Mile High Report
Good morning, Broncos Country. The Denver Broncos have sported one of the best defenses in the National Football League the past two seasons. In back-to-back years, the Broncos led the NFL in sacks and set franchise records in that category. They ranked highly in a lot of advanced metrics in both 2024 and 2025, but one area sticks out as an area for major improvement—turnovers.
In ‘24, the Broncos were tied for seventh league-wide with 25 takeaways. Last season, there was significant regression in that respect. Denver’s defense had just 14 takeaways placing them in the bottom seven of all defenses. After minicamp practice the other day, Head Coach Sean Payton remarked that finding a way to force more turnovers will be one of the biggest points of emphasis for them over the course of the summer.
“Quite a bit. In the end, you have to be smart as your practice with each other. As strong as we were in the sack, no sack, offensive and defensive statistics, that’s an area where we feel like there’s progress to be made,” stated Payton.
Late last season, Payton was quite vocal in front of the media challenging his defense to rise to the occasion and come up with big plays on defense. In the final games of the year, the Broncos did much better with that. When the offense struggled, it was the defense that found a way to come up with a game-changing turnover to help change the tide of a game.
With a tough schedule, especially to start the season, being able to stack up takeaways will be mission critical. That will give them an edge in close games and help them earn marks in the win column. Payton is hopeful past experiences and continued emphasis during training camp, will help them achieve that in ’26.
“We’ve been in these games where that margin is thin. That ’09 [NFC] Championship Game in New Orleans, we beat Minnesota. If you look at all the stat lines, I mean, they were 580 yards versus two-something. The only reason we were able to win that game was the five takeaways. Obviously it had a lot to do with the win against Buffalo. It still is the No. 1 trump card as it pertains to wins and losses in this league. That’s one of our goals.”
As always, thank you for reading. Here is today’s slate of articles for Horse Tracks.
