos could keep both, and ultimately they did,��signing Strnad to a three-year, $18 million deal��and��Singleton to a two-year, $15 million deal.

Greenlaw, meanwhile, re-signed with San Francisco a year after the Broncos won a heated battle between the clubs for his services.

“Just how much we love Dre as a person and as a player,” San Francisco coach Kyle Shanahan said Monday when asked about the rationale for bringing Greenlaw back. “He’s one of the best linebackers I’ve ever coached and I’ve been around some good ones. What he’s meant to the Niners organization.

“We hated being away from him for a year and we’re pumped he’s back.”

Singleton and Strnad are part of a broader pattern of retention in Denver this spring. The Broncos signed or tendered 13 of their 17 restricted and unrestricted free agents, plus all four of their exclusive rights players.

“We like our players,” Paton said. “We compare all our players to what����ap there in free agency and our guys were up there pretty high.

“We’ve won a lot of games with these guys. They fit the culture and not everyone does.”

Paton extension a ‘when,’ not if

The Broncos general manager is entering the final year of his original six-year contract he signed when he was hired in January 2021.

CEO and owner Greg Penner reiterated Monday that finalizing an agreement to keep Paton in Denver is a matter of when, not if.

“We want to have George here long-term,” Penner said. “He’s been a terrific partner for Sean and how they work together. I’m sure we’ll get that sorted out.”

Broncos ‘haven’t heard’ on international game in ’26

Broncos president Damani Leech said the club has not heard anything about playing an international game in 2026.

That doesn’t categorically rule out Denver landing a game as a visiting team, but typically teams are at least aware of the possibility by this point a little more than a month before the schedule is released. By this time a year ago, the Broncos knew they were in the mix to play either in Berlin, Germany or London. They ended up playing the New York Jets at Tottenham Stadium in London.

One potential this year would be playing San Francisco in Mexico City, but so far, there has been no indication that Denver will be placed in that game.

“Technically, we are (in the mix), but we haven’t heard anything yet,” Leech said.

Before joining the Broncos as team president in 2022, Leech was the COO of NFL International in the league office.

“Selfishly, I personally love the international ambitions of the league, Greg and Carrie support it, Sean’s a big fan of it,” Leech said. “So anything we can do to support the overall league initiative, we’re on board.”

Training camp update

The Broncos are set to move into their new team headquarters in June.

That project is on time and on budget, Penner said. Fans, however, will not be back on a grass berm for training camp come July. Instead, the club will once again use temporary bleachers for fans attending camp practices.

Leech said he expects capacity to be about double what it was last summer, so somewhere in the 1,500 neighborhood.

“And then shortly after camp ends, we’ll start to build the berm back up and it will be more similar to what fans are used to,” Leech said. The new berm will go where the Broncos’ current building is, to the East of Denver’s practice fields.

DL a free agent possibility

Paton and the Broncos think they are well-situated to make up for the loss of defensive lineman John Franklin-Myers.

Franklin-Myers, of course, signed a massive three-year, $63 million deal with Tennessee when free agency opened.

Even though Denver is confident in its depth beyond the starting trio, thanks to Malcolm Roach, Eyioma Uwazurike, Jordan Jackson, and second-year man Sai’Vion Jones, Paton left the door open to adding from the outside still in the coming weeks or months.

“We have pretty good depth, but you are always looking for big guys on the offensive and defensive lines,” he said.

How rare is this retention?

Paton said he hadn’t exactly crunched the numbers on just how many of their own the Broncos have brought back this offseason — but admitted the front office’s approach was “pretty unique.”

“It’s not for everyone, what we’re doing,” Paton said.

Indeed, in recent history, it really hasn’t been for anyone. According to some numbers crunched by The Denver Post, the Broncos currently have 94% of their 2025 snaps under contract heading into their 2026 offseason program. Denver has added only one external free agent, safety and special-teams player Tycen Anderson, and Paton made clear Monday that this was an intentional approach centered on preserving what’s already in the building.

