The majority of NFL teams began training camp this week in anticipation of the 2024 season.
That milestone in the league calendar brought with it an annual summer tradition — media taking their best guesses at 53-man roster projections for the respective NFL teams they cover.
Each NFL franchise must cut its active roster to 53 players by the start of the regular season, and those transactions lead to several well-known names getting released each August.
For embattled quarterback Zach Wilson, this summer is the first time in his four-year career that he’s not attending training camp with the New York Jets — he is in Denver now.
Will Wilson, the former BYU signal caller, make the 53-man roster for the Broncos?
If Denver 53-man projections from several writers this week are any indication, it’s something to monitor as the Broncos go through training camp and the preseason.
What is the QB situation in Denver?
The Broncos have hit the reset button at quarterback after cutting short the Russell Wilson experiment following two fruitless seasons.
Denver brought in a pair of quarterbacks this year to join holdover Jarrett Stidham, who started the team’s final two games last season in relief of Wilson.
First, there’s rookie Bo Nix out of Oregon, whom the Broncos snagged at No. 12 overall in this year’s NFL draft. He’s seen by many to be the leading candidate to take over as starting quarterback, perhaps even on Week 1, after a standout college career.
Then there’s Zach Wilson, who was unceremoniously traded from the Jets to the Broncos this offseason after the No. 2 overall pick in 2021 fell out of favor in New York.
Stidham has the most experience with Sean Payton’s offense in Denver — this is his second year with the Broncos. Last year, he completed 60.6% of his passes for 496 yards, two touchdowns and one interception in his two starts.
Payton, who’s heading into his second year as the Broncos’ head coach, said all three of the quarterbacks will get their chance to take first-team reps early in training camp.
“We’ll mix it up again. Obviously, it won’t stay that way for the long term,” Payton said, as the Deseret News previously reported. “Eventually we’ll settle into the routine we want.”
Could Zach Wilson be released?
Combining Stidham’s year of experience in the system with Nix being the QB of the future (or perhaps even right now) as a high draft pick, the odds aren’t in favor of Wilson if the Broncos choose to keep just two quarterbacks on the active roster during the regular season.
Wilson reportedly dealt with a “mixed bag” of success and struggles during offseason workouts, with Denver Sports’ Andrew Mason writing that the 24-year-old “appeared to lag compared with the other two quarterbacks in terms of consistency and accuracy during the five practices that were open to media observation in May and June.”
That’s led writers like ESPN’s Jeff Legwold to question whether Wilson will make the 53-man roster come cutdowns at the end of August.
In his 53-man Broncos roster projection ahead of Denver’s training camp, which started Wednesday, Legwold predicted that Nix and Stidham would make the cut, while Wilson wouldn’t.
“With Nix expected to be the starter, it is difficult to square the idea the Broncos would spend ‘weeks’ — Payton’s word — to put together a trade for Wilson and then not keep him on the 53-man roster. But keeping Wilson could cost a team fighting depth issues at other positions a player of greater need,” Legwold wrote.
“The Saints kept four quarterbacks on the roster to open the 2021 season, when Payton was the coach in New Orleans, so he could certainly lobby to keep three this year, but that decision would come with a price.”
Two other writers — Sporting News’ Travis Wakeman and Broncos Wire’s Jon Heath — sided with Legwold in predicting that Wilson wouldn’t make the 53-man roster cut.
Wakeman said the key QB battle in training camp will be between Stidham and Wilson.
“There was some thought given to the Broncos keeping all three quarterbacks to have enough support for the rookie Nix, but the team’s full confidence in him will be enough and Wilson has seemed like the odd man out all along,” Wakeman wrote in his projections.
Key dates for Zach Wilson and the Denver Broncos
The Broncos will open preseason play at the Indianapolis Colts on Aug. 11.
Denver will then play its final two preseason games at home against the Green Bay Packers on Aug. 18 and the Arizona Cardinals on Aug. 25.
All three of those games will be important for one of the more open quarterback battles in the NFL this year.
Cutdown day in the NFL this year will be Aug. 27 — prior to 2 p.m. MDT that day, all NFL teams must reduce their rosters to a maximum of 53 players on the active roster.
The following day, Aug. 28, the claiming period for players placed on waivers at final roster cutdowns ends at 10 a.m. MDT.
Denver opens the regular season on Sept. 8 at the Seattle Seahawks.