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ENGLEWOOD, Colo. — Broncos head coach Sean Payton, after a hard-fought, Christmas night victory against the Kansas City Chiefs, did something he hadn’t done often across the nearly 200 speeches made in winning locker rooms as a head coach.
“We don’t really give game balls out for feel-good stories,” said Zach Strief, who has been a part of many of those celebratory locker rooms, first as an offensive lineman with the Saints and now as the coach of that position group in Denver.
On this night, an exception was warranted.
Alex Forsyth, who arrived in Denver as a seventh-round pick in 2023, had stepped in at center with only three days to prepare following an injury to starter Luke Wattenberg. That Forsyth had filled in during Denver’s 20-13 victory, in the same stadium where a failed rep in field goal protection contributed to a gutting, walk-off loss one year earlier, made his role all the more worthy of recognition in front of his teammates and coaches. Payton afterward called it a “life lesson” kind of moment.
“I gave him the game ball having not seen the tape” of Forsyth’s performance, Payton said this week.
Once he did watch the film? It immediately became clear the game ball wasn’t just about the story. Forsyth took 44 pass-block snaps in the game without allowing a single pressure, according to TruMedia, including one solid rep after another against All-Pro defensive tackle Chris Jones. It was a testament to what has occurred for the Broncos along the offensive line all season. The unit keeps meeting the lofty standard it set before the season, even amid frequent personnel shuffling.
Alex Forsyth started at center in the Broncos’ preseason game against the Cardinals but played sparingly before facing the Chiefs in Week 17. (Ron Chenoy / Imagn Images)
“What’s so special is a guy goes in and the expectations don’t change,” reserve Calvin Throckmorton said. “We know we can still operate at a super high level. I think that’s what is so special about the room.”
The Broncos have used six different offensive line combinations, and that doesn’t include the three different players they have used in the “jumbo” position in the team’s six-linemen packages. Denver has maintained the lowest sack percentage (3.1) in the league entering Week 18 and the third-lowest pressure rate (31.8). The Broncos are fourth in yards before contact per rush (1.9), a decent indicator of how well holes are being created in the run game.
It’s one of the major reasons the Broncos are one victory from securing the No. 1 seed in the AFC, a goal they can achieve by beating the Los Angeles Chargers at home in the regular-season finale Sunday. Forsyth was only the latest member of the group to contribute to an increasingly high standard.
“It was fitting,” Payton said of Forsyth’s performance.
“He absolutely knocked it out of the park,” right tackle Mike McGlinchey added.
“The reality is, when you turn on the tape, he would have gotten (a game ball) anyways,” Strief said. “That, to me, is the part that’s cool about it.”
The Broncos in 2023 enjoyed more offensive stability than any other team in the league. The starting five that year — left tackle Garett Bolles, left guard Ben Powers, center Lloyd Cushenberry, right guard Quinn Meinerz and McGlinchey, the right tackle — started 16 of a possible 17 games together, with McGlinchey’s injury absence in a meaningless Week 18 being the only break in the chain.
As much as the Broncos’ coaching staff appreciated the continuity, coaches knew another season like that was unlikely. They were also confident, though, in the depth they were acquiring and developing behind the scenes.
Forsyth and versatile lineman Alex Palczewski arrived in 2023, the latter as an undrafted free agent. In 2024, the Broncos found another undrafted free agent in offensive tackle Frank Crum and signed Throckmorton, who had played for Payton and Strief in New Orleans. Though Palczewski and Forsyth saw time as fill-ins in 2024, the development of Denver’s young linemen had largely taken place outside the public eye. Inside the building, the improvement heading into this season was easy to see.
“I can remember back in training camp working on our offensive line and saying, ‘I don’t know if I’ve ever been part of a group that’s as deep as we are,’” offensive coordinator Joe Lombardi said this week. “I’m not surprised by the way that those guys have responded to some of the injuries. I think it’s a credit to just the way this program’s been built.”
The first free agent the Broncos signed after Payton took over was McGlinchey. Selected with the ninth pick of the 2018 NFL Draft by the San Francisco 49ers, he had been an all-rookie performer and then helped lead the 49ers to a Super Bowl as a second-year starter. He signed a five-year, $87.5 million deal with the Broncos to cement a right tackle position that had been a revolving door for the franchise for the better part of a decade.
