ENGLEWOOD, Colo. — After practice, Wednesday, Cooper from Children’s Hospital came out to play the role of junior reporter. Several players stopped by to greet the precocious Cooper, as did Broncos’ ownership partner and chief executive officer Greg Penner.
On his way to Cooper, Penner spotted a newly acquired player, defensive lineman Elijah Garcia, who had just been signed off the Rams’ practice squad. Penner walked over to shake Garcia’s hand and introduce himself. Penner’s post-practice path then took him to Cooper.
Perhaps more than expected for someone who has spent most of his life in the corporate world of finance and publicly-traded discount retail, Penner has been a regular presence inside the Broncos’ training facility and out on the practice field. And he’s been around more lately, at least to the eyes of this observer.
With critical decisions approaching, Penner’s financial, emotional and time investment in the Broncos has been notable. His involvement and investment is needed now, not later, with the Broncos clinching their sixth consecutive losing season this week, which is the number of losing records that the team had in its previous 42 years.
Penner, his wife Carrie and father-in-law Rob Walton combined to put up the bulk of the $4.65 billion it took to buy the Denver Broncos’ franchise from the Pat Bowlen estate in August. As Forbes initially reported in August, Penner holds a 30% stake in the Broncos, or $1.395 billion, demonstrating the significant financial investment he has put in the franchise. Moreover, Broncos ownership has pledged $100 million into Empower Field upgrades, subject to the NFL owner's approval next week. The idea is to enhance the fans’ experience now while Penner continues to evaluate the long-term decision on the stadium’s future.
Make no mistake, Penner is an owner with skin in the game.
Combined with his wife Carrie, the Penners are in for 60% of the Broncos, or $2.79 billion. Rob Walton owns the largest individual share at 34%, or $1.581 billion, but he has made it clear his son-in-law Greg is the person who is running the team’s day-to-day operations. (The other three owners – Mellody Hobson, Lewis Hamilton and Condoleezza Rice – hold the other 6% non-voting interest in the Broncos with Hobson owning the bulk of the limited partners’ share).
The Penners and Walton have attended every Broncos game this season, home and away. They have joined their team in the locker room for the postgame talks, win or lose, each time. There have been far more somber than joyous postgame locker rooms this year and Penner, whose easy smile belies a quiet intensity, has been busy the past four months both gathering knowledge on the ins and outs of owning an NFL franchise while also asking questions of football people he trusts with plans of trying to find solutions for a football team that incredulously is at its lowest point in the franchise’s 63-season history.
Both general manager George Paton and head coach Nathaniel Hackett have talked about their regular communication and meetings with Penner.
By all impressions, the Broncos are not a hobby for Penner. They are not a toy or another investment opportunity. The team has quickly become his life’s obsession.
Penner declined to comment for this story but not much has changed with his team since his last public comments in London on October 28, two days prior to the Broncos’ come-from-behind win against Jacksonville at Wembley Stadium.
“It’s not the start we were looking for,’’ Penner said as the Broncos were then 2-5. “It’s been disappointing so far. We had really high expectations coming in. We still have high expectations. The fans have high expectations of us. And we’re not where we need to be.”
Those words still hold and there have been four consecutive losses since that trip overseas with three of those defeats undecided until the final minute.
In all, the Broncos have been involved in an NFL-high 10 one-score possessions. Their 7 one-score losses not only lead the league this season but tie for the 5th-most in NFL history at this point in the season.
They are competitive but there is no “close loss” credit in the NFL. The Broncos have also been battered. They have had 23 players land on injured reserve (IR) this season, which is tied with Tennessee for the most.
When the Walton-Penner group was unanimously approved by the NFL’s 32 owners to buy the Broncos just four months ago, the new partners and everybody else thought they were getting a team in great shape.
The Broncos’ football department was led by one of the shrewdest executives in Paton, who was just beginning his second year as the team’s general manager. In his first year of 2021, Paton won an award for having the best NFL draft.
There was also an enthusiastic and football-smart newly hired head coach in Hackett, and rock star quarterback in Russell Wilson, who had been one of the NFL’s biggest winners the previous 10 years.
