{"id":245747,"date":"2025-07-29T16:25:14","date_gmt":"2025-07-29T16:25:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/245747\/"},"modified":"2025-07-29T16:25:14","modified_gmt":"2025-07-29T16:25:14","slug":"broncos-want-me-to-be-here","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/245747\/","title":{"rendered":"Broncos ‘want me to be here’"},"content":{"rendered":"

In the old days, Nik Bonitto\u2019s mentor called him \u201cMr. Steal Your Girl\u201d to embarrass him.<\/p>\n

Smooth. Cool. And quiet. Trainer Javon Gopie loudly bellowed Bonitto\u2019s dubbed nickname in public settings. Gopie loved it. Bonitto hated it.<\/p>\n

On Monday, Bonitto was lounging an arm over a bench when the news of the day was broken to him. Teammate Courtland Sutton, the Denver lifer, had agreed to terms on a four-year extension<\/a>. The first in a logjam of Broncos who need new deals, including Bonitto himself, just got one.<\/p>\n

And in that moment, \u201cMr. Steal Your Girl\u201d turned from introvert to extrovert, his mouth moving faster than his brain. Or maybe vice versa.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe signed that (expletive) just now?\u201d Bonitto asked, catching himself for cursing. \u201cOh. My bad.\u201d<\/p>\n

It was as if he\u2019d just seen sunshine for the first time. His teeth beamed. His voice peaked. His eyes gleamed, without a single speck of jealousy.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat?\u201d Bonitto grinned when told the terms: four years, $92 million. \u201cI\u2019ll talk to him. That\u2019s tough. Alright, yeah. I gotta talk to him. But nah, that\u2019s tough.\u201d<\/p>\n

Of course, it\u2019s the exact position Bonitto himself would like to be in. The 2022 second-round pick is on the final year of his rookie deal and teetering on the edge of a massive payday. The outside linebacker was a second-team All-Pro in 2025. He also wasn\u2019t even a starter until Week 3 and didn\u2019t even land on ESPN\u2019s executive-and-coach-sourced rankings of the top 10 players at his position<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Is an extension in the back of his head? Obviously, Bonitto affirmed. Does he see the league is not fully sold on him yet? Definitely. But the 25-year-old needs no bulletin-board material or external kindling to stoke the fire.<\/p>\n

Some, as Gopie says, play football to feed their families. Some play for a \u201cgold jacket,\u201d Gopie added, referencing the mark of admission in the Pro Football Hall of Fame<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Bonitto, Gopie said, \u201cWants to put on a gold jacket.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI know I have a great agent, and I know he\u2019ll take care of that,\u201d Bonitto said, referencing agent Tory Dandy. \u201cI have 100% trust in him. And I know the Broncos want me to be here as well. So at the end of the day, I have no worries that they\u2019ll figure out whatever they need to figure out.\u201d<\/p>\n

Bonitto\u2019s battle is not for a contract. The battle is with himself, a battle he\u2019s been fighting since he was a four-star recruit coming out of Florida in need of a few lessons in football maturation and more than a few pounds in the weight room.<\/p>\n

The QB pressures and hurries rose every year for Bonitto at Oklahoma. They\u2019ve risen every year since he\u2019s been a Bronco, too. Slowly, a game predicated on an elite speed-rush has expanded, as Bonitto\u2019s gone from a 200-pound high school recruit to a shade under 250 pounds this offseason in Denver. It\u2019s the biggest Gopie\u2019s ever seen him.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere was a trajectory,\u201d said former Oklahoma defensive coordinator Alex Grinch, \u201cthat was coming.\u201d<\/p>\n

Bonitto expects to stay on that road after a 13.5-sack season in 2024. He dissected his film from last season and felt he missed out on a few more sacks. His teammates expect that from him, as fellow edge starter Jonathon Cooper said he \u201cisn\u2019t satisfied.\u201d His coaches expect it, too. Defensive coordinator Vance Joseph is convinced he\u2019s going to take \u201canother huge jump.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cNik\u2019s humble,\u201d Joseph said during minicamp. \u201cNik\u2019s a worker, man. If you ask Nik if he\u2019s a great player yet, he would tell you no. And that\u2019s what I want from young players. I mean, he knows that there\u2019s a lot more in there that he can give us as a rusher.\u201d<\/p>\n

He now sits in an interesting space, a Pro Bowler who he himself and others view as an unfinished product. But Bonitto isn\u2019t trying to hoard snaps in order to get paid. Quite the opposite.<\/p>\n

He revealed a couple of weeks ago that he felt his body started to \u201cbreak down\u201d near the end of last season, and head coach Sean Payton already mentioned this offseason that the Broncos had to be careful of Bonitto\u2019s snap count. Bonitto said he hadn\u2019t had those specific conversations, but that he was with Payton \u201c100%.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cEspecially with the guys that we have behind us, they\u2019re just as good to go in there and make plays as well,\u201d Bonitto said, referencing depth that includes Dondrea Tillman, Jonah Elliss and Que Robinson.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd if I can take just a little bit of toll off my body, then I\u2019m willing to do it. Just because, like I said, I want to protect my body.\u201d<\/p>\n

The man is running his own race. Sutton got an extension. Zach Allen is up for one. So is John Franklin-Myers.<\/p>\n

Bonitto isn\u2019t particularly miffed to still be dangling.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy job is to come out here, do what I got to do,\u201d Bonitto said. \u201cShow them why.\u201d<\/p>\n

Want more Broncos news? Sign up for the Broncos Insider to get all our NFL analysis.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In the old days, Nik Bonitto\u2019s mentor called him \u201cMr. Steal Your Girl\u201d to embarrass him. Smooth. Cool.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":245748,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2062],"tags":[232,1270,231,258,2426,9916,7,2318,1729,3901,929,926,6,1625,1135,1813,9,2832,1626],"class_list":{"0":"post-245747","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-denver-broncos","8":"tag-broncos","9":"tag-courtland-sutton","10":"tag-denver","11":"tag-denver-broncos","12":"tag-denverbroncos","13":"tag-dondrea-tillman","14":"tag-football","15":"tag-john-franklin-myers","16":"tag-jonah-elliss","17":"tag-jonathon-cooper","18":"tag-latest-headlines","19":"tag-more-broncos-news","20":"tag-nfl","21":"tag-nik-bonitto","22":"tag-oklahoma","23":"tag-sean-payton","24":"tag-sports","25":"tag-vance-joseph","26":"tag-zach-allen"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nfl\/114937458013183811","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/245747","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=245747"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/245747\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/245748"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=245747"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=245747"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=245747"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}