After losing Josey Jewell during NFL free agency, the Denver Broncos signed Cody Barton to a one-year contract. The deal feels similar to when the Broncos signed Alex Singleton to a one-year contract in 2022.
Singleton had 19 career starts on his resume when he joined the Broncos, but he had made his mark in the NFL on special teams. Denver signed him as a key special teams player who would get a chance to compete at linebacker.
Barton is a similar case, joining the club with 24 starts over the last two years as well as 1,212 career snaps on special teams.
“Well first off, there were two elements to it,” Broncos coach Sean Payton said on May 30 when asked about Barton. “We saw he had a chance, really for the first time in his career, to play a large part of his season as a starter. So we saw that. We saw the good, we saw the things that weren’t as good. We always knew that he was an ‘A’ special teams player. The vision became easy relative to, ‘Hey, he comes in and competes for Mike [middle linebacker], and we know he’s someone that also can play a core four [special] teams role for us.
“There’s open competition there, and we have Jonas [Griffith], we have like three or four players that we’re going to rotate through. Again that’s one where once the pads get on, I think it will be a little bit easier to evaluate. But Cody was someone that we got to see more defensive snaps from last year than at any point in his career. So there was a clear vision relative to, ‘All right, what he can do at linebacker and then what he can do in the kicking game,’ and he’s young.”
Barton, 27, played 93% of the Washington Commanders’ defensive snaps last season. Singleton, meanwhile, has totaled 340 tackles over the last two years in Denver, earning a three-year contract extension in 2023. Barton will get a chance to start next to Singleton in 2024, but he’ll have to beat out Griffith — and others — to win the job. Coming off a career year, Barton will aim to follow Singleton’s blueprint.
