ENGLEWOOD, Colo. — Zach Potter could always count on the same probing phone calls while serving as the general manager of the Birmingham Stallions of the United Football League.
If the team’s season was underway, he’d be speaking regularly to someone from the Denver Broncos — scout, front-office executive, assistant coach.
“The Broncos, generally speaking, would call me every single week on players,” Potter, now the general manager for the UConn football program, said last year. “It wasn’t just our guys. It was players within the league. That was probably one of the most consistent teams of wanting to know who is down there. Who is performing? Have they changed in personality? Have they changed their weight-room habits? … They genuinely wanted new information.”
The Broncos will begin training camp later this month with three players who joined the team after competing in the UFL, the spring league that has operated independently since 2024 following the merger of the XFL and the USFL. Only the Detroit Lions, with four UFL alums on their extended roster, currently have more. Denver signed wide receiver Hakeem Butler and defensive back Sean Fresch Jr., both of whom played last season for the UFL’s St. Louis Battlehawks, and both participated in the team’s minicamp. Outside linebacker Dondrea Tillman, meanwhile, is entering his third season with the Broncos after signing with Denver following a championship-winning season with the Stallions in 2024.
The additions of Butler and Fresch were part of a wave of UFL players signed by NFL teams after that league’s season ended in early June. The UFL said 23 of its players were signed to 90-man NFL rosters in the first week of the UFL’s offseason, a jump from 10 signings during the same window in 2025. That increase, Broncos coach Sean Payton said, reflects a shift in attention by NFL teams in where they are searching for talent outside of the direct-from-college pipeline.
“I asked the question of the scouts the other day like, ‘UFL or CFL? Where are we getting the better (players)?’ Payton said in June. ” … I think it’s kind of becoming that, ‘OK, where’s the next market?’ They’re getting developed somewhere. Where are they if they’re not in our league? I think to (the UFL’s) credit, it’s helping us.”
Tillman has been one of the UFL’s biggest success stories since joining the Broncos in 2024. He has nine sacks over the past two seasons and played 37 percent of Denver’s defensive snaps in 2025. He also had two interceptions last season, tied for the team lead with defensive back Ja’Quan McMillian. The UFL offered Tillman the reps he needed to grow as a player after attending tiny Indiana University of Pennsylvania, a Division II school. He was not invited to the NFL Scouting Combine when his college career ended in 2020. The coronavirus pandemic that year wiped away any shot at auditioning for teams during a pro day. Playing with the Stallions gave him three seasons to develop his body and his pass-rush plan.
In his first NFL action — Week 3 of the 2024 season — Tillman had two sacks of Tampa Bay Buccaneers quarterback Baker Mayfield.
“Do I think guys can go get exposure, get experience, get confidence?” Payton said of the UFL’s chance to be a growing pipeline to the NFL. “History has said there are Hall of Famers now for our league that played up in the CFL. I think yes, definitely.”
The Broncos are hopeful the wealth of experience in the UFL can translate during Butler’s latest opportunity with an NFL team. He has had offseason stints with several squads since being a fourth-round pick of the Arizona Cardinals in 2019, but his most consistent playing time has come during the last three seasons with the Battlehawks. He set a league record last season by averaging 22.1 yards per reception on his 29 catches. At 6-foot-5 and 227 pounds, Butler fits the big-bodied profile Payton likes to have redundancies of in his receiving room. The 30-year-old is trying to crack the 53-man roster of an NFL team for the first time since a three-week stint with the Eagles in 2020. He’s been a member of offseason or practice squad rosters of six teams since being drafted out of Iowa State.
Fresch, meanwhile, is trying to make the most of his first NFL shot after spending the past two seasons in the UFL. The 5-foot-9, 181-pound defensive back was one of the UFL’s top return specialists last season and could compete in Denver’s training camp for depth in the return game behind two-time All-Pro Marvin Mims. Fresch, 24, hopes to follow the path of KaVontae Turpin, a three-time Pro Bowl returner with the Cowboys who earned his shot in Dallas after a league-MVP 2022 season with the New Jersey Generals of the USFL.
“There are traits that you see at a position that I think, sometimes as you head into camp, those are important looks,” Payton said. “So both of them had success (in the UFL), and we felt that we helped upgrade the roster.”
Butler and Fresch face uphill climbs to make the Week 1 roster of a championship-contending squad loaded with returning talent. Even practice squad spots will be hotly contested on a team enjoying one of the highest rates of continuity in the league. But it has become clear the Broncos respect the talent in the UFL as it tries to become a dependable development ground for future NFL players.
“When you’re sitting in my chair, you’re always trying to build every day,” Broncos general manager George Paton said during the NFL meetings earlier this year. “Even when the draft’s over, it’s like, ‘UFL, what’s going on there?’ … So it just never ends, and it never ends with the scouts. You’re always building. You can never get complacent in this job, or you’re going to get passed up.”