“The culture — and the guys we have really fit it,” Paton said. “It just, it����ap kinda worked out that way.”

Well, much of the Broncos’ 2026 NFL Draft capital has up and Waddled away.

Denver’s entire outlook come April is radically different, now, after the Broncos gambled a first-round, third-round and fourth-round pick in 2026 for the dynamite addition of star receiver Jaylen Waddle (and a fourth-round pick). Suddenly, general manager Paton has significantly fewer picks to work with, as the Broncos now face the increased importance of hitting a few key roster needs in this year’s class.

The organization’s current arsenal of picks is all over the place: No. 62 (second round), No. 108 (fourth round, from Saints), No. 111 (fourth round, from Dolphins), No. 170 (fifth round), No. 246, No. 256, and No. 257 (seventh round). The clusters there strongly hint that Denver will make some sort of move up or back in the draft order. And with the haul given up for Waddle, it’s easy to see Paton wanting to take advantage of a needy franchise and moving back in April to accumulate some more mid-round capital.

With that in mind, Broncos beat reporters Parker Gabriel and Luca Evans took a new approach to this iteration of The Post’s mock draft: trades were on the table. And very much encouraged.

Once again, The Post used Pro Football Focus’s mock-draft simulator — which also allows trades and approximates fair value in pick swaps — for this exercise. The last mock draft in this space, in early March, had the Broncos selecting Indiana receiver Omar Cooper Jr. at the end of the first round. This one is … rather different.

Round 3, pick No. 70: RB Jonah Coleman, Washington

OK, let’s break this down.

There’s a realistic scenario in which the Broncos, now lacking a first-round pick, end up throwing a package together to try and move up for a gem like Notre Dame running back Jadarian Price or Vanderbilt tight end Eli Stowers. But it’d be difficult to see Paton, who has historically preferred trading back rather than trading up, taking that kind of swing after the Broncos’ trade for Waddle. Instead, The Post explored a scenario in which Paton and the Broncos trade back from No. 62.

In this PFF-massaged but not-impossible development, the Broncos find a trade partner in the Cleveland Browns, who are evidently eager to jump up a few slots to take their guy at the back of the second round. Here, Denver trades pick No. 62 and pick No. 170 for pick No. 70 and pick No. 107 from Cleveland, .

Coleman would fit neatly into the Broncos’ current running-back room, which still needs an injection of juice after re-upping with J.K. Dobbins, Jaleel McLaughlin and Tyler Badie during free agency. If Denver is still confident in the Dobbins-RJ Harvey tandem, it’ll need a durable running back who can pick up first-down work between the tackles, bruise at the goal line, and bring some third-down heft. Coleman checks every box.

The 5-foot-8, 220-pound back is solid in pass protection, and broke down schemes with Denver’s offensive staff during his NFL Combine meeting with the Broncos. He’s not especially explosive outside the tackles, but ran for 5.5 yards per carry across his collegiate career and had 15 touchdowns on the ground in 2025. He fumbled twice in 551 collegiate carries and dropped one pass in 109 total targets, according to PFF. That’s an NFL-ready ceiling-raiser right there.

Other options considered: RB Mike Washington Jr., Arkansas.��Washington is shooting up draft boards after a monster performance at the combine, with a class-leading 4.33 40-yard-dash and a 39-inch vertical jump. The issue for Denver: he hasn’t been good in pass protection in college, and the Broncos need a third back whom Nix trusts in that area.

Round 4, pick No. 107: DL Chris McClellan, Mizzou

Here’s the other Browns slot, which kicks off a hilarious run of three Broncos selections in the span of five picks.

McClellan was Denver’s first known top-30 visit of the pre-draft process, and could factor into Denver’s plan to replace the departed John Franklin-Myers. He projects as more of a nose tackle at 6-foot-4 and 313 pounds — which the Broncos don’t necessarily need, with D.J. Jones and Malcolm Roach on multi-year deals — but McClellan has clear pass-rushing upside, with six sacks in 13 games last year. He’d bring another talented young body to compete in the room with veteran Eyioma Uwazurike and 2025 rookie Sai’vion Jones.

