“It’s all a puzzle relative to how we play these guys,” Payton said. “So when you have depth and you have flexibility of where you can play, (that’s good). We know kind of where we’d like to play Zach, where we’d like to play D.J., and yet if you’re thin, sometimes you don’t have that luxury.

“I like where the numbers are there, and we got some experience that we brought in there, both at the end and the tackle position.”

By the time the 2023 season ended, Allen had put together a solid first year in Denver. He finished with 60 pressures, according to Pro Football Focus, the No. 8 mark in the NFL. He played in every game for the first time in his career.

Team-wise, though, Denver’s front seven wasn’t good. The defense didn’t grade out well overall. The Broncos fell short of the playoffs.

Standing on the precipice of a few weeks’ worth of summer vacation, Allen sounded like a guy who couldn’t wait to get back to try to build on the individual side but more pertinently the team side.

“The more and more you’re in this league, the more you realize that it’s fun and also helpful to play with really good players,” Allen said. “That’s all you can ask for. And I think we really have something special. I think we’ve seen it through this whole OTA and everything.

“There’s no pads, but there’s a different tempo, different speed it’s being played at and I think it’s going to be really cool when the pads come on.”

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