ENGLEWOOD, Colo. — Sean Payton sat down at a table cluttered with recorders and notebooks and skipped the pleasantries.
It was early in the morning on March 27, 2023, and the new Denver Broncos coach chugged a large coffee as he sat down to answer questions from a group of reporters at the NFL’s annual league meetings inside a swanky hotel in Phoenix. Payton didn’t hold back about the mess he was inheriting after a five-win season for the Broncos in 2022 that resulted in the firing of first-year coach Nathaniel Hackett.
“If it sounds like I’m being critical …” Payton said at one point as he discussed the “hard to watch” film from the previous season, “I am.”
Payton perked up, though, when the opportunity arose to talk about the quarterback. Not the starter, Russell Wilson, the player for whom the Broncos had traded five premium draft picks one year earlier, but the backup the team had just signed: Jarrett Stidham.
“We have a young player,” Payton began, “and I think there’s certain players we saw in free agency, can they come in and play and start? Yes, I think you get that with Jarrett, but I also think you get a player who is still ascending. If you watch the 49ers game (Stidham started for the Raiders at the end of the 2022 season) … that’s impressive against a good defense. He was a priority for us, quietly. Fortunately, it worked out where we were able to get him.”
The Broncos will soon find out just how consequential it was to sign Stidham amidst little fanfare nearly three years ago. He will start Sunday in the AFC Championship Game against the New England Patriots in place of injured QB1 Bo Nix. Stidham will throw his first pass in a game that counts in 749 days. He will become the first quarterback in NFL history to start in the conference title game without having attempted a pass in that same season.
“Just really excited to get out there,” the 29-year-old said Thursday. “Once the ball is snapped, that first play, it’s just football at that point. It’ll be fun.”
In many ways, Stidham represents a best, worst-case scenario for the Broncos. It’s hard to pick a worse time to lose your starter than before a game with a trip to the Super Bowl on the line. It is also true there are few teams in better position to call up a backup with three seasons of experience in the offense he will be asked to pilot in the biggest game of the year.
“That’s why,” Payton said this week, “that signing was important. I’m glad that the acquisition took place.”
How exactly did Stidham end up in this almost unprecedented spot? And how else has it shifted a quarterback room that was jolted by Nix’s injury?
Why Payton chose Stidham — and vice versa
Payton has always grasped the importance of depth in a quarterback room. His biggest coaching mentor, Bill Parcells, famously rode backup quarterback Jeff Hostetler to a Super Bowl with the New York Giants in 1990. But Payton’s own view of that critical component of a roster was crystallized in 2019, when he was coaching the New Orleans Saints and star quarterback Drew Brees faced the first extended absence of his career with the franchise.
Enter Teddy Bridgewater. The backup won his first start as Payton catered aspects of his offense around a quarterback with a different skill set than Brees. The Saints won again the following week. Then, again. Five in a row, all told.
“At our first team meeting (after the Brees injury), I said, ‘I’m not worried about Bridgewater,’” Payton said. “‘I’m worried about everyone else in this room making sure that their level is up to speed.’ After the fifth (win), this is about when Drew’s thumb’s getting better. I was just kidding Drew and said, ‘How’re you doing?’ He said, ‘I’m getting ready to come back,’ and I said, ‘Well, make sure you take your time. Things are going well here.’ I think the most important thing is, and it’s the same with tight ends or receivers or runners, ‘What are the things that they like? What are the things that they do well?’ Then building it around that.”
Stidham drew the attention of Payton — and other decision-makers around the league — when he made his first career start in Week 17 of the 2022 season and threw for 365 yards and three touchdowns in a narrow loss to the San Francisco 49ers, who featured the No. 1 defense in both points and yards allowed that season.
The Broncos had signed Wilson to a five-year, $242 million contract extension months earlier, but Payton was adamant Denver still needed to make a substantial investment to add to the quarterback room.
“That’s when we became aggressive,” Payton said.
Stidham, a 2019 fourth-round pick of the Patriots who never started a game in New England during the regular season before being traded to the Las Vegas Raiders, had options as his first contract ended. That included the chance to sign back with the Raiders and head coach Josh McDaniels, whose stint as New England’s offensive coordinator made him the only play caller Stidham had known to that point. But Stidham took the Broncos’ two-year, $10 million offer, in part because he believed in Payton’s ability to help him grow as a quarterback, even if there wasn’t an immediate pathway to a starting job.
“Sean’s been great to me my whole time here,” said Stidham, who signed a two-year, $12 million deal in March to remain in Denver as Nix’s backup. “Obviously, he was a big reason I decided to come to Denver two years ago and then again this last year. We’ve had a great relationship. I’ve learned a ton from him, along with everybody else on the staff and everything. So, obviously, super appreciative of Sean.”
Why Stidham’s wait has been so long in Denver
When Payton decided to bench Wilson with two games left in the 2023 season — a move that preceded the veteran quarterback’s release the following spring and left the Broncos with a record $85 million in dead money on their salary cap — it opened up a potential starting opportunity in the NFL for Stidham for the first time. The Broncos used their 12th overall pick on Nix, creating a quarterback competition between the rookie and the veteran holdover from Payton’s first season in Denver.
