Ian Hartitz saddles up with the team preview and fantasy football outlook for the Denver Broncos heading into the 2025 NFL season.

Year 2 of the Sean Payton era in Denver produced double-digit wins and a Wild Card loss at the hands of Bills Mafia. Defensive Player of the Year Patrick Surtain II led arguably the league's best overall defense, while Bo Nix and Courtland Sutton led a surprisingly solid top-10 scoring offense.

Denver Broncos in 2024:

  • Points per game: 25 (10th)
  • EPA per dropback: +0.06 (17th)
  • EPA per rush: -0.08 (17th)
  • Points per game against: 18.3 (3rd)

Fast forward to 2025, and most of last season's key contributors return, while the team also spruced up the RB, TE, and secondary rooms throughout free agency and the draft. PFF ranked the roster as the ninth-best in the league, and it's hard to overly disagree with the sentiment—particularly if some of the offense's young playmakers really live up to their potential.

This brings us to today's goal: Answering key (mostly fantasy-related) questions about the Broncos ahead of their 2025 season.

As always: It's a great day to be great.

Denver Broncos 2025 Fantasy Football And Team Preview

Just how good was Bo Nix as a rookie?

Nix's 18.6 fantasy points per game as a rookie were good for the fifth-highest mark in the Super Bowl era behind only Cam Newton, Justin Herbert, Robert Griffin, and Jayden Daniels. Pretty, pretty, pretty good stuff, especially considering Nix seemed to only get better as the season went on.

 

Now, the passing numbers weren't necessarily elite. Nix was the QB16 and QB21 in EPA per dropback (+0.09), respectively, and completion percentage over expected (+0.6%) among 32 qualified signal-callers. Still, the now 25-year-old was a rookie after all, and it's not like there were many great avenues to go with the football other than Courtland Sutton and (to a lesser extent) Marvin Mims.

Work to do indeed, but at the end of the day: One helluva debut for the 2024 NFL Draft's No. 12 overall pick. After all, Justin Herbert (36) and Cam Newton (35) are the only rookie QBs to total more combined passing and rushing TDs than Nix (33) in NFL history. Pretty, pretty, pretty good!

Bo Nix Fantasy Football Outlook

Nix's dual-threat prowess can't be understated: The only QBs to score more fantasy points from rushing last season were Jalen Hurts, Jayden Daniels, Josh Allen, Lamar Jackson, Kyler Murray, and Anthony Richardson. This is in large part why Nix is receiving the benefit of the doubt in fantasy land as the early ADP QB9: Guys like Dak Prescott and Jared Goff just don't offer the same upside on the ground.

Ultimately, I'm a little lower than the other Fantasy Life rankers and have Nix as my QB11, favoring the multi-year production from guys like Justin Fields and Brock Purdy in that range. We still aren't exactly looking at a world-class group of skill-position players here; it's possible Nix runs just a bit less hot in the TD department while still looking the part of the team's long-term franchise QB.

What are realistic Year 1 expectations for RJ Harvey?

The Broncos selected Harvey with the 60th overall pick in the 2025 NFL Draft to presumably lead a backfield that let Javonte Williams walk in free agency. The UCF product wasn't always believed to be a Day 2 caliber prospect, but 4,509 yards and 47 scores during his last three seasons at UCF reflect the reality that the 24-year-old RB is a ballplayer.

The RB5 in Fantasy Life Director of Analytics Dwain McFarland's Rookie RB Super Model, Harvey boasts a quality speed score and gets a nice boost from his draft capital—which is more predictive of rookie year performance than you might think.

That said: Fantasy Life Draft Expert Thor Nystrom had Harvey as only his RB9 before the draft. The Tyjae Spears comp isn't a bad thing, per se, although the pass-down story seems a bit up and down.

"Harvey is a skilled and proven receiver. He’s one of three FBS running backs in this draft class to catch at least 19 balls with at least 1.25 YPRR each of the last two years. In space, he’s slippery as a banana peel and has a NOS button when he needs it.

“Harvey is horrid in pass protection, but he’s a good enough receiver that the point needn’t be belabored beyond that. Harvey has had recurring ball-security issues. Over the past three seasons, he had nine fumbles— three each season—five of which were lost. This better get fixed, because it will get him benched in the NFL.”

