The Denver Broncos have 12 players whose contracts will expire after this season. You don't have to be a salary cap wizard to realize that it will be impossible for the Broncos to retain all of them.
Of those 12, nine are starters: Demaryius Thomas, Julius Thomas, Rahim Moore, Wes Welker, Virgil Green, Orlando Franklin, Nate Irving, Will Montgomery and Terrance Knighton.
Right now, the only certainty Broncos fans can cling to is that Von Miller and Chris Harris will be with the team next season. The team exercised the fifth-year option ($9.754 million in 2015) for Miller while Harris signed a five-year deal worth $42.50 million with $24 million guaranteed.
"Yeah, we have a bunch of guys coming up, and so we're hoping that we can get everybody," Broncos general manager John Elway said. "It's never going to be easy, but Chris was the target to start with and we were thankful to get that done, so we hope that we can continue to do that and keep this team together."
According to Mike Klis of The Denver Post, Denver's free agent priorities are as follows: 1. Demaryius Thomas, 2. Julius Thomas, 3. Will Montgomery/Virgil Green, 4. Terrance Knighton, Rahim Moore, Orlando Franklin, 5. Wes Welker.
Demaryius Thomas is about to finish a third consecutive season with at least 90 receptions, 1,400 yards and 10 touchdowns. At this point, it is expected that the Broncos will place the franchise tag on him worth roughly $12.7 million.
That amount will make it difficult to re-sign their athletic tight end Julius Thomas. Denver will presumably resume contract extension talks with him during the offseason.
Klis hints that Knighton may be a casualty of limited salary cap space.
"And in a matter of weeks, there is a distinct possibility Broncos fans will have watched Terrance 'Pot Roast' Knighton play for the last time while wearing orange and blue."
