The Broncos are without a first-round draft pick. They traded the 30th overall choice and their third-rounder in a deal with the Dolphins for veteran wide receiver Jaylen Waddle.<\/p>\n
The Broncos made the deal believing Waddle will help them more than two rookies selected in the top 94 would have.<\/p>\n
The team\u2019s first pick next week will come at No. 62 overall, and whoever the choice is, the Broncos don\u2019t expect him to contribute much in 2026.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe like to draft high-trait players and maybe they lack a little polish, and it\u2019s going to take some development,\u2019\u2019 Broncos General Manager George Paton said Thursday, via Mike Klis of 9News. \u201cSure, we\u2019d like someone to come in and start right away, but that\u2019s not always realistic for first-, second-[round picks], no matter where they\u2019re picked. It\u2019s just hard<\/a>, and with the way our team is built now it\u2019s going to be hard to come in and start Day 1.\u201d<\/p>\n Cornerback Jahdae Barron, the team\u2019s first-round pick in 2025, played only 30 percent of the defensive snaps in 17 games last season. He spent most of his rookie season watching Ja\u2019Quan McMillian.<\/p>\n The Broncos have done their homework on prospects they expect to be drafted between No. 45 and 75 overall. They then narrowed the list again.<\/p>\n \u201cThere\u2019s six players we\u2019re kind of focused on that could be there at 62,\u2019\u2019 Paton said. \u201cWe feel good about those players. We\u2019re going to keep working through them.\u201d<\/p>\n Paton said the Broncos could move up in the second round, but they are \u201cunlikely\u201d to trade back into the first round.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Broncos are without a first-round draft pick. They traded the 30th overall choice and their third-rounder in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":588713,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[63],"tags":[349,99],"class_list":["post-588712","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nfl","tag-nfl","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/588712","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=588712"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/588712\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/588713"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=588712"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=588712"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=588712"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}