ENGLEWOOD, Colorado – At the start of training camp, the tightest end will be the most competitive and tightest spot on the Denver Broncos depth chart.
By selecting Missouri tight end Albert Okwuegbunam, a former quarterback teammate Drew Lock, in the fourth round of the 2020 draft, the Broncos have taken their fifth tight fin in the last six drafts – a total that includes Noah Fant, the first of the round tour team in 2019.
Earlier this season football president / general manager John Elway said: “I like the group we have, I like what Noah did as a rookie, but we will always try to find good players soccer, as much as we can, at each location. [Tight end] is no different. “
Consider that the five of these former draft picks are still on the list – Okwuegbunam, Fant, Jeff Heuerman, Jake Butt and Troy Fumagalli. The Broncos also signed Nick Vannett for a $ 5.7 million two-year contract last March. And then there’s Andrew Beck, a versatile player who can line up both at the end and behind and played more shots on special teams last season than any other tight end on the list.
Do the math: these are the seven players the Broncos invested in which last season was four places on the list when the team left training camp.
The new offensive coordinator, Pat Shurmur, didn’t give a lot of clues – beyond the “Get-the-ball-to-the-good-players” mantra – what his Broncos playbook would look like. Given that Shurmur has made extensive use of backhand sets for much of his time as an NFL player, and how aggressively Elway has added to the tight final position this off-season, it is expected that the ends tight teams get a lot of work in the passing game.
“I really think you have to distribute the ball,” said Shurmur. “Generally, in the games you win and play a good attack, when you look at the stats sheet at the end of the game, there are probably six or seven guys who have caught passes and there are probably two or three guys who ran the ball. I really think if you want to have a good attack you need threats outside, inside and in the backfield. It’s going to be fun. “
Fant, with 40 receptions as a rookie last season, is TE1 and it’s hard to believe the Broncos would have looked for Vannett as the type of receiver / blocker combo they would like to associate with Fant if they didn’t have it considered on the list. And no matter how brutal Okwuegbunam can be in its running, the bottom line is that it has rare speed – 4.49 in the 40-yard dash with the 258-pound screening combine. It’s faster than 29 of the wide receivers that have run in Indianapolis.
For his part, Beck plays more on special teams, or did last season, than any other tight end of the team, and just after the season, Elway said that Beck “came in and made a great job. “
In short, it does not take long to arrive at four potential candidates for the active list. Heuerman (third round pick, 2015), Butt (fifth round, 2017) and Fumagalli (fifth round, 2018) are now in a competition where not everyone will have a chair when the music stops.
The Broncos have always praised the potential of these three players, but all three have battled injuries and spent at least one season in reserve with the Broncos.
The Broncos have seen the Chiefs, tight end Travis Kelce terrorize their defense in recent years and want more at the position of their attack. Three of Kelce’s five career games with over 130 yards received were against the Broncos.
The Broncos have not had a tight end to the season with more than three touchdowns since Julius Thomas had 12 touchdowns in consecutive years in 2013 and 2014.
Short receiver Courtland Sutton said that this was all part of the offensive need to give Lock as many options as possible.
“If we get into a situation where Drew and everyone in the offense feels comfortable with the offense, then we know what we are supposed to do, then it becomes pretty much an uncontrollable situation where the Coach Shurmur will obviously be calling the best game for us to be successful and successful, “said Sutton earlier in the offseason. “… I think the offense of coach Shurmur is going to be able to add a lot of threat to all the weapons we already have in attack.”
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