Broncos may have their deepest WR group in years, but can they cut down on drops?

ENGLEWOOD, Colo. — Sean Payton touched his thumbs and index fingers together, forming a triangle. To end his final press conference of the 2025 season in late January, the veteran head coach was teaching fundamentals.

“There’s a proper way to catch a football, and most of the time, it’s with your thumbs together, not the other way around,” Payton said. “The other way around, I’m serious, only exists when the ball is below your belly button. Even the deep balls should be caught with your thumbs together. So we have to be better at that.”

The backdrop for Payton’s review of the basics was a recently concluded season in which the Broncos were charged with 37 drops, according to TruMedia, the second-most in the NFL (17 from wide receivers, tied for fifth-most at that position group). They let six more passes slip through their fingers in the playoffs, the most among the 14 teams in the tournament. Three of those came in Denver’s three-point loss to the Patriots in the AFC Championship Game.

The Broncos are entering Monday night’s season opener with arguably their most talented receiving group since Demaryius Thomas and Emmanuel Sanders were catching passes in Denver. Jaylen Waddle, acquired in a blockbuster trade with the Miami Dolphins in March, gives the Broncos a route-running maestro to complement back-to-back 1,000-yard receiver Courtland Sutton. Marvin Mims (fourth year), Troy Franklin (third) and Pat Bryant (second) have big-game experience in Denver’s offense. As does veteran Lil’Jordan Humphrey, who caught a touchdown pass in the playoff win against the Bills and was one of six receivers Denver kept on its initial 53-man roster.

Still, for a team that was on a quest this offseason, as Payton put it, to find the “meat on the bone” when it comes to improving on the margins, reducing the drops is a clear priority. Payton, at season’s end, fired former wide receivers coach Keary Colbert and hired Ronald Curry, a former NFL wide receiver who spent six seasons coaching alongside Payton in New Orleans. Curry, who was Josh Allen’s quarterbacks coach in Buffalo for the past two years, said he began his work with Denver’s receivers in the offseason by “never assuming anything” about how they catch the football.

“You always address the issues, no matter what it is,” Curry said. “So if that was an issue getting here, I feel like, knock on wood, these guys caught the ball excellently all camp, all offseason. We work on it in between drills, as far as those guys catching the ball, if they’re not in on special teams. As a receiver, you’ve got to be able to run and you’ve got to be able to catch, and that’s what we harp on.”

The focus for Curry with the receivers has been on creating game-like scenarios to rep technique and evaluate how they attack the ball. Knowing whether a receiver is right-hand- or left-hand-dominant, or how they alter their fingers when they are crouching to catch the ball, helps personalize the teaching points.

“A lot of guys feel like they catch 100 Jugs (machine passes) and they’re good, but the ball is coming right at ’em,” said Curry, who was drawn to the Denver job for a chance to coach receivers again and the opportunity to reunite with Payton. “So you want to try to put them in positions where they’re catching the ball without burning their legs up. We sit back there, and I’m a former quarterback, and Kyle (Kempt) has been helping us from the quality-control position in throwing these guys the ball and just coming up with different drills that are better game-like (situations). The more you do that, the better, and then you just harp on it. Just like anything, you coach it. Now, you might not get it the first time, but you try it again, and you try it again until it becomes muscle memory, and then you build that confidence and that callus. I think those guys have done that over the last couple of months.”

Another “meat on the bone” target: creating more explosive plays after the grab. Broncos wide receivers in 2025 produced 35.1 percent of their total yardage after the catch, a figure that ranked 19th in the NFL when isolating for that position. The Broncos had 98 yards after the catch over expectation last season, as tracked by Next Gen Stats, which tied for 23rd in the NFL — well behind the league-leading Steelers (460 YACOE). It’s an area where Waddle should make an immediate impact. He ranked eighth among all wide receivers with at least 100 targets from 2022 to 2024 in yards after the catch per reception (5.9). Curry was on the opposite sideline in four matchups with Waddle as an AFC East rival coach the past two seasons, but being on the field with him each day has given the coach a greater appreciation for the uniqueness of Waddle’s traits.

“You admire him from a distance; you see his skill set, but when you see it live and in color every day, man, his transitional skills are excellent,” Curry said.

“There’s really nothing he can’t do. Teams respect his speed, so he uses that to his advantage, and he can stop on a dime. When you can threaten somebody with speed and get a corner to open, and then you ask that same corner to transition, I don’t know that there’s any corner in the league who can transition with him. He’s a route runner. He’s not a lines-on-paper kind of guy. He has a great feel for football and a high IQ, so he knows how to set up the routes he’s using.”

Broncos offensive coordinator Davis Webb said this week that he has been pleased by the consistency he’s seen from the team’s wide receivers as the opener against the Chiefs approaches. Drops have been more isolated occurrences than bunched miscues during the offseason. And while Bryant may have been the breakout player in camp from the group — “I’m excited to see him play,” Curry said — Webb believes they have a deep room of players who can threaten defenses.

“I think the No. 1 thing is that everyone has had really good consecutive days,” Webb said. “All of them have consistently gotten better from OTAs to here. I think a lot of it is Ronald Curry. … There are a lot of good talks he and I get to have because I was (in Buffalo) before him and then he kind of came after me. I’m very blessed RC is here. I think his relatability with the players is noticeable.”

Now, it’s time to see if it will all come together at the thumbs for Denver’s wide receivers in 2026.