The Broncos are paying for a decision they made in 2025, and Luke Wattenberg’s play in 2026 is making the cost impossible to miss.
Denver gave its starting center a four-year extension worth $48 million with $27 million guaranteed. On paper, that’s hardly outrageous for a starting center in today’s NFL. But the deal stops looking reasonable fast if the player in question isn’t holding up his end of the bargain.
Wattenberg hasn’t.
The biggest issue isn’t just that he has been outmatched at times in the run game and in pass protection. It’s that his snaps have become a real problem, and that kind of mistake can wreck an offense before a play even has a chance to develop. The Broncos have already seen it show up in the form of early pressure on Bo Nix, much of it coming from the interior, along with offensive drives derailed by inaccurate snaps.
That concern has been building since 2024, even if there isn’t a long reel of glaring blunders to point to. It surfaced again after the Broncos’ Week 1 loss to the Kansas City Chiefs, when both Wattenberg and Chiefs center Creed Humphrey had trouble delivering clean snaps to the quarterback.
The evidence has piled up enough that the situation feels urgent now. A post from SleeperBroncos on October 16, 2026, captured the latest frustration: “Luke Wattenberg has had issues with his snaps ever since being the starter for the Broncos and it finally bites them on this drive
Second down play was an atrocious snap and basically killed the drive
It can’t continue like this…”
Denver does have another option in Alex Forsyth, who has started six games over the past couple of seasons while filling in for Wattenberg. Both players also missed significant time in camp this year because of injury, which may be part of why Wattenberg has struggled to hold up at the point of attack.
Still, the Broncos can’t just keep waiting for this to sort itself out. If the interior pressure keeps coming, or if the snapping issues keep costing the offense, the team is going to have to seriously consider a change.
Wattenberg’s pass protection was one of the main reasons Denver felt comfortable locking him up with the extension. So far, the results haven’t matched that confidence.
And that leaves the Broncos with a bigger problem than one bad contract. They entered the offseason without real competition for starting jobs, and that decision is showing up on Sundays.
Sean Payton didn’t want to call it “running it back,” but that’s effectively what happened. Nobody had to fight for their spot, and players who had already shown flaws were handed their jobs again.
The result is a team making too many avoidable mistakes and not nearly enough plays at the line of scrimmage.
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