The Broncos opened their 2026 preseason with a win over the Falcons on Friday, and the first game of the year gave a pretty clear snapshot of where this roster stands. Denver has some position battles worth watching, but it also has a lot of talent baked into the lineup already. For long stretches, that showed.
A few players and units came out of the game looking better than others, while a couple of mistakes stood out for all the wrong reasons.
The defense set the tone immediately. Denver blanked Atlanta in the first half and stayed in control for most of the night. The front got consistent pressure and made life miserable for the Falcons’ quarterbacks, which was exactly the kind of start the Broncos wanted to see carry over into a new season.
Offensively, Davis Webb had a strong first outing as play caller. Denver’s first half offered a glimpse of what this unit can look like, with the Broncos scoring 24 total points and 17 from the offense.
The team lined up under center often and found some chunk gains through the air, and the overall flow of the operation looked clean with Webb running it. There will be growing pains - this is his first time calling plays full-time in the NFL - but the debut was encouraging.
Jonah Coleman also made a real impression with his touches in the first half. He didn’t swing the game by himself, but he showed tackle-breaking ability and burst, along with some juice between the tackles.
That kind of running is exactly the sort of thing Denver was missing when J.K. Dobbins went down.
Jahdae Barron had one of the biggest moments of the night. The 2025 first-round pick got plenty of work and turned it into a 98-yard pick-six on a tipped pass deflection from linebacker Karene Reid.
Barron spent much of his rookie year buried in the secondary, so a preseason opener like this was a useful reminder of why the Broncos invested in him. He looks like a player who could eventually settle in on the outside or in the slot, depending on how Denver handles contract talks with Riley Moss and Ja'Quan McMillian.
Not everything was sharp, though. Penalties kept getting in the way, and that’s a problem the Broncos can’t afford to carry forward.
Right tackle Mike McGlinchey drew a couple of flags on one drive, and special teams had issues as well. Denver finished last season with the third-most penalties in the NFL, so this is already a familiar headache.
It showed up again in the first preseason action of 2026.
Backup tackle Matt Peart also had a rough night. A false start by Peart pushed Denver into trying a long field goal instead of going for it on 4th-and-3, and the sequence unraveled from there.
The operation was rushed, the snap was botched, and the drive lost its chance to end cleanly. For a player fighting for a spot, mistakes like that can be costly fast.
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