Two years after parting ways with veteran quarterback Russell Wilson, the Denver Broncos finally breathed a sigh of relief, as they got free from the dead money charges. Head coach Sean Payton – who navigated the team through two years of cap crunch – expressed happiness after having done something that has motivated teams, who are navigating through similar cap-related situations.

“It feels good,” Payton said of leaving Wilson’s dead cap behind, per ESPN’s Jeff Legwold. “It’s important. It’s hard to do that.”

After his release following the 2023 season, Wilson cost the Broncos $53 million in 2024 and $32 million last season. Most teams would have crumbled under that dead cap, but Payton built instead. He drafted Bo Nix in the 2024 Draft, right after Wilson’s Broncos run ended, and worked with what he had left to build around his rookie QB – and it clicked.

In his rookie season (2024), Nix took Mile High to the playoffs for the first time since 2015. While that ended with a Wild Card exit, Nix came back stronger last season. He tallied an 11-game win streak at one point, rallied the locker room, and led Denver to the AFC Championship game. And all of this happened because Payton had a clear vision of what he was going to do.

“It wasn’t something you do lightly,” Payton said. “I’ve said if somebody tells you that you can have $100,000 to renovate your house or half that, you’re going to choose the bigger number every time. But when people have asked, I’ve said we started at a point where we weren’t going to make excuses, we made the decision, get to work. There are a ton of built-in excuses, and if you’re going to make them, then you can’t make that kind of decision.”

By absorbing Russell Wilson’s $85 million dead cap and still being successful, Denver gave the league a template. An NFC general manager told ESPN the Broncos “got everybody to kind of think you could rip the tape off if you really had to, and you could work through it, and it didn’t always have to be this long road back.”

As of right now, the Broncos have the second-lowest dead cap hit in the league. Linebacker Dre Greenlaw, WR Trent Sherfield, and RB Audric Estime combine for just $3.4 million in dead money. And this offseason has proven that Sean Payton has pioneered something into existence because teams are already doing it.

Sean Payton’s blueprint is spreading

The Miami Dolphins’ housecleaning went extreme after a disastrous 7-10 season. They cut quarterback Tua Tagovailoa, released WR Tyreek Hill, and traded WR Jaylen Waddle. Altogether, Miami is absorbing a total of $179,214,257 in dead money this year, per Over The Cap. $55.4 million of that money goes to Tagovailoa alone. But just like Sean Payton with Russell Wilson, Miami knew this had to be done.

“If you keep kicking the can down the road, you never get healthy,” general manager Jon-Eric Sullivan said at the owners meeting. “I mean, there’s two philosophies that you subscribe to in the National Football League. You pay as you go, or you’re living on credit. … We want the flexibility that paying as you go provides and we can’t get there unless we kind of take it on the chin this year.”

The Atlanta Falcons followed the same playbook by absorbing $35.4 million from Kirk Cousins. They even gave Tua another shot, and it cost them only the veteran minimum. The Arizona Cardinals didn’t want to pay excessively for a quarterback who wasn’t winning them games. So they cut ties with Kyler Murray and absorbed a $46.57 million dead cap.

All of these teams are ripping the tape off exactly as Denver showed them. The question is whether they have the right quarterback and a productive team around him. Sean Payton had both, and that’s why Mile High never drowned from the $85 million bill Russell Wilson handed them.