This takes us to Sean Payton's historical usage at the position. Yes, there have been plenty of good times over the years, with the Saints producing a top-11 RB in PPR points per game during 12 of his 15 seasons in charge.

Also yes, the last two years have been rough, and this is a man who has been happy to use multi-back committees. Consider: Only the Steelers (18%) and Bills (12%) left a single RB on the field for at least 60% of their offense's snaps in a lower percentage of games than the Broncos (24%) last season.

The additional candidates to steal snaps in 2025:

  • J.K. Dobbins: 10th in rush yards over expected per carry (+0.6) last season, Dobbins managed to rack up 1,058 total yards and 9 TDs in 13 games in 2024 after suiting up just nine times during the 2021-23 seasons. Many have thrown shade at Dobbins for being cooked due to less-than-amazing long speed on some of his big runs; just realize he actually posted a faster top ballcarrier speed (19.92 MPH) than guys like Travis Etienne (19.9) and Kyren Williams (19.1) last season. 
  • Jaleel McLaughlin: Has averaged a quite-good 4.8 yards per carry on 189 rushes over the past two seasons, but the pass-game prowess has been brutal. Overall, McLaughlin's average of 3.7 yards per target ranks dead last among 229 players with 50+ targets over the last two seasons.
  • Audric Estime: Received a handful of carries per game down the stretch of last season, but only cleared 50 yards on one occasion. It sure seems like the decision to sign Dobbins most threatens Estime's potential early-down role.

Bottom line: Broncos RBs have ranked first and fourth in total receptions over the past two seasons despite not having an overly good pass-catching back. Harvey should be that guy, but we're also expecting quite a bit from someone who never caught more than 22 passes in a season at UCF.

Ultimately, I struggle to get behind Harvey's RB20 ADP. Placing such a large bet on the offensive environment and lack of backfield competition feels like a mistake at that sort of price; "boring" veterans like James Conner and David Montgomery are both cheaper, and fellow rookies like TreVeyon Henderson, Quinshon Judkins, and Kaleb Johnson also go later despite nearly unanimously being considered better prospects just a few short months ago. I understand the pass-catching upside for any RB here, but man, seeing just 49 projected targets (13th most among RBs) doesn't get me too excited.

Otherwise: I'm mostly out on these Broncos RBs. Dobbins is a fine enough FLEX/handcuff dart in the later rounds next to guys like Rico Dowdle and Roschon Johnson, although his one-year, $2.75 million contract hardly guarantees a featured role. 

Is Courtland Sutton the only WR here worth pursuing in fantasy land ?

Sutton's infamous Thursday night goose-egg in Week 7 featured *zero* targets. But after that? Bo Nix's No. 1 WR averaged 18.2 PPR points per game during the rest of the regular season (WR10), thanks in large part to an absurd league-high 49% air-yard share.

The 29-year-old veteran has emerged as the team's clear No. 1 pass-game option during the past two years, although even scoring 18 TDs hasn't exactly led to fantasy fireworks. Overall, Sutton worked as just the WR39 and WR25 in PPR points per game in 2023 and 2024—nice value relative to his previous WR4 price tag, although not exactly the sort of ceiling perhaps worth chasing at his 2025 WR27 ADP.

And then there's Marvin Mims, who has been used as more of a part-time player during his short two-year career. In fact, the Broncos' Wild Card loss to the Bills marked the first time all season that Sean Payton put Mims on the field for at least 50% of the offense's snaps. Glass-half-empty folks will point to this fact as a sign that the 2023 second-rounder isn't good enough to play starter's snaps … but glass-half-full folks can simply say that Payton finally caught up to the reality that we're looking at one of the league's more efficient pass catchers here.

 

Mims has received 24 rush attempts in 34 career games, and his 27 screen targets last year were the sixth-highest mark in the league. The first-team All-Pro returner made plays all over the field in 2024 while proving especially lethal from the slot. This is a damn good football player capable of winning after the catch and downfield, even if we haven't seen a ton of the other WR "stuff".

