The Broncos’ 17-14 overtime win over the Seahawks didn’t just push Denver to 4-2. It may also have started to reshape how the team should think about the November 10 NFL trade deadline.
Denver is on its mini-bye now after Thursday night’s victory, and the big-picture view still points away from a seller’s mindset. The Broncos survived a tough first six games, and with the NFL’s fourth-easiest remaining schedule ahead of them, they’re still in the hunt for the AFC West and the No. 1 seed in the conference. Teams in that position usually don’t start dealing away pieces.
Still, Thursday’s game offered a couple of real clues about where this roster stands.
The first one centers on the secondary, where Denver’s cornerback depth has become impossible to ignore. Pat Surtain II is not the player in question here - the issue is what happens around him.
Surtain missed time, and he was limited Thursday because of a rib injury, playing 20 snaps out of 85. In his absence, Jahdae Barron and Kris Abrams-Draine have stepped into major roles and given the Broncos a lot to think about.
Seattle attacked them hard. Against a passing game led by Sam Darnold and featuring Jaxon Smith-Njigba and Cooper Kupp, Barron and Abrams-Draine were targeted a combined 26 times.
They gave up completions, sure, but they also held up enough for Denver to survive a desperate Seahawks offense and leave with the win. Abrams-Draine also came up with a huge interception late in the fourth quarter, and Barron was on the field for every defensive snap, all 85 of them.
That kind of performance doesn’t automatically make Surtain expendable, and the Broncos are not looking to move him. But he is in a contract year, and once you add in the fact that Ja'Quan McMillian is also in a contract year, the math gets more complicated fast. McMillian, Denver’s nickel, remains a takeaway machine and one of the NFL’s best clutch-time defensive backs.
There’s only so much money to go around. If someone called about Surtain, general manager George Paton would probably listen.
At the same time, the Broncos have learned the hard way over the past two seasons that cornerback depth matters. Injuries hit that group before, and without the kind of five-deep cushion Denver has now, one setback later in the year could get a lot uglier.
Keeping Surtain through the 2026 season would preserve that buffer.
The other name that stands out is Marvin Mims Jr.
Mims has dealt with two injuries since training camp began, and that may explain part of what has been a shaky season. But he also hasn’t looked like the same player. Against Seattle, that showed up in a few ugly moments: he couldn’t finish a deep ball that would have set the Broncos up at the goal line, and there were multiple plays where he wasn’t even tracking the football.
Maybe some of that was by design. It didn’t look that way.
And the bigger concern is that Mims’s biggest value has always come through his return game, which has also been underwhelming. His return yardage hasn’t been there, even with teams trying to kick away from him, and he muffed a return in Week 4 that directly led to Denver’s second loss of the season.
Whether the dip is tied to his injuries, his contract situation, or the arrival of Jaylen Waddle, Mims has not looked like the player the Broncos have known over the past few seasons. Denver spent a lot of time this summer looking for return options, and with Kolbe Katsis and Cameron Ross on the practice squad, it would not be a surprise if Mims became a trade candidate before the deadline - if there’s a market for him. He is still only 24, and he remains a two-time All-Pro/Pro Bowl returner.
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The reaction around the performance came quickly, with media voices like Ryan Fitzpatrick and Colin Cowherd zeroing in on his tendency to settle for checkdowns instead of challenging defenses deeper. For a Broncos team trying to build around him, that kind of critique is more than background noise because it speaks directly to the style they think can work long term. The bigger question now is whether this was just a rough afternoon or a sign of a debate that is only going to get louder. [Read more 🡒]