What was the Broncos’ worst personnel move this offseason/preseason?

The Denver Broncos had quite the transformative offseason in 2018. They experienced wholesale change at key positions on offense and lost a dog or two on defense, but overall what personnel move likely hurt them the most in their immediate future?

That is a question our staff hoped to address in today’s roundtable discussion. Let us know what you think in the comments section below.

What was the Broncos’ worst personnel move this offseason/preseason?

• Scotty: Probably could have done more at tight end. Lots of question marks there.
• Sadaraine: I don’t care how much of a locker room problem or coaching issue Aqib Talib was. Trading him away was a big time mistake that changes what Joe Woods can and can’t do with his defensive play calling. I did not see Talib as a guy that lost a step. He is, was, and will always be a straight up dawg and our coach should have been able to make it work for a player of his talent.
• Pete: Dumping Aqib Talib. I hated it when the idea was shopped around and I hate it even more right now. Bradley Roby isn’t up to snuff for replacing Talib. Sure, he’s ok, but he’s no Talib. We robbed from our biggest position of strength and turned it into a liability as teams are able to throw all over us. Chris Harris Jr. can’t cover everyone at the same time, and sadly there isn’t much behind him. Maybe Adam Jones can play, but the last time he did, he wasn’t any good. This isn’t 2015/2016 anymore.
• Taylor: Trading Aqib Talib away was the worst thing the Broncos did to their roster this offseason. It may have been necessary for cap & long term planning reasons, and possibly even for locker room reasons, but it turned the team’s greatest strength into a question mark in one fell swoop. If the moves made to replace him don’t work out & the secondary struggles, we’ll cringe when looking back at this trade.
• Jeff: Talib will be at the top of the list for most, but the writing was on the wall with him, and there have been reports that he was beginning to be an issue in the locker room, not getting along with Vance Joseph, so it was probably best that he go somewhere else. I think the Menelik Watson situation was worse and cost Denver a lot of unneeded cap space. Now, I know some of it was out of their control because he waited to have surgery so they would be forced to keep him, but that whole situation was a mess and they now are ranked higher in dead money than they have been for the last 5 years
• Laurie: Trading Aqib Talib was the move I hate the most, but I understand it and don’t think it was the worst for the team. But keeping Menelik Watson and his expensive salary was a dumb move, easily the worst (late) decision by the front office.
• Hart: Keeping Menelik Watson on the roster as long as they did. They could have gotten rid of him much sooner and not had to have paid him over six million dollars to do nothing for the franchise. He should have been released at the end of last season.
• Adam: Names like Aqib Talib and Menelik Watson are certainly the obvious places to point for most fans. And those aren’t wrong. I’ll go another direction. Retaining Vance Joseph could be the move that comes back to bite this team in the end. Of course I am hopeful that Joseph will have learned from his 2017 debacle, but if not, it’s clear that keeping him around was a huge mistake.
• Joe R: Talib and Watson for the reason’s mentioned above, both illustrate Elway’s biggest weakness as a GM. He believed Talib was replaceable by Langley, (a project who had shown nothing to that point) or Brock (a player who was an afterthought in free agency).
• Ian St: To change it up, wasting another offseason on Paxton Lynch instead of just moving on.