The additional candidates to receive a decent number of snaps next season …

  • Pat Bryant: Earned a Michael Thomas comp from Payton after the draft, although it's not exactly rare for the ex-Saints head coach to reference his past stars. Either way: Bryant was selected with the 74th overall pick for a reason after posting a 54-984-10 receiving line during his final season at Illinois—I'm just not expecting TOO many Year 1 fireworks from the WR11 in the Fantasy Life WR Rookie Super Model and Thor Nystrom's pre-draft WR20.
  • Devaughn Vele: Caught 41 of 55 targets for 475 yards and a trio of scores as a seventh-round rookie, although his role actually decreased down the stretch in favor of Mims and Troy Franklin. It's tough to see Vele commanding a full-time role with the potential overlap in skill sets between him and Bryant.
  • Troy Franklin: Received a team-high 12 targets on passes thrown 30+ yards downfield … and caught exactly one—but hey, it was a good one! That said, Franklin caught more than two passes in a single game just once and was largely pigeon-holed into the WR4 field-stretcher role—something that doesn't seem overly on the verge of changing in 2025.

Bottom line: We might be looking at a rare situation that features *five* different WRs regularly rotating. Sutton is locked in as the obvious WR1, although the newfound presence of this team's viable pass-catching RB and TE could shrink his target total. Given the fact that Payton couldn't coax a top-24 finish out of Sutton in 2024 with essentially zero target competition, I haven't been lining up in early drafts to buy him at his most-expensive price in years.

I've also generally not gone too hard in the paint for these other pass catchers due to similar best-case upside concerns. Bryant would be the late-round dart I'd recommend throwing, but guys like Romeo Doubs and Cedric Tillman basically cost the same, are good, and project to see quite a bit more volume.

What is Evan Engram's ceiling as Sean Payton's latest joker TE?

The former first-round pick didn't exactly live up to the hype during his first five seasons with the Giants, but underwent a bit of a rebirth during his three years in Jacksonville.

Engram among 40 TEs with 100+ targets from 2022-24:

  • Receptions: 234 (2nd)
  • Receiving yards: 2,094 (5th)
  • Yards per route: 1.52 (13th)
  • Targets per route: 22.2% (8th)

Overall, Engram averaged a robust 11.6 PPR points per game—the eighth-highest mark at the position. It's rare to see 6-foot-3, 234-pound athletes with this sort of ability to move in space.

Obviously, the Broncos haven't managed to field a player up to Payton's standards at TE over the past two seasons: Denver TEs rank dead last in targets by a whopping 37 pass-game opportunities since 2023. His track record at the position over the years really hasn't been too hot other than the obvious Jimmy Graham booms.

Still, Engram spent more total snaps in the slot or out wide (185) than inline (172) last year, indicating that a role as the starting TE and de facto "big slot" is firmly on the table. The reality that the only proven commodities in the Broncos WR room are Sutton and (to a lesser extent) Mims adds credence to the idea that Engram should have a featured role from day one–something reflected in Fantasy Life projections that have only Sutton (117) earning more targets than Engram (108).

Bottom line: Engram is one of my top-three most drafted TEs of this offseason thanks to his previous borderline TE1 price and potential to clear triple-digit targets in a reigning top-10 scoring offense. The Broncos have 23 million reasons to feature the soon to be 31-year-old TE as much as possible—he's my TE9 and someone I'd take ahead of guys like the recently traded Jonnu Smith and the first-round rookie TEs.

What teams have invested the most in their offensive line in recent years?

The Broncos are up there! Overall, they rank 13th, 12th, and fifth in total dollars spent on the offensive line during 2023-25. Their average rank of 10 places them in sixth place behind only the Lions, Falcons, Colts, Panthers, and Chiefs.

Can you guess who comes in dead last? That's right: The Seahawks.

Prediction For The Chargers 2025 Season

The Broncos' ability to win 10 games last year despite going only 1-6 in one-score contests is quite impressive. Throw in the potential for Nix to make a Year 2 leap in an offense that made a concerted effort to add more quality playmakers, and I'm taking OVER 9.5 wins despite the loaded nature of the AFC West.

As for my bold fantasy prediction: Evan Engram leads all Broncos pass catchers in PPR points on his way to a top-six finish at the position.