McGlinchey was riding high as he arrived in Denver. He had been chosen as a central piece in Payton’s upcoming rebuild. That felt good. Then, McGlinchey had his first conversation with Strief, who had been hired a couple of months earlier by Payton.
“When I first got here, I had just signed my contract, and Zach told me, like, ‘You’re not a very good pass protector,’” McGlinchey recalled this week. “I was like, ‘You guys just brought me here on (a big contract). That’s a pretty wild thing to say.’ I’d never met him or whatever, but he says, ‘You’re gonna be.’”
Strief and McGlinchey may not have had a prior relationship, but the position coach had already done significant homework. He knew that McGlinchey was “a golf nerd,” so he equated the technique overhaul he was about to ask the veteran right tackle to embrace to “Tiger Woods changing his swing in the middle of his career in search of being better.”
The Broncos entered Week 18 with the lowest sack percentage (3.1) in the league. (Isaiah J. Downing / Imagn Images)
The Broncos this season have received important, timely contributions from Forsyth, Crum, Throckmorton and Palczewski, whose transition into Powers’ spot at left guard after he previously played right tackle “blew my mind,” Strief said. But they have also seen veterans such as McGlinchey (eighth season), Bolles (ninth), Meinerz (fifth) and Wattenberg (fourth) play arguably the best football of their careers. Bolles and Meinerz earned Pro Bowl berths last month. Wattenberg, in his second season as a starter, recently earned a four-year contract extension. McGlinchey has allowed only two sacks across 645 pass-block snaps.
Development in the NFL is often associated with how programs bring along young players, but McGlinchey said the mark of Strief’s impact as a teacher is how he has been able to open new pathways of improvement for established veterans who have taken pride in the skill sets that helped them reach second contracts in the league.
“Zach has kind of opened our eyes, and certainly mine, of, ‘Hey, you’ve got to be willing to try different things and things you’re not really comfortable with,’” said McGlinchey, who considers himself a “worlds better” player than the one who arrived in Denver three years ago. “He talks all the time about how one of the hardest things to do is be an old player and change what you’re doing. You’ve lasted so long and you’ve survived that long doing what you do. It takes a lot of courage to be able to trust that what he’s teaching us is better than what you’ve lasted (with). That’s the part that Zach is so good at, one, being able to be a good teacher and get the message across, but also, two, being a good salesman. He’s super conscientious about, ‘If you don’t believe what I’m telling you, then why the hell would I try it?’”
Building that trust for Strief began with embracing the responsibility that could be bestowed upon every player in the room. When the coach conducted his first meeting with the Broncos’ offensive line room in 2023, he pulled up the final meaningful play of Super Bowl LVI. It was fourth-and-1 near midfield for the Cincinnati Bengals, who trailed the Los Angeles Rams by 3 points with 43 seconds left. On the right side of the defensive line for the Rams was arguably the game’s best player at the time, defensive tackle Aaron Donald. The championship dream for the Bengals in that moment hinged on whether they would be able to stop Donald from wrecking the play.
The Bengals couldn’t do it, and the final image of the Rams’ Super Bowl victory was Donald tossing Bengals quarterback Joe Burrow to the turf like a rag doll.
“You’ve got to have it or you lose the Super Bowl, right?” McGlinchey said. “That’s a pretty big deal. That’s a monstrous task for an offensive lineman. So that’s what you train for. You train for that moment. How do you get yourself to the position of trust to not give him a s—ty (pass-block) set. Most good players see more crappy sets, more crappy technique, because of how scared you are. You can’t be scared. That’s the biggest thing he’s coached out of all of us.”
The process began with an invitation to fail. McGlinchey, expanding on the golf analogy, felt as if he were trying out a new swing on the golf course during his first training camp with the Broncos. There were movements that felt unnatural as he began adopting a new technique. The temptation to move back to the stroke he trusted to produce a fairway drive was tempting.
“There’s a lot of butting heads in the middle of that,” McGlinchey said. “Zach and I are both very prideful guys, similar personalities, have the know-it-all gene a little bit, so you kind of clash heads early. It’s, ‘Hey, I’ve done this a long time a different way. I don’t really trust what you’re saying.’”
