Grading The Week: Is Broncos’ Garett Bolles worth $82 million? He is to QB Bo Nix, and that’s only vote that counts

There’s only one hard-and-fast rule about rooting interests up in the Grading The Week offices: Cheer for good narratives. Cheer for good stories. Don’t cheer for teams.

But when it comes to individual players around the Front Range, full disclosure, the powers that be have been known to make … um, exceptions.

Cards on the table? The goofs up in GTW HQ are happy for Garett Bolles after the big Broncos left tackle landed a four-year, $82-million contract extension earlier this week.

After a few months of wondering whether the Broncos would fish or cut bat with Big 72, his new deal more or less makes him a Bronco for life — or at least through 2028, his age-36 season.

Boles’ contract extension — B-plus

Was it an overpay? Depends on whom you ask. Per Spotrac, Bolles’ AAV of $20.5 million would rank eighth among NFL tackles in 2024, eighth in 2025, eighth in 2026 and seventh in 2027. The top tackle earners for ’24 and ’25 are the same, in terms of AAV — the Bucs’ Tristan Wirfs ($28.1 million), followed by the Lions’ Penei Sewell ($28.1 million) and the 49ers’ Trent Williams ($27.55 million).

Bolles isn’t quite the eraser Williams is by the Bay, nor the athlete Sewell is up in Motor City. But at 32, he’s managed to split the difference well enough, all while staying — and this part gets more impressive after the age of 30 — relatively healthy.

Meanwhile, Mr. Availability is still flashing plenty of other abilities, too. Per Pro Football Focus film-graders, Bolles ranks fourth among league tackles in pass protection. PFF says he’s given up just one sack in 817 snaps and 13 starts heading into the Colts game on Sunday while ranking him fourth among league tackles in terms of pass-protection grade.

Now that Bo Nix is putting down stakes, and in all the right ways, the next trick for the Broncos front office is ticking off the boxes around him.

The law firm of Sean Payton & George Paton has built a top-6 offensive line, and every starter save for center Luke Wattenberg is currently under contract through at least 2026. Given the old axiom about not trying to fix what ain’t broke to begin with, you can understand the double-down on continuity up front.

So extending Bolles takes Nix’s blind-side off the table, at least where the draft is concerned. NFL.com draft analyst Chad Reuter in October listed only three collegiate tackles among his top 25 Senior Bowl prospects, and most mocks have the top two — LSU’s Will Campbell and Texas’ Kelvin Banks Jr. — long off the board by the time the Broncos would pick in the early or mid-20s.

But you know who will probably still be there? (Not Boise State tailback Ashton Jeanty, sadly.) Tight ends! A handful of big-ish Big Ten receiving targets. Specifically, a couple of seam route giants — 6-foot-6 Tyler Warren out of Penn State and 6-5 Colston Loveland out of Michigan.

Sean Payton is building Saints 2.0 up in Dove Valley, piece by piece. In Nix, he’s got his Drew Brees. In Powers and Quinn Meinerz, he’s got a pair of Pro Bowl-level guards, just like he had in the Big Easy. The next order of business is landing another Jimmy Graham or an Alvin Kamara. Extending Bolles clears a path to address either slot via the draft. And then the real fun begins.