5 Moves That Could Have Broncos GM George Paton on the Hot Seat

George Paton had better hope these five fateful decisions turn around for the Denver Broncos.

The Denver Broncos head into the 2023 season with tons of questions about the future of the franchise. Despite the hiring of Sean Payton as the new head coach, several moves in the past have led to massive uncertainty moving forward.

The key decision maker behind those moves — GM George Paton — has to face the fire of the inferno that has been the Broncos ever since they won the Super Bowl almost a decade ago. While it hasn't all been the fault of Paton, several of his moves should have his seat very hot as we go into yet another regime change.

Having a keen eye for talent in the scouting community does not make a general manager elite. Contract decisions, free-agent signings, and trades all factor into the equation. And while most believe Paton is incredibly respected in the scouting community and among league circles, there is a lot of criticism that needs to be levied in his direction.

Here are the five worst moves Paton has made in the last three seasons that could lead to his firing following the 2023 season. 

5. Drafting Nik Bonitto at no.64 overall

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Some may think this criticism is a bit unfair, but with the added benefit of hindsight and watching how everything played itself out, this is incredibly warranted.

Several people in the scouting community, myself included, believed that Bonitto was barely a top-100 player in the class due to his inefficiencies as a run defender. He has incredible athleticism, but he's a raw pass-rush specialist with a long way to becoming successful as a starter in the league, if he ever gets to that point.

The Broncos definitely aren't sold on Bonitto as a major factor in 2023, which was illustrated by the addition of Frank Clark a few weeks ago. And that's a major problem for a top-64 pick.

Factor in the fact that the Seattle Seahawks drafted Abraham Lucas eight picks later and this selection gets even worse. Lucas started 16 games at right tackle for the Seahawks in 2022. Denver has seemingly needed a right tackle for over a decade, and if Lucas were to have played at the level he did last season for the Broncos, they wouldn't have needed to spend $87.5 million to pay for Mike McGlinchey in free agency. 

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4. The Randy Gregory Signing

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Compounding the Bonitto draft selection is the massive contract paid to Gregory. While the upside of Gregory as a pass rusher is incredible, the downside is a litany of injury issues and suspension concerns from his past. 

At the time of the deal, Gregory had never played a full 16-game season and had only started in 12 total games over the first six years of his career, leading to several questions about why he had gotten such a massive contract to begin with.

Making matters worse, while the ink was drying on Gregory's five-year, $70 million deal, news broke that he needed to have shoulder surgery to repair a torn rotator cuff prior to the 2022 season. Gregory was able to recover in time to start the first four games of the year, showing out as an impactful edge defender, especially as a pass rusher.

But then the injury bug struck again, forcing Gregory to undergo arthroscopic knee surgery to trim a torn meniscus and miss the next nine games. Gregory returned for a pair of games late in the season, but was unable to provide much impact as he was still recovering from the knee surgery.

If Gregory cannot stay healthy in 2023 and play for at least 14 games, this may turn out to be the actual worst move of the Paton tenure. Fortunately for the Broncos, there is an easy way out of the contract after the season is over where they can move on from Gregory while only incurring a $6 million dead cap hit. 

3. Paying Courtland Sutton & Tim Patrick

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Back in 2021, the hot debate about the Broncos' wide receiver room was which player the team would sign to a long-term extension. Sutton and Patrick had both shown to be reliable players for the team as possession-style receivers and as leaders in the locker room. 

Denver had also just spent a pair of selections on receivers in Jerry Jeudy and KJ Hamler in 2020, so the room was already starting to look full moving forward. Rather than picking one, Paton decided to extend both, which was quite a bit of a surprise. 

Paton opted to sign Patrick first, agreeing to a three-year extension mere days before handing Sutton a four-year deal. Now, the Broncos have the most expensive wide receiver room in the NFL, doling out $44 million to the room as it currently stands.

The problem with that is the fact that no receiver on the roster has had a 1000-yard season since 2019, when Sutton lit the league on fire with explosive downfield contested catches. The Broncos also brought Marvin Mims Jr. into the fold, as trade rumors have surrounded the room going back to as early as February.

While it may not all be their fault, Patrick and Sutton haven't been the players that the Broncos have expected them to be since they signed those contracts. In Patrick's defense, he suffered a torn ACL early in training camp last season, so he hasn't had the opportunity to showcase his skill set since 2021.

Regardless, having that much invested in the most dependent position on the offense is a very bad decision unless they're able to produce at a high level. The fact that all of the top four options in the receiver room have been brought up in trade discussions over the past several months should make it clear how obvious of a mistake it was. 

2. Hiring Nathaniel Hackett

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After moving on from Vic Fangio following the disaster that was the 2021 season, Paton was tasked with his first head coaching search as a general manager. He cast a wide net, looking through a diverse list of coaches that included names like Dan Quinn, Eric Bienemy, Kellen Moore, and Nathaniel Hackett.

Quinn was widely viewed as a favorite for the position due to his desire to work with Paton going back to his time as the head coach of the Atlanta Falcons. The feeling was mutual, as Paton had originally scheduled Quinn for a second interview before eventually pulling the trigger on hiring Hackett.

At the time, and even now, that move was dripping with speculation that the Broncos were trying to lure Aaron Rodgers to Denver and that hiring Hackett was a feather in their cap to land him. However, Rodgers chose to stay in Green Bay, and the Broncos pivoted to Russell Wilson (more on that later).

Hackett was in over his head as a first-time head coach, struggling to navigate the waters as the lead man in charge. He opted for a slower-paced and lighter training camp, citing player health and safety as a major priority. As a result, his players appeared ill-prepared for the violence of the game of football.

There were struggles in situational football, getting the play calls in on time, time-out usage, and pretty much everything else in between. Things had gotten so bad that Hackett eventually had to hire Jerry Rosburg to help coach the coaches and manage in-game situations.

Hackett became only the second coach since 1980 to be fired before the end of their first season as a head coach and the fifth since the merger in 1970. His quick stint as the Broncos' head coach was an absolute disaster, and it lies directly at the feet of Paton. 

1. The Russell Wilson Extension

DenverBroncos.com

People may want to call the trade for Russell Wilson as a negative for Paton, but that move still has a chance to play out in a positive way and potentially save the GM's job. However, signing Wilson to a massive contract extension before ever seeing him play a snap for the Broncos was a bad move.

When Paton made the move to acquire Wilson from Seattle, the QB still had two years left on his current deal at a very team-friendly cap hit. While it seemed inevitable that Wilson was going to get a big extension in Denver, there wasn't any rush to get it done.

Shortly after the Walton-Penner ownership group took over the day-to-day operations of the franchise, Paton gave Wilson a five-year, $245 million contract extension that had $165 million in guarantees, making him the second-highest paid player at the quarterback position on an average per year basis at the time.

Under the poor coaching and tutelage of Hackett, Wilson turned in the worst season of his career, leading many to speculate about 2023 being the final season that the QB plays for the Broncos. If that were to be the case, the Broncos would eat $85 million in dead money over the course of 2024 and 2025.

Wilson has an opportunity to bounce back this season and make good on the extension, but at face value, this contract was a very bad decision by Paton that could also impact the franchise's salary cap in a negative way for the next three seasons. There was plenty of time to wait and see what Wilson, who had shown injury concerns and declining play in 2021, would look like in 2022 before giving him a new mega-deal. 

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