The Athletic Football Show: A show about the NFL - NEWS: Broncos trade for Jaylen Waddle

Episode Date: March 17, 2026

The Broncos mostly sat out the free agency frenzy last week, but they finally made their presence felt with a huge trade for Jaylen Waddle. What does he bring to the offense? How much more dynamic is this group with Waddle in the fold? And what's next in Miami? Robert Mays and Derrik Klassen break it down on this episode of The Athletic Football Show.Connect with The Athletic Football ShowYT: https://www.youtube.com/@TAFootballShowPodcasts: https://podfollow.com/the-athletic-football-show/viewX: https://x.com/TA_FootballShowIG: https://www.instagram.com/tafootballshowTikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@tafootballshowDiscord: http://discord.gg/theathleticfootballshowBuy our merch! http://theathletic.lnk.to/tafsmerchCall us: 847-448-0701Email us: [e-mail]: Robert MaysCo-Hosts: Derrik Klassen and Dave HelmanExecutive Producer: Michael BellerVideo Producer: Katy DuffyAudio Producer: Michael BellerSocial Producer: Scott KrinchFollow Robert on Bluesky: @robertmays.bsky.socialFollow Derrik on Bluesky: @qbklass.bsky.socialFollow Robert on X: @robertmaysFollow Derrik on X: @QBKlassTheme song: HauntedWritten by Dylan Slocum, Trevor Dietrich, Ruben Duarte, Kyle McAulay, and Meredith VanWoert / Performed by Spanish Love SongsCourtesy of Pure Noise / By arrangement with Bank Robber Music, LLC Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

No rest from NFL news these days. This was a fun one, though. Now, I don't think a move outside of a keep to leave, who apparently called this and knew it was coming, I don't think a lot of us expected this to be the next major domino to drop in the NFL world. But Jalen Waddle headed to the Denver Broncos. The Broncos sending first and third round picks to Miami.

They're swapping fourth round picks. I believe it's like 20 spots falling a little bit further. So for the most part, a first and a third round pick heading back to the Dolphins for Jalen Waddle. Let's walk through this. Let's start with the Broncos perspective here. We talked about whether Denver was better a couple of days ago when we did this about the AFC. And for the Broncos, the answer was kind of unequivocally no. They hadn't really added any players.

But it felt like they might be laying in wait to do something big as part of their final push here with a roster that obviously was in the AFC championship game last year. and if their quarterback gets stayed healthy, very well could have been in the Super Bowl. So how do you feel about Jalen Waddle heading to this version of the Broncos and where they are right now? I mean, we've said, I think we said going into last off season

and I would have said it going into this off season. They needed more pop at the skill player positions. And obviously you have a number one wide receiver in Cortland Sutton, but he's more of a big bodied. He's winning on dig routes. He's kind of like our third down guy. He's just not really the kind of just spit him out the ball and he can go make a play for us.

And they'd try to, to piece together this role with guys like Marvin Mims kind of was this for a little bit. Obviously, they signed Evan Ingram who for a tight end kind of gives you that, but I think that probably didn't even go as well as they wanted last year. They draft RJ Harvey out of the backfield who was supposed to give them that, but there was issues getting him on the field. Going and trading for Jalen Waddle, it is like a we 100% know that so long as this guy is on the field, we can get explosives. And I do think the way that they run the offense where there's a lot of quick game, there's a lot of RPO's. There's a lot of like, can we just get the

ballout type of plays to go get a guy like Jalen Wado, who is pretty in arguably one of the best guys in the league at that particular skill set. I think it makes so much sense for them. Yeah, saying they piece it together, I think is exactly the right way to frame it, right? You have Marvin Mims and you're trying to figure out this role within the offense. This is just cutting straight to the point. It's like, we're going to pay a premium to get the best version of this skill set into what we do. And if you're the Broncos at this stage, I completely understand wanting to do it this way. And they gave up a lot to go get jail in Waddle. We'll talk about it from the Dolphins perspective.

You go up a first round pick. You give up two top 100 picks. But you look at the contract coming back. I believe on Waddle's deal, this year he has a $1 million-based salary, and then he has a $16 million option bonus or $15 million option bonus that gets paid out in three days, which I assume that was part of the timeline

as to why this happened when it did. So the Broncos, you pro-rate that bonus. He's going to make, what is that, $7 million against the cap this year. And then his base salaries in each of the next two years, are like $23 million and $25 million. So you take the 16 this year, the 25 and the 23, we're talking about like three years, $65 million.

