John Franklin-Myers chuckled, acknowledging the football story he’s never been able to rewrite.
He was passed up by most every FBS program coming out of Greenville High in Texas. He was passed up by the Los Angeles Rams in 2019, cut after he’d played Super Bowl snaps the year before as a rookie. He was passed up by the New York Jets in 2024, who traded Franklin-Myers because they couldn’t pay him.
History is repeating itself in Franklin-Myers’ second season in Denver. The Broncos haven’t engaged in extension talks with the stalwart defensive end despite signing Courtland Sutton, Zach Allen and now Nik Bonitto to big-money deals. As the 2025 season opens, Franklin-Myers is without a contract after this season and isn’t expecting the Broncos to extend him, a source told The Post.
“Shoot, it’s only a matter of time,” Franklin-Myers told The Denver Post in the locker room Friday. “You can’t deny me. And a lot of that stuff is circumstantial, is based on circumstances.
“But after this year, I’m a free agent, and I control the circumstances.”
Ask Denver’s coaching staff, and John Franklin-Myers is a “key figure” to the success of the Broncos’ defensive front, as defensive line coach Jamar Cain told The Denver Post on Thursday.
“John does the dirty work that nobody ever sees,” Cain said. “And to see him come back this year in fall camp, and embrace playing the run better than what he played it last year — and no ego, and want to be coached, and want to be coached hard and want to be told what you’re not doing right and having that open dialogue with him — it’s been amazing.”
Cain called Franklin-Myers a “very selfless person” — a reference to Franklin-Myers’ ability to elevate his teammates’ success. This was an all-encompassing statement. In terms of yearly average value on his deal, Franklin-Myers is now the lowest-paid member of Denver’s defensive front — set to be paid $7.5 million in 2025 — despite being its glue.
On Thursday, the day of his $106 million coronation, Bonitto walked into the Broncos’ locker room with a massive smile on his face. Franklin-Myers recognized what it meant. His heart lifted.
“I’m like, ‘Damn, did they just pay me?’” Franklin-Myers said, referencing the happiness he felt for Bonitto after seeing him get his payday. “Like, I got some of that money, you know.”
The floor for any sort of Franklin-Myers deal in Denver is likely around $15 million, after Denver re-signed steady nose tackle and now-captain D.J. Jones to a three-year deal with an average annual value of $13 million in March. But the Broncos’ future financial picture looks too complicated to extend Franklin-Myers, with three big-money extensions on the books and a tight window before an extension for quarterback Bo Nix looms post-2026.
The full details of Bonitto’s extension (worth up to $120 million total in incentives) aren’t known. But NFL teams tend to back-load bigger extensions with high base salaries toward the end of contracts. Come 2028, for example, Allen and Sutton will take up over $65 million in cap space alone. And that isn’t even factoring in Bonitto or a future Nix deal.
Even in the short term, the books are already tightening. Assuming Denver structures Bonitto’s deal similarly to Allen’s (who has a $16.5 million cap number in 2026), they currently have in the neighborhood of $30 million in cap room next year. They carried over $40 million into free agency this offseason. Not much wiggle room for another big-money deal.
Of course, cap maneuvering is always possible. Denver could restructure the contract of All-Pro guard Quinn Meinerz and save itself over $10 million in cap in 2026. Cutting another big-money linemate like Mike McGlinchey before June would save them over $8 million.
As Paton said, though, there are other mouths to feed on expiring deals besides Franklin-Myers. Wattenberg is coming off a solid year in pass protection as the Broncos’ starting center, and linebacker Alex Singleton and nickel Ja’Quan McMillian are key starters for Denver’s defense. The Broncos could always elect to re-up with backup defensive tackle Malcolm Roach on the cheap, too.
“You keep playing, you keep showing up, the money gon’ take care of itself,” Roach said in early August.
The money does not take care of itself, though, for NFL front offices. And the Broncos would have to move plenty around to even consider throwing Franklin-Myers his appropriate value, as the defensive end looks toward the open market.
“There is power in knowing that my time is coming,” Franklin-Myers said. “But, ultimately, patience is a virtue. And I’ve learned that over this year.
“And shoot, I was just handling my business, being happy for these guys, because they’ve earned every cent.”
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