Russell Wilson’s $85 million dead-money charge is gone from the Denver Broncos’ salary cap books. The club finally closed the accounting burden from the 2024 release that once sat over two seasons and reset the roster math around it.
Sean Payton said before a recent practice, “It feels good” and “It’s important. It’s hard to do that.” Denver now has the NFL’s second-lowest dead money charges at about $3.4 million, a sharp drop from the load created when Wilson was released as the 2024 combine ended.
Denver clears the cap hit
The Broncos absorbed $53 million against the 2024 salary cap and another $32 million in 2025 from Wilson’s release. Those charges are now off the books, leaving only about $3.4 million in dead money on the current ledger.
Denver also picked up dead money by cutting Randy Gregory, Tim Patrick and Justin Simmons, while the offseason release of Dre Greenlaw accounts for $2.16 million of the current total. That is the cap picture the club gets to carry into summer work.
Payton’s financial reset
Payton’s comments matched the numbers. He did not dress up the situation; he called it good to have the financial house back in order, and he put a premium on how hard it was to get there.
The Broncos are set to adjourn from offseason work for the summer on Thursday, so the immediate roster task is finished. What remains is a cleaner cap sheet than the one they lived with after Wilson was cut.
Miami and the Broncos model
The reason this story has broader league weight is simple: Denver carried a record-level dead-money burden and still went 24-10 over the two seasons after Wilson’s release. The Broncos broke an eight-year playoff drought, made two postseason trips and advanced to the AFC Championship Game in January.
’s informal survey of 11 coaches and personnel executives found many respondents believed the Miami Dolphins’ offseason strategy followed what Denver did two years earlier. Miami set a new league record with $179 million in dead cap charges this offseason, and the release of Tua Tagovailoa contributed $99.2 million to that total.
Jeff Legwold wrote that many respondents viewed Miami’s move as a progression from what the Broncos did two years ago. One NFC general manager said, “Teams have had dead money issues, cut guys so they could draft or do free agency, and people have had to cut guys on big contracts, But I do think [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.”
The lesson for any front office staring at a massive cap mistake is now on the books too. Denver swallowed the hit, won anyway, and finished the reset without carrying Russell Wilson’s release into another year.