That's the contract Chris Godwin got last year. But I mean, that's not a lot for a guy who is entering his age, I believe 28 season. So you're going to get 28, 29, 30. And for where you are, we know this. You're not going to get a player like Jalen Waddle and free agency. And so to add this type of talent to your roster on top of what you already have, you're always going to have to pay a little bit of a premium.

and the contract is healthy enough that maybe you can justify giving up a little bit more because you can make it work with the books. So on a football level, I get this, from a timeline level I get this, even from the price, which is very high, I can understand the Broncos thinking, this is the best way to improve our team

on the timeline that we're currently on. And you probably weren't going to get this guy in the draft where they're picking. Like their pick is 30th in the first round. Like you are probably not going to find a player who can give you the kind of explosiveness. Like, you know, maybe if they had the chief's pick and it's a nine,

maybe you can make the argument, you can find that. I mean, that's about where Jalen Waddle went. But with way they were picking at 30, like you were probably just not going to find that guy. So you obviously give up that. You give up the extra third round as well. But I'm okay shelling out a third round pick. Like, I know third round picks are valuable,

but it's not that often that those guys turn into like true, true contributors for you. For you to pay that as your premium for like, this is certainty. We know that this guy can give it to us. I'm pretty into that. And so I really like this move for them. And again, they were not going to find this caliber of guy in free agency.

I mean, Waddle is a tier. at least the tier better than all of the guys who hit free agency. And he's, again, this is like prime of your career sort of age, the 27, 28, 29. The money's not that bad. Like this is for a team like Denver and especially like they're not paying their quarterback very much. And so there's two three year window where Waddle is, even if the money starts to go up a little bit and you're paying him, you know, $20,000, you're not paying the quarterback anything. So who really cares? Yeah, I mean, by the time Waddle hits his last year on this deal, that's when you get to Bo Nix's 50-year option.

And so obviously the roster will have. to change a little bit in the meantime, but even absorbing Waddle's deal, which end the $26 million cap here for 2027. I'm looking at it right now. They still have like $19 million in cap space. And they'll have to move some money around, right? Like they've paid a lot of guys in part because they are on that rookie quarterback timeline. And so they'll have to move some money around by doing this. But I think the money is better spent on a player like Jalen Waddle than some of the other things that they've spent it on over the last couple years. And what's fun about this, when these moves happen. One of the things I like to do is, well, who else should have been willing to pay this

price for J.L. Waddle? And I kind of think after the DJ Moore move, like, this was the team to make this sport sort of splashy move, when you think about teams that were right on the precipice that had a need of this position and with this skill set, the Broncos were the most logical destination, I think. And like you said, we have talked about that over the last couple years. So this is the right team in this moment to give up these sort of assets for a player like Jail and Waddle. And that's why I think it's a fun fit. Yeah, I'm like, I'm looking at like, yeah, I'm just using the draft order right now, but I'm trying to figure out like what other team it would have made sense for. Obviously, knowing now that the Buffalo thing had already happened with DJ more like, I mean, I know the Rams

were sniffing around at receivers. So I would not have been that surprised if they tried to do something like that. Because there were the rumors of them like moving Adams as well, which I would not do, but I understand how that could have worked out for them. And then like New England was probably not going to happen because it's all interdivision. And so it's very unlikely you play a, you move a player of that caliber in the division when they have like an MVP caliber quarterback. So that was probably not going to happen. Like this realistically was the best destination. And again, I like the fit not just from Denver's perspective of them getting a player like

Waddle, but I like it for Waddle, like what the offense is going to ask him to do. This is the role that he's probably going to play is very similar to the role that he's probably would have played or did play very early on in like the Tua era where it was a lot of like, even before they got Mike McDaniel where it was like, dude, we're splitting the ball out to him a hundred times and he's just going to be our like short, quick game thing. And then every now and then you can, okay, we can hit a drift for out of Bo Nix is willing to throw it. We can get him on a go ball. They run a lot of dagger. And if he's now your scene player, instead of Marvin Mims, it's like, oh, this could be a touchdown instead of just the,

we hope that like the DB kind of misses something and Marvin Mims can just get free. I just think he's a really good complimentary piece to what Cortland Sutton is. Like if you're talking about two receivers with complimentary, go back to the word, complimentary skill sets, that I think play off of each other well. I mean, this is how you would build it. This is exactly how you would build it. They fit so well together in trying to get the most out of your offense. So from Denver, Denver's perspective, I think it makes total sense.

