Three days, seven rounds and eight new Denver Broncos later, the 2016 NFL Draft finally came to an end for John Elway, Gary Kubiak and the rest of the Broncos staff on Saturday evening.
Paxton Lynch, Adam Gotsis, Justin Simmons, Devontae Booker, Connor McGovern, Andy Janovich, Will Parks and Riley Dixon—that is your Denver Broncos 2016 draft class.
“I’m really excited about it,” Elway said. “I think it fell really well for us and we really got a lot of good football players and good guys. I’m really thrilled in how it fell.”
The draft is one heck of a grind for all involved. For the personnel staff, it’s a year-round process. Elway made sure to pass around the credit for all who make it possible.
“I mean, it’s a lot of work. There’s no question. It’s a lot of work,” he said with a laugh of relief. “I think at this point in time once the draft is over and we get up to the 90-man roster limit, it’s nice to be able to exhale. But I think when you look back and you look at the people at who we got and you look and say that we got better as a football team. I think it’s something that’s a source of pride for us, especially on the personnel side because this is our job.
“As Gary said, we’re tremendously blessed with great people,” he added. “Our scouts work their tail off. [Director of Player Personnel] Matt Russell and [Director of Pro Personnel] Tom Heckert have done a tremendous job; [Pro Scouting Coordinator] A.J. Durso. The whole group. [Assistant Director of College Scouting] Adam Peters—they’re really bright, young guys that work their tail off. We wouldn’t have this class if it wasn’t for them. Really, the credit goes to them. I think they should feel very proud of how this draft fell and [with] the players that we came out with.”
Of course, there’s always one scout who stands out.
“I think it was [Southeast Area Scout] Eugene [Armstrong],” Elway explained with the same wide smile he maintained throughout the presser. “Eugene Armstrong, I think, was the scout of the year. I think we had two or three guys from his area. He had Paxton [Lynch] and [Connor] McGovern. He was scout of the year.”
It’s tough to look for a common trend among eight players from different schools, and different positions with different backgrounds but one thing that kept coming up was strength. Second-round pick Adam Gotsis was rumored to have raised his power clean numbers from 225 to 350 last summer, Connor McGovern told media Saturday his best bench-press was “somewhere close to 500 (pounds),” and he has hit the low-700’s on his squat.
The weight room just kept coming up and Elway admitted there was something to that.
“I think more than the fact that they’re that strong, I think the way you look at it is the mentality that they have and it means that much to them,” told the general manager. “If they’re working that hard in the weight room then you know what kind of guy you’re getting. You can tell a lot about guys and how they react when they’re in the weight room and if we get guys like this who want to be in there, that’s the best mentality.”
They fit their mold and they fit their needs. In the end, Gary Kubiak put it best.
“We’ve got a Super Bowl football team,” he noted with pride. “But yet you look at this draft and I think we’ve got some guys that are going to help our football team immediately. That’s very impressive.”
Impressive on paper, now these guys get their chance to be impressive on the field, rookie mini-camp begins this week.
Gary Kubiak’s favorite saying, “Time to work.”
