Broncos Camp Notebook | Day 3: News & Notes

The third day of Denver Broncos training camp is in the books. And what a day it was.

Not only did the Broncos don pads for the first time this season, with many a pop and collision to be seen and heard by the 800 fans in attendance, but some huge news broke after practice.

Let's get to the news and notes from Day 3 of Broncos camp.

Courtland Sutton Gets Paid

Sutton ended up being the first domino to fall when it comes to the group of core Broncos entering a contract year. Bo Nix's No. 1 target garnered a four-year extension worth $93 million with $41 million guaranteed.

Sutton becomes the 18th-highest-paid wide receiver in the NFL, and he's under contract beyond Nix's rookie deal. Considering how important Nix is to the Broncos' 2025 ambitions, it should perhaps come as no surprise that his top target was the front office's first order of business.

Sutton did the individual drills on Monday and the walkthrough, but was again absent from the 11-on-11 period. We now know that he was away helping to hammer out the final details of his extension. Expect to see him fully participate moving forward.

Outside Zone

As All-Pro right guard Quinn Meinerz talked about last week, there are some new wrinkles to the Broncos' 2025 rushing attack. On Monday, we saw that come out in the wash with the pads on, and fans got to see the running backs hitting the hole hard and finding lanes to blast through.

According to left tackle Garett Bolles, one of the new wrinkles for the ground attack is the outside zone, which requires running backs with vision and speed to hit the edge and turn the corner in equal measure.

"The way that they hit the hole," Bolles said on Monday. "We've got some guys that can stretch out the outside zone game for us, which is an emphasis for us coming into this training camp."

Sean Payton hasn't traditionally used a lot of zone, inside or outside, so it's interesting to see it becoming a more prominent aspect of Denver's ground attack moving forward. It could pay dividends.

Harvey Stands Out

The rookie running back looked very good on Monday with the pads on. He was decisive and got to the edge quickly to turn upfield in the Broncos' emphasis on the outside zone.

The Broncos lacked an explosive running back with vision last year, and in tandem with J.K. Dobbins, there doesn't appear to be a shortage of that caliber of talent in the room anymore.

Drew Sanders Update

Sanders went down with a foot injury during Saturday's practice and was carted off. On Sunday, NFL insider Ian Rapoport reported that it's a tendon injury in his foot and that the Broncos expect to be without the third-year linebacker when the regular season starts.

Payton offered a contrary prognosis to the Sanders injury on Monday.

"The news for us was good news in that it’s a ligament in his foot, and it’s not a tendon. What does that mean? It’s going to certainly be north of four to six weeks, but the tendon was what we were concerned about," Payton said of Sanders. "I’m not going to try to spell it [out], but the ligament repair is a much easier one than that of a tendon. So we were all pretty happy with that. I’ll update you when we get a timeline. There have been some cases where there’s surgery, some where there’s not. I think he’s doing the right thing right now kind of exploring those options."

Payton would go on to emphasize that the impact to Denver's inside linebacker depth is "short term."

“It just changes short-term. I’m saying four to six, seven, eight weeks," Payton said. "We’ll look at that position closely and understand the reps and how we have to approach it.”

Sanders is seeking additional opinions before he begins his treatment of the injury.

Dre Greenlaw's Knockout