From the Dolphins perspective, I can understand this on a lot of levels, but I think there are layers to this as you think about how it fits into the Malik Willis signing, all of that other stuff. So as you think about this from Denver, from the Dolphins perspective, and why the Dolphins would be willing to do this, and how this plays into their thinking. Where do you land on it? I mean, the more we look like,

I know we did some stuff like when they signed Malik Willis, it was like, oh, the offense can be fun with Malik Willis and Jalen Waddle and Devon H.N. Realistically, though, like with the timeline that they kind of proved that they were trying to be on, one of Devin H.N. and Jalen Wattle probably was ultimately going to be off the team. And now we know that it's obviously Waddle. And so I get it from their perspective in the terms of like their, clearly tanking, let's acquire as much as we can. But now it does make the like, well,

what are you even, like, you're not really even setting Malik Willis up for success. So like, why did you sign a player like this? I get in the sense of like you did not have a starting quarterback. So you have to sign somebody and he's probably the most exciting guy for you on the market. But it does not feel currently like they are giving him that much of a chance to actually go out and prove what his abilities are. Like this, to me, the way that the roster is shaping out a little bit feels a little bit like last year's Tennessee Titans team where it's just a ton of young skill players it's not a lot of guys who are super proven the offensive line you can maybe squint and see something fun and then you're really just praying on this uber talented quarterback to

make something out of not a whole lot around him yeah i think that there are two things going on here you can look at a guy like malik willis and future kind of unknown options a quarterback and decide signing me leak willis to a three-year deal even if we're not going to try to be competitive of this year is still in the best interests of our franchise over the next three seasons. It is a long-term answer. We think this is a viable enough choice at the right price where let's just do this and it doesn't necessarily have to be about what we're trying to accomplish in the short term. I think that's fine, right?

Like he's on a three-year deal. You have $140 million in cap space next year now. You can start building up the roster again around him next year. And if you want to try to be competitive by 2028 when he's in the third year of his deal, he's still on the roster and maybe that was your best chance to find a quarterback. But I think what you said to me is the point that I would come back to. Now you're really cutting him off at the knees before you're even starting this season. Like there is a chance that this is still the, that still was the best move for you in the long term.

But you are just setting that guy up to have a rough year in the first year of that contract. And then let's just play this out for just a little bit further. Let's just say you're really, really, really bad. you get the first overall pick in next year's draft because you're so bad and Malik Willis didn't have a good year because you didn't surround him with anyone. Are you putting yourself in a spot where now you have a tough decision to make at the end of all of that because of how much you've torn down the rest of the offensive roster? That's a far off possibility.

I don't think that's probably what's at front of mind for them as they make this move. But my mind at least goes there a little bit because I do think that's on the table. I mean, they're now in a position where it's like, if they're so bad that they get the first overall pick, I almost think that makes things easier. And it's like, you just take whoever it's going to be Archmany or whatever it is, even though you already paid Malik Willis.

And then the other side of that is like, if Malik Willis is good enough to keep you out of the first overall pick, okay, then maybe we found some sort of answer. Like if he's good enough to only land you at seventh or whatever it is, despite how bad the rest of the roster is, it's like, okay, maybe now we do have a guy that we can build around. I just looking at the roster now is crazy.

It's really Devon A Chan at skill player and like nothing else. They have no players, period. They have no players, period. Like, it's funny, it's funny with these really bad teams. Usually it's the offensive line that is struggling. But like, if anything, the offensive line is like the one unit you can squint and be like, okay, they've got passable play here. And almost everything else is like, they just did not have a lot of talent.

