The NFL Defensive Player of the Year award has largely been the domain of the league’s top pass rushers in recent years. The 2024 season, however, featured a breakthrough performance.
Surtain proved instrumental in ending the Broncos’ eight-year playoff drought, giving Denver’s seventh-ranked defense a lockdown presence on the back end. An All-Pro selection for the second time and Pro Bowl choice for the third time in his four-year career, he recorded four interceptions and 11 passes defensed.
Despite often shadowing top receivers, Surtain was targeted on just 10.9% of his snaps, the lowest rate since 2021 among cornerbacks with at least 300 coverage snaps, according to Next Gen Stats. His 306 yards allowed represented the lowest total by any NFL cornerback with 375 or more coverage snaps this season, per Next Gen Stats.
‘It would be a huge honor,’ Surtain said in January about the possibility of winning Defensive Player of the Year. ‘It’s something that I worked for, it’s an award that I dreamed of all my life. To go at the top of the professional level and win such a prestigious award, it would mean a lot.
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‘But … I think a lot of credit goes into the play of the team’s success as well, and what we were able to do defensively as a unit, establish ourselves in this league and become one of the premier defenses in this league. And my success doesn’t start without our defense’s success.’
Surtain is only the second Broncos player to win the award after Randy Gradishar claimed it in 1978.