The Denver Broncos are finally looking at free agency additions outside of re-signing their former players. After their blockbuster trade for Jaylen Waddle earlier in the week, they’ve now added a special teams ace in former Cincinnati Bengals safety Tycen Anderson. That the Bengals made a last ditch effort to re-sign him once he had a deal with Denver suggests they weren’t too keen on losing him and were hoping to get him back at a more reasonable rate. Their loss becomes Denver’s gain.
Broncos daily recap
WE HAVE A FREE
AGENT SIGNING THAT DIDN’T COME FROM DENVER. People will sleep on this signing, but both P.J. Locke and Justin Strnad played heavily on special teams last season. They needed to dude to fill a bigger role there and got one. Excellent pick up for Denver.
Broncos are signing safety/special teams ace Tycen Anderson
Denver’s first external free agent signing of 2026 is officially on the books. The Broncos are bringing in safety Tycen Anderson from Cincinnati on a one-year deal. Anderson was a fifth-round pick by the Bengals in 2022 and appeared in every game for Cincinnati the last two seasons, logging 83% of the team’s special-teams snaps in 2025. He’s played just a handful of defensive snaps in his career, but fills a real need after P.J. Locke departed for Dallas. Anderson will compete with Devon Key and J.L. Skinner for the third safety spot while immediately upgrading the special teams unit.
Under the radar
The Broncos freed up another $1.58M in cap space by restructuring OL Matt Peart’s contract. That will help free up some cap space.
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Broncos history lesson
The John Elway Trade
I was only five years old when this trade went down and I’m really only familiar with the fact that somehow the Denver Broncos ended up with Elway and that’s the only reason I – as a non-local – became and stayed a Broncos fan as a young lad.
With the power of AI, I had it drum up a quick summary of that drama for those of us too young to remember to review. The summary was not as quick as I hoped, but I also didn’t realize how much drama went down that it had to cover in order to summarize the whole event.
Summer 1981 — The New York Yankees select John Elway in the second round (52nd overall) of the MLB Draft. Elway receives $150,000 to play outfield.
Summer 1982 — Elway plays 42 games for the Yankees’ Class-A affiliate in Oneonta, New York, hitting .318 with four home runs, 13 stolen bases, and 25 RBIs. The baseball career is real — and so is the leverage it provides.
December 1982 — Elway tells the Baltimore Colts directly that he does not want to play for the team. He privately requests to go to a West Coast team, or to Dallas or Miami. The Colts, holding the No. 1 overall pick, ignore the request.
Early 1983 — Elway and his agent Marvin Demoff attempt to negotiate a quiet arrangement with the Colts — a private agreement where Elway would publicly cite a desire to stay on the West Coast as the reason for a trade. The Colts refuse. Elway goes public, threatening to play baseball full-time for George Steinbrenner’s Yankees if Baltimore drafts him. Terry Bradshaw publicly rips Elway for trying to circumvent the system.
April 26, 1983 (Draft Day) — Commissioner Pete Rozelle steps to the podium at the New York Sheraton Hotel at 8:00 a.m. ET. The Colts turn in the card nine seconds later: “With the first pick in the 1983 NFL Draft, the Baltimore Colts select John Elway, quarterback, Stanford.” Hours later, Jack Elway — John’s father and the head coach at San Jose State — delivers the now-famous line: “He will never play for Irsay or Coach Kush.”
April 26–May 1, 1983 — A six-day standoff. Colts GM Ernie Accorsi, who believed Elway was a generational talent, initially resists trading him. Steinbrenner aggressively courts Elway to commit to baseball full-time. Multiple NFL teams reach out to Baltimore about a deal. Behind the scenes, Broncos owner Edgar Kaiser and head coach Dan Reeves push hard to land Elway.
May 2, 1983 (The Trade) — Colts owner Robert Irsay overrules Accorsi and orders the trade completed. On the night of May 2, Denver and Baltimore finalize the deal: the Broncos send quarterback Mark Herrmann, offensive tackle Chris Hinton (the fourth overall pick from a week earlier), and their 1984 first-round pick (which becomes guard Ron Solt) to the Colts in exchange for the rights to John Elway.
The fact that Elway was projecting to the Colts all the way back in December is wild. The focus was on the six-day stand-off after the draft, but this was a six month long war that John freaking Elway ended up winning.
Reading the AI recap didn’t quite do it for me though, so I headed over to YouTube to see what else was out there and found an absolute gem covering the breaking news event from 9News. It was obviously recorded on an old VHS tape before finding its way on the internet.
They talking compensation and noted that it looked like a steal of a trade for Denver. I would say that was the correct instant analysis. He was directly involved in seven of the franchise’s eight Super Bowl appearances and all three of their titles. Pretty obvious who won that trade…
I love the part about Al Davis crying hard and suing the NFL for tampering with the trade. The irony it was likely Elway saying he wanted to stay on the west coast as why the Baltimore Colts made a deal with the Denver Broncos instead. They were thinking, “Screw that young punk. Enjoy flyover country.”
I think Elway got the last laugh there too.
It’s looking like I may go back to mock drafts here soon. Just because Denver said ‘f dem picks’ doesn’t mean we have to stop looking at who might be available for them to pick when they do pick!