I joked about this before we started recording. And I know that when the actual accounting happens, they will be under the cap. But if you literally just like go to over the cap right now, it says that the dolphins are over the cap based on the jail and Waddle trade because of the dead money that's now going to hit it. They have like four good players. Yeah, there will be money moved around and I'm sure the Broncos will take on a portion of that. Like they're not going to, you can't be over the cap after the league year starts. I understand that. But if you just look at it right now, they are up against the cap at the very least. Let's just say that. They are near the salary

cap on March 17th. The guy on the team making the most amount of money against the cap right now is Zach Seeler, who's making $11.3 million against the cap, and they have next to no cap room. That's almost impossible. But that's where they are. They have, as it currently stands, and I think this is without Tua's deal, $115 million in dead money. That is a... That's hard to do.

That is really... I mean, again, we've been setting this up for two, three years now, but that is seeing it actually fall apart. Like, I think us talking about it for 18 months. months of like this is the inevitable end, this is the inevitable end. It's one thing to say that we know that that's true. And then to look at it and see what it actually looks like is somehow jarring, even though we knew it was always going to come to this. It's remarkable. Even if it's the right set of decisions, it's still crazy to actually see it laid out in front of you. And I think

the question what the Dolphins is, when you're looking at this sort of trade for Jalen Waddle and you're thinking about, all right, do we keep Jalen Waddle and forego those draft picks or do we just fully start over. And I think that's what this is. They're just fully starting over. The dolphins over the last four drafts, okay? How many top 100 picks do you think the dolphins made in the last four drafts combined? Made? Made. I made top 100 picks in the last four drafts do you think they had. Like five or six? Six. Wow. Okay. Do you know how many they have this year? I think I saw it's like seven, right? Seven. They have seven top 100 picks this year.

They had six in the last four drafts combined. And that's what this group is doing, right? John Eric Sullivan, the people now in charge of this thing are looking at the roster and looking at what needs to happen. And the answer is, it's not even just like the tear down for the sake of tanking. It's the tear down and the replenishment of young cost control players on the roster because you don't have any. And that's just, you just can't be there.

I think some people look at the idea of tanking and we just need to get bad so we get higher draft picks. I don't even think that's necessarily what this is all about. I think it's looking at a guy like Jalen Waddle and then looking at the alternative of we could have Jailen Waddle on the team for $27, $30 million against the cap for each of the next two years or 25 or whatever it is. Or we could have two more top 100 picks

as we're completely remaking the entire roster. And I think for a team like the Dolphins, that's probably the right answer. The only reason I think it's even a little bit complicated is because you just sign Malik Willis to this contract. And I don't think that should be an impediment to making the right decisions in the long run around the rest of the roster. And I think that's what they're doing. I think so too. And honestly, with the Malik Willis thing, I obviously support them having signed him.

But I do think we talked about him going into free agency as a guy who might sign for like 30 million, right? Which is like, that is a we are clearly committing to this guy. The fact that now he's only signed for just over like 20 million a year, I do think like even the dolphins are in a spot where it's like, we are not necessarily like full blown committing to this. The way that we thought a team might going into free agency. And so I do think that they've kind of left the door open for like, if this works cool, if it doesn't, it's really not the end of the world.

And like this, them like, it's so funny on how quickly they flipped their draft strategy. Obviously now knowing that things were going to blow up. But just last year, they were trying to like leverage this thing and like, keep it going because they traded away picks to go and get Jonas Savanea because they were like, we absolutely need a guard. Oh, yeah, exactly. It was like, oh, I remember. Oh, I remember. It was indefensible in the moments. Exactly, because it was like, you need young players. But it was like, we need they in their mind, they were like, we need a starting guard more than we need X amount of young players. And I get why they did that in the moment trying to make things work, but it clearly has blown up the other way now where

they're like, nope, wherever we can get starters, we're just going to throw a bunch of darts and see how it goes. If you look at it and you, let's fast forwarded a year, I believe heading into 2027, even some of the veterans that are currently on the roster after this year, Aaron Brewer, Jordan Brooks, Austin Jackson, Devon A. Chan, and I think a couple other guys, but those are really most of them. So heading into next, after the 2026 season. Brooks, Brewer, Jackson, and A. Chan will all be free agents.