Other options considered: TE Michael Trigg, Baylor.��Trigg will likely be sitting there for Denver in the middle rounds of April’s draft. He had terrific production last season, with 50 catches for 694 yards and six touchdowns. He played more from the slot than at in-line tight end in 2025, though, which would overlap with the strengths Denver already has at receiver.

Round 4, pick No. 108: S Bud Clark, TCU

The Broncos just signed a safety Thursday, agreeing to a one-year deal with former Bengals reserve Tycen Anderson. Anderson will likely compete for Denver’s third-safety job in 2026, but he profiles more as a special-teams ace. And the Broncos will have some decisions to make regarding Brandon Jones in the upcoming season, as the veteran starter enters the final year of his contract.

Enter Clark, who brings good size (6-foot-1 and 188 pounds), program loyalty (six seasons at TCU) and elite collegiate ball production (15 interceptions and 21 passes defensed across his last four seasons). His abilities in coverage would be an excellent complement next to hard-hitting chaos agent Talanoa Hufanga, and Clark’s lengthy stint in college would likely help his evaluation here in Denver’s eyes.

Other options considered:��Nobody. The Post likes Clark.

Round 4, pick No. 111: G Beau Stephens, Iowa

It’s high time for the Broncos to actually spend some draft capital on an offensive lineman: they’re set to keep the same starting front around Nix for the third straight year, but have several aging starters and upcoming contract questions in that mix. It’s almost a certainty that Denver looks to their offensive line in this class, and Stephens would be a solid option.

Denver scouts Iowa well (see: Riley Moss, 2023 third-round pick), and Stephens grew from a reserve into a top-end starter across five years with the Hawkeyes. He allowed just four quarterback pressures in 304 pass-blocking snaps in 2025, according to PFF, an absurd number. Plus, he’s started solely at left guard the past two seasons — where incumbent Ben Powers’ contract is set to expire after the 2026 season. The only issue here: the arm length and overall athleticism aren’t strong.

Other options considered: LB Bryce Boettcher.��At present, it’d probably be strange for the Broncos to go through April without drafting a linebacker, after cutting Dre Greenlaw at the start of free agency. Boettcher would bring another Oregon standout into the fold, and profiles similarly in makeup and play-style to current Broncos captain Alex Singleton.

Round 6, pick No. 209: FB Eli Heidenreich, Navy

This might require some tequila to be wheeled into the draft room to even think about pulling this off. But, presto! Denver suddenly has a sixth-round pick again.

At the present moment, the Broncos are sitting with three not-especially-valuable picks at the back of the seventh round. It’d be quite hard to imagine Denver taking the second-last and very-last players of April’s draft back-to-back, at compensatory picks No. 256 and No. 257. Therefore, The Post looked for a deal to move up and add an impact Day 3 skill player, and couldn’t pass up on Heidenreich here after packaging all three seventh-rounders for

Heidenreich could be Payton’s new Taysom Hill, in all but size. He has one of the more unique profiles of any player in this 2026 class, running for 499 yards and catching for 941 in his senior season in Navy’s triple-option offense. Is he a receiver? Is he a running back? Is he a fullback with slot-receiver flex? Who knows. But he ran a 4.44-second 40-yard-dash at the combine.

Perhaps Heidenreich could be an eventual replacement as both a returner and gadget weapon for Marvin Mims Jr., who’s currently slated to hit free agency after 2026. The potential here in Denver’s offense was too great to pass up.

Other options considered:��TE Oscar Delp, Georgia.��Delp was often stuck at the back of the pecking order of Georgia’s pass-catching options, and never caught more than 24 passes in a single season in college. His stock should rise , after being held out of the combine with a hairline fracture.