Appearances were deceiving. For whatever head-scratching reasons, the Broncos have been the league’s most disappointing team in arguably the most disappointing season in team history. They bring a 3-9 record into their game Sunday afternoon at Empower Field at Mile High against the Kansas City Chiefs, who are closing in on their seventh consecutive AFC West Division title – an accomplishment due in no small part to their 13-game winning streak against the Broncos that spans more than 7 years.
Wilson has not been a top 10 quarterback this season, as he was in 9 of his first 10 seasons with Seattle, but the 29th-rated passer. The Broncos’ offense did not return to its prolific, Peyton Manning-led scoring ways a decade ago, as was promised, instead falling to the least-scoring team in the NFL. If the Broncos’ 13.8 points per game average holds through the final five games, it would be the worst offense in the 63-season history of the franchise, eclipsing the 14.0 ppg low by the 1966 team coached by Mac Speedie and then Ray Malavasi.
When you think about how bad the Broncos were in the 1960s, to be worse than that is the height of embarrassment.
For this, Paton traded away the building blocks for a better future. Two first-round picks, two second-round selections, two starters and a young backup quarterback were sent to Seattle in exchange for Wilson. In the days before the 2022 regular season began, Paton doubled down by giving Wilson a five-year, $245 million contract extension.
Further adding insult to the trade is the Seahawks would be in the playoffs with a 7-5 record if the season ended today. Wilson’s former backup Geno Smith is the league’s No. 2-rated quarterback. And thanks to the Wilson trade and the Broncos’ woes, Seattle is presently sitting on the No. 3 overall pick in the 2023 draft.
And about the head coach Paton selected in January. Coming off three successful years as the Green Bay Packers’ offensive coordinator, Hackett had the type of ebullient personality and coaching style that was viewed as a 180-degree swing from his predecessor, Vic Fangio, but was also unlike the typical demeanor of an NFL head coach.
From the Broncos’ highly-watched first game, Hackett has struggled in his first stint as head coach with game management decisions and the league’s worst offense. While he deserves credit for admitting mistakes and taking accountability, he hasn’t quite lived down a series of high-profile, in-game errors.
His season-opening decision of attempting a 64-yard field goal with time and timeouts remaining at the Seahawks—rather than put the ball in the hands of Wilson in his return to Seattle—was widely ridiculed locally and nationally. Before a primetime Monday night audience that included Peyton Manning demonstratively begging for a timeout, Hackett let the clock run down to 20 seconds before sending McManus out for the futile kick that missed left.
In game 2, the Broncos continued to have game-operation difficulties, capped by the Broncos’ crowd at Empower Field at Mile High mockingly chanting down the play clock to help the offense get the snap off in time. That led to Hackett reaching an agreement to bring longtime Baltimore Ravens’ special teams coordinator Jerry Rosburg out of retirement to serve as a special game-day operations consultant.
Although the Broncos won game 2 against Houston and the following game against the San Francisco 49ers, 11-10, on Sunday Night Football, the offense continued to sputter. Inept offense, and late-game also collapses by an otherwise impressive defense, resulted in the Broncos suffering seven losses by one score or less. The team has committed a league-high 91 penalties, on pace for one of the highest totals in franchise history.
Following another low-scoring, one-score, 17-10 loss at Tennessee on Nov. 13, Hackett turned over offensive play-calling duties to quarterbacks coach Klint Kubiak, son of the highly accomplished former Broncos’ offensive coordinator, head coach and play caller Gary Kubiak. The switch brought some intangible improvements but not on the scoreboard, as the Broncos have since lost three games while putting up just 16, 10 and 9 points.
And so soon, Broncos Country will be counting on Penner to come up with decisions that will be the crucial first steps in returning this franchise to prominence. Which won’t be easy as it now seems like a long journey merely to mediocrity.
Penner is most likely to retain Paton, who despite some outsized mistakes is still considered a quality talent evaluator who is adept at the nuances of roster administration.
But the question since McManus’ 64-yard field goal went wide in Seattle in game 1 is whether Hackett will be one and done. The Broncos are already assured of their sixth consecutive losing season. Soon enough, Penner will have to transfer his information-gathering stage into action.
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