Zach Allen agrees to four-year, $102 million contract extension with Broncos, sources say

Zach Allen spent the past year-plus cementing himself as a central force on Denver’s talented defense.

Now he’ll be paid like one of the game’s best.

The defensive tackle and the Broncos have agreed to a four-year, $102 million contract extension, according to multiple league sources. The deal comes with $69.5 million in guarantees, and Allen is now under contract with the club through 2029.

The 27-year-old broke out in 2024, logging 8.5 sacks and leading all defensive tackles in the NFL with 67 pressures, according to Next Gen Stats.

His run of premier play in Denver dates back further than that, though, to the middle of the 2023 season when Allen really hit his stride.

The Broncos originally signed the 2019 third-round pick out of Boston College to a three-year deal as a free agent before the 2023 season. He spent the first four years of his career in Arizona, where he played for now-Broncos defensive coordinator Vance Joseph.

Allen played the best football of his career last fall and dominated in big games. He had a hand, for example, in five different sacks of Cincinnati star Joe Burrow in a critical late-December matchup. He logged four or more pressures in 10 of the 16 games he played in and played a whopping 89% of defensive snaps.

“Zach has that stamina and that cardio where he’s in great shape,” head coach Sean Payton said recently. “But when you look at the tape, it’s hard to play on the offensive and defensive front, especially the defensive front. A lot of snaps like that — that’s one of his strengths. And the versatility.”

All of those marks made Allen an easy call as an extension candidate this year as he prepared to enter the final year of his contract.

Allen jumps to No. 3 among interior defensive linemen in terms of average annual value at $25.5 million per season. That puts him near the top of a list of 15 other interior defensive linemen in the NFL to top $20 million per season in average annual contract value. There are only three others who make north of $25 million per season, including Milton Williams, who got $26 million per year from New England back in March as a free agent.

Allen’s extension follows a four-year, $92 million deal for receiver Courtland Sutton last week. Denver’s got at least one other obvious extension candidate in outside linebacker Nik Bonitto, who is entering the final year of his rookie contract. Last year the club didn’t rush with outside linebacker Jonathon Cooper when he was in the same position, agreeing to an extension in the middle of the season. Bonitto could follow the same path.

Denver’s got other defensive players entering contract years, too, most notably a pair of Allen’s running mates up front in John Franklin-Myers and Malcolm Roach.

Allen becomes just the third player to be tied to the Broncos through the 2029 season, joining Sutton and cornerback Pat Surtain II, the reigning NFL defensive player of the year.

The Broncos have been busy over the past 13 months, locking up several key players to long-term deals. The list: Allen, Sutton, Surtain, Cooper, left tackle Garett Bolles and All-Pro right guard Quinn Meinerz. Those deals came with a total of $306 million in guarantees, a major spending spree to solidify the core of Payton’s roster for the coming years.

The extensions for Sutton and Allen should clear room on the Broncos’ 2025 cap given that they carried the second and third-highest cap figures on the team at $20.2 million and $19.75 million, respectively. That will likely allow the team to convert 2024 base salary into mostly signing bonus and prorate out the rest of the bonus money, creating cap flexibility in the short term.

Before the extensions, Denver already had $12.6 million in cap space, according to OvertheCap. So they’ll have plenty of flexibility to get more deals done if they want to and they’ll be in position to roll over a substantial amount of cap space to 2026.

This story will be updated.