It would not be wrong to say Stidham performed as well or better than Nix in that 2024 training camp competition on a day-by-day, throw-by-throw grading scale. Payton, though, chose Nix, as the rookie closed camp strong and then performed well in the preseason. Stidham, though disappointed, vowed to stay ready, then proved it in practice.
“He just knows what he’s doing and understands why the coaches are calling certain calls,” said Broncos defensive end John Franklin-Myers, who has battled Stidham in practices the past two seasons. “That’s what makes him so good. Sometimes you go out there, you play football and you run what’s called, but you’re not understanding where you want the ball, how fast, when and everything like that. Stiddy, man, he’s running scout-team plays and he’s running them … better than the (opponent’s) starting quarterback.”
It just never translated into an opportunity for Stidham, making his growth as a quarterback a largely behind-the-scenes affair. Nix is the only quarterback in the NFL who attempted every one of his team’s passes the past two seasons.
That continuity has made Stidham’s sudden starting role all the more abrupt, but he’s not the only one whose job has been different the past week.
Stidham has backed up Nix for the past two seasons in Denver, and the two quarterbacks are close friends. (Isaiah J. Downing / Imagn Images)
A new No. 2 — and familiar No. 3
When Colts quarterback Daniel Jones suffered a season-ending Achilles tear in Week 14, Indianapolis quickly worked down a list of experience with coach Shane Steichen’s offense. Before landing on Philip Rivers, the Colts made a call to representatives of Sam Ehlinger, who was residing at the time on the Broncos’ practice squad after spending his first four seasons with the Colts.
Instead, even with the potential to start a game for the Colts in front of him, Ehlinger chose to stay in Denver and continue his daily work behind Nix and Stidham and alongside quarterbacks coach Davis Webb, who has drawn leaguewide attention during this hiring cycle for the way he has worked with that room.
“We’re glad he’s staying,” Payton said of Ehlinger in December. “We think a lot of him — a lot. He’s been a real good surprise for all of us, especially offensively, when we see and watch him, and he made that decision. That’s a big deal.”
Ehlinger, who was promoted to the Broncos’ active roster before the playoffs and was active as the third-string quarterback against the Bills, could now be just one play away from playing in the AFC Championship Game. Ehlinger has started three career games, one fewer than Stidham. All came with the Colts, the team that selected him out of the University of Texas in the sixth round of the 2021 NFL Draft. He has completed 63.4 percent of his career passes for 573 yards with three touchdowns and three interceptions.
The injury to Nix meant the Broncos needed another quarterback on their roster — and fast. Luckily, a passer familiar with Payton’s offense lives just down the road in the Denver suburb of Highlands Ranch. Ben DiNucci was on Denver’s practice squad during the 2023 season. When Stidham replaced Wilson at the end of the year, DiNucci was slotted into the backup role. He was released shortly after the Broncos drafted Nix the following spring and signed Zach Wilson as the team’s third quarterback. DiNucci spent most of the fall working as an analyst with CBS Sports, even providing analysis on the aftermath of the Broncos’ divisional playoff win against the Bills.
Then, he got a call from the Broncos.
“It has come to my attention that a team may need my services,” DiNucci wrote in a post on X shortly after news of his signing with Denver was announced. “Good thing my schedule is open this week. Broncos Country … Let’s go to a Super Bowl?”
DiNucci could be promoted to the roster ahead of Sunday’s game, which would allow him to be active and serve as Denver’s third-string quarterback. It was only three years ago that the 49ers’ two active quarterbacks suffered injuries in the NFC Championship Game loss to the Eagles, forcing Brock Purdy to essentially play the second half with one usable arm. Denver won’t have Nix on Sunday, but they will enter the game with three quarterbacks who have experience in this Broncos offense.
Payton on Stidham: ‘Watch out’
When Stidham was a senior quarterback at Stephenville High in Texas in 2014, he suffered a hand injury that required surgery. The hope was that he could return for the fourth round of the state playoffs, if Stephenville advanced that far.
As Stephenville readied for its third-round game, Stidham was approaching the end of his rehab. Head coach Joe Gillespie decided to have the senior quarterback dress and warm up before the game against Lubbock’s Estacado High, if only to give the opponent something else to think about.
“I wasn’t going to play him,” Gillespie said. “I didn’t start him. He stood next to me on the sideline. I was like, ‘Hold the chart, man.’”
Then, Stephenville went three-and-out on its first possession. Estacado followed by quickly flying down the field for a touchdown.
“So I looked at him before the second series and said, ‘Buddy, you’re in,’” Gillespie said. “He goes out and sets a school record for most touchdowns in a game and most yards in a game. He hadn’t played in six weeks, and he goes out there and just lights it on fire.”
Stephenville won 66-64.
Stidham’s competitiveness, big arm and ability to process coverage are traits that have shown up in moments similar to that one during his time at Auburn, but they have largely been hidden from public view since he entered the league. It was a fact that Payton was asked about moments after he delivered news that Nix, the quarterback who had just led Denver on its eighth game-winning drive of the season, was no longer available. What could be expected of Stidham, a quarterback who has never had a moment like this one in the NFL?
“Watch out,” Payton said. “Just watch.”