Earlier this week, Sean Payton was in his office and decided he needed to set the tone.
Not in a team meeting. Not with his assistant coaches or with reporters in a news conference.
With his general manager.
It was a light-hearted interaction, one Payton relayed publicly on Wednesday, but it may have offered a window into the head coach’s mindset as the league’s trade deadline approaches on Nov. 4.
Payton’s office is not far from George Paton’s office in Denver’s palatial new facility, but it’s a little farther and around the corner.
So Payton called for Paton to come down to his office.
The veteran general manager arrived and said, ‘What do you need?’
Payton’s response: “Nothing, I just wanted you to be down on our end where the spenders are.”
This is a regular delineation in what has become a fruitful relationship between Payton and Paton over the years. Payton is the spender. Paton is the saver.
The head coach decided Paton was spending too much time with the other savers in the front office, including vice president of football administration Rich Hurtado, who manages Denver’s salary cap and is the club’s lead contract negotiator.
“He hangs out by Rich,” Payton said with a smile. “Rich has got the coupons. Two different kind of personalities. Come hang out where my wife hangs out.”
All of which raises a question for the Broncos over the next week-plus: Will they spend at the trade deadline? Or stand pat?
Payton didn’t say much in the anecdote, but he does have a way of making his stance clear.
As covered after Denver’s win over Arizona, there are practical considerations on each side of the ledger that will shape whether the Broncos swing a deal. On one side, Denver would have to move money around to create space for any significant salary, as it currently has around $4 million in space. The Broncos deliberately set their offseason plan to end up here and, in doing so, appear to have operated as if they didn’t plan on making a big trade at the deadline. Of course, cap dollars are usually malleable and plans can change.
In the other column, there’s the fact that Denver has its entire set of draft picks for 2027 plus a likely fourth-round comp pick for John Franklin-Myers’ free-agency departure — and the potential still of an additional comp pick if, say, defensive coordinator Vance Joseph lands a head coaching job.
But then another set of questions arrives even before you get to finding a partner willing to deal a player at a price both sides can tolerate.
What are the needs?
Spend or stand pat? Chiefs offer a referendum.
There is plenty at stake on the field Sunday afternoon against Kansas City. If Denver wins, the AFC West race is tied and the season series split. If the Broncos lose, the Chiefs pull ahead by three games, functionally speaking, as they’d be up two and in possession of the tiebreaker after sweeping the season series.
The undercard of the day, though, might be what the performance and result mean for the Broncos’ roster and how much they feel they need to upgrade.
One game is never going to set the entire course, but if the Broncos are on the fence about how to feel about their running back room, their offensive line, their depth at safety and inside linebacker or any other position group on the team, another data point against a division rival certainly won’t hurt in developing a clear understanding.
The position group with the clearest need and biggest room for upgrade is tight end. The Broncos have settled into a playing time rhythm with Evan Engram, Adam Trautman and Nate Adkins, but none have made a big impact and only Trautman is under contract beyond this year.
True difference-makers at the position, though, are scarce and many play on teams that are in contention this year.
Payton had effusive praise for Arizona’s Trey McBride in the lead-up to Denver’s win last week and to McBride himself after the game, saying, “I’ve had some good joker tight ends and you’re definitely one of them.”
“That meant a lot to me,” McBride said later. “Just to hear what he had to say about me as a player. I’ve got a ton of respect for Sean.”
There’s a long way between swapping compliments, though, and the Cardinals thinking it’s a good idea, even in the midst of a rebuild, to trade a 27-year-old franchise cornerstone.
Timing always matters, too. The Broncos explored a trade for Jaylen Waddle a year ago ahead of last year’s deadline, but it didn’t materialize. Then a deal ultimately got done in the spring.
“We had done a lot of work at the trade deadline and we felt like we knew the player well and we knew the person even better,” Paton said. Two factors at that point, though: The Broncos were healthy at receiver around the trade deadline and they were on a long winning streak.
By the time the postseason rolled around, Denver ended up short at the position due to injuries to Pat Bryant and Troy Franklin. Plus, at that point the Broncos didn’t know where their first-round pick would fall. By the spring, they knew it was No. 30.
“They were asking a lot at that time,” Paton said, looking back to the 2025 deadline. “The more you think about it, the more you go through all your different models. Like I said, cap and draft picks and who’s available in the draft, free agency, all of that. ‘Who could really help us, our team?’”
That picture, at least in the short term, is far less clear in October and early November than it is in the spring.
One player who could fit that kind of bill is Indianapolis star running back Jonathan Taylor, whom the Broncos and several other teams have been loosely tied to. Whether running back is actually a need for Denver may feel different based on how rookie Jonah Coleman looks with more run after returning from injury and whether RJ Harvey much more than a game or two with a knee injury that cropped up Thursday but, according to a source, is not considered long-term.
Along the offensive line, a handful of Broncos veterans have struggled at times, but the club has shown resolve with those same players before and has invested years in developing the likes of Alex Palczewski, Frank Crum, Alex Forsyth, and others.
The Broncos could also take a less glamorous approach to the deadline and fortify depth at linebacker or safety, which would cost far less than a blockbuster and might pay dividends if a run of injuries hits, or, in the safety room, continues later in the season.
A conservative, proven approach to roster building
In the end, if the Broncos take a big swing in the next 10 days, it will buck not only what appear to be their original offseason plans, but also the deadline histories of both Payton and Paton.
In five trade deadlines at the helm in Denver, Paton has never acquired more than marginal or fill-in players. He traded for outside linebacker Jacob Martin in 2022 to fill a gap created the same day he traded Bradley Chubb to Miami for a first-round pick — a deal that, coincidentally, netted Denver the pick it traded to New Orleans to hire Payton. He also made a couple of ancillary moves in 2021.
Since Payton arrived, Denver’s only deadline move was trading Baron Browning to Arizona for a sixth-rounder in 2024. Nik Bonitto was emerging as a star and Denver had a surplus, plus the club needed a little cap space in order to finalize a four-year, $60 million extension with Jonathon Cooper. So they netted a pick for Browning.
Really, the Broncos haven’t made a splash at the deadline much further back than that. The closest the club has come to acquiring a household name in more than a decade was a near-deal to land Hall of Fame left tackle Joe Thomas from Cleveland in 2015, but it fell apart at the last minute. Denver still won the Super Bowl later that season.
Before his tenure in Denver, Payton made a handful of trade deadline acquisitions over his 15 seasons in New Orleans but never parted with more draft capital than a fourth-rounder and a seventh-rounder for cornerback Eli Apple in 2018.
Of course, patterns and norms don’t predict the future.
After the Broncos moved back to No. 60 in a pair of trades during Day 2 of the draft in 2025, Paton congratulated Payton on the first trade-backs of his two decades as a head coach.
Sometimes the savers do prevail. Sometimes the spenders do.
Sometimes they share a history at the trade deadline, as Payton and Paton did before they came together in Denver.
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