Brooks, Brewer, and Jackson have their contracts avoiding. The only guys on the roster at that point, set to be on the roster at that point, that aren't draft picks this team has made in the last like three or four years, are Zach Seeler and Malik Willis. That's it. That's crazy. Those are the only guys. So this is truly as much of like a full scale reset as you can really really.

hit in the NFL, even as it currently stands, they only have like 28 guys under contract for next year. And listen, they're going to make 11 draft picks this year. And so that's going to be a huge chunk of it, but this is what you have to do. When you've pushed so far in the direction that they did, the only way to untangle that is to go really, really far in the other direction and just try to restock this thing with as many young cost control pieces as you possibly can. And even if I think that's not necessarily incongruent with signing Malik Willis, I still can arrive at a point

where I'm like, this fucking sucks from Malik Willis. This is a chance to be a starter and now they're tearing down the whole roster around him. That was always possible and maybe he had a sense of that coming into this situation

and the money and the relationships were the most important thing. But just for his sake and seeing him be the best version of himself as a player, I wish he had landed somewhere that was actually trying to win a couple games in the short term. Yeah, I mean, listen, the, like Green Bay's offensive skill players are

imperfect, but think about just how many dudes they had like Christian Watson, Jaden Reed, Matthew Golden by the end of the season was giving them something. Like the tight ends were solid. You had a really good running back in Josh Jacobs. Like to have all of that, it was like, man, I've got an option everywhere. One through five is going to do something for me. And now it's kind of like if I don't check down to Devon A-chan, I'm praying that somebody makes it play for me. It's a very different world he's going to be living in. The last thing I'll say, I'm looking at the chat right now. And like Grenade asked, why would Halfley take this job knowing they're actively trying to be bad? How does that help him? The people that were interviewing for this job knew they were

going to actively try to be bad. This is not a surprise to anybody. Whether this move would happen as part of that, whether they would do the full scale nuclear option, which is what the Waddle trade involves, they knew that they were going to take a huge step back this year. Again, the only thing that runs even sort of counter to that is signing Willis. And my assumption is they just looked at that as like a multi-year option and said, this is as good a bet as we can possibly make. And like you said, maybe the price is low enough where it's not going to prevent them from taking another bite if they have to.

When you don't have a quarterback and you have a shitload of cap space heading into next year, $160 million worth of it, the idea of, well, if we cut Malik Willis next season, you know, it has to, if they could make him a June 1st cut next night, next year. It's 25 against the cap in 2027 and then 13 against the cap in 2028. And that's a decent amount of money to eat up on your cap for a quarterback that's not playing for you. But it's not so bad that the gamble on him potentially being the answer as a long-term starter might not have been worth it. I get that as like the overall calculus if you're the people in charge of this team because you're trying to give yourself every single opportunity

to find a quarterback. I actually think it's pretty smart. If whoever you draft in the top five is decent, you're not going to care. Like that's an amount of money that you're not going to care that the dead cap is what it is. And then the thing I would say about Halfley, and this is also true of like Michael Fleur with the Cardinals is like, you just don't know. Like there are only 32 NFL jobs and you just don't know how often you're going to get chances to get them. Like what if Halfley stays in Green Bay and just for whatever reason it's a disaster season for their defense? And then he's now in a spot where he's not getting calls to get a head coaching job. When you get a chance like this to go do that,

and especially to be able to do it to go with a GM that you are also familiar with, like it's just, again, obviously bad situation in terms of the roster and them having to tear it down. But it is like you just don't get that many opportunities to go and do this in the NFL. Yeah, it looks very, very ugly for the dolphins right now.

This is, it doesn't look ugly starting in 2027. Like this is, it's a one year thing where you really have to eat it. And then you're resetting about, as hard as an NFL team can reset. And the other side of it, you have a willing trade partner that is willing to take on somebody like Waddle because they think that is the final piece for them. And so for both of these teams, I think that it makes a lot of sense based on where they are to do a move like this.

It makes the Broncos a hell of a lot more exciting. And I think it makes the dolphins a little bit easier to understand. Definitely. I'm a little bit jazz about what them, because I think the whole thing with me with the Broncos and the AFC was like, man, if their offense just had one more gear to it, they could be really, really scary. And now Jalen Waddle is a whole lot of gear. So it's pretty exciting.

Bonix, 26 NFL MVP. Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. All right. That is all we've got for today. This will be in your guys' feeds along with building the beast into Wednesday. So be on the lookout for both of those for now. That's all we got. Appreciate you guys joining us.

Talk to you soon.