Strief asked only that McGlinchey stick with it. Even amid failed reps, the coach would point out details that pushed the tackle toward a higher level. It is all a part of Strief’s unique knack, as McGlinchey puts it, “for coaching the mind and the psychology of what we’re doing.”
“Then, all of a sudden, you start to see it work,” McGlinchey said. “You start to feel it. So you’re like, ‘All right, I’ll try it. Hey, it’s April, it’s May, we’re in OTAs. Where else are you gonna try?’ The golfers aren’t gonna fix their swing in the middle of (a tournament), but that whole week at the range, they’re gonna find something to get you to change what you’re doing. That’s kind of how we’ve worked for the last three years, and I think every guy in our room has bought into that, and it’s part of the reason why we’re having a great year.”
The week before Forsyth took over as Denver’s starting center in a game that was instrumental in its quest for the No. 1 seed, he was 25 yards behind the line of scrimmage during a Broncos practice, mirroring Wattenberg from afar. When quarterback Bo Nix called Forsyth one of the most prepared players in the league following the win against the Chiefs, it wasn’t hyperbole. In each practice this season before Week 17, Forsyth mimicked every rep performed by the starting offense, making the necessary checks, snapping the ball and then exploding off the ball to block a ghost defensive tackle or dropping into a pass-blocking set.
“Never told him to do it,” Strief said. “Every single rep, he’s back there. He’s snapping to somebody. He’s making his calls and he’s taking his footwork. What you really want to see, and what you love, and what benefits a room like ours, is (you can tell a player), ‘You want to be good and you want to go on the field and play well? Watch him.’ Like, he’s not the most talented person in the world, but he works so hard at it. He’s so intentional in everything he does, so what you really like to see is proof that that’s the right way, which I think is what he proved.”
There is not a player in Denver’s offensive line room who hasn’t been effusive in their praise of Strief this season. As a lineman in Payton’s offense for 12 seasons, he’s uniquely positioned to understand the demands and stresses placed upon them and offers a window into how to navigate those — like a trail guide for the 14,000-foot peak that is Mount Payton.
“With the insights and those little things, he lived it, so he can coach through experience really well,” said Crum, who has spent much of this season occupying the same “jumbo” role that Strief filled during part of his career in New Orleans. “That’s very helpful, as a player, to see things through the same lens.”
Strief strongly contends, though, that sharing that experience would be of little benefit if the Broncos weren’t so intentional about how they have added to the room. The Broncos have not spent premium NFL Draft capital on the offensive line. In fact, since taking Meinerz in the third round in 2021, Denver hasn’t used anything higher than a fifth-round pick on an offensive lineman. The Broncos haven’t selected a true offensive tackle in the draft since taking Bolles with the 20th pick in 2017. Yet, they’ve been able to find impactful pieces in the late rounds and in college free agency, a critical part of the formula given that every starting member of the line is playing on a lucrative, multiyear contract.
To Strief, the standard the Broncos have maintained in 2025, amid more shuffling than in previous seasons, “justifies the way we look at acquiring the people we bring in the building.”
“When Sean talks about bringing in smart, tough players who endear themselves to their teammates and love football, that’s the product of those types of people,” Strief said. “We’re not pulling anything out of those guys. Like, yeah, we’re giving them some fundamentals. ‘This is how we do this.’ But I never have to jump anyone’s butt in practice because they’re not working hard. I never have to ask someone to do more after practice. It’s an unbelievable group because of the maturity, how smart they are and how tough they are. It really is amazing to be around them.”
The Broncos this offseason hired Chris Morgan, who has coached offensive linemen in the NFL since 2009. He had coached with six different teams before landing in Denver, overseeing dozens of different rooms. Early in OTA workouts in May, he could already tell that what the Broncos had built with their unit was unique.
“When he got here, he was like, ‘Jeez, every one of these guys is smart. Every one of these guys works hard,’” Strief said. “That’s what’s cool about it, and that’s what people end up seeing as a product on the field. These are really great human beings who do all the stuff the right way and don’t want to let the guy next to him down.”
It helps explain why Strief said he had “no anxiety” when the team called upon Forsyth in a big spot last week. This group, each of the 12 in the room, has been preparing for its Super Bowl moment like the one Strief pulled up in front of the room almost three years ago. Now, it could be just a few weeks from experiencing one of its own.
