It seems almost everybody is in agreement on one thing—Virgil Green has been underutilized as a pass catcher during his five-year career with the Denver Broncos.
Green, when used in the air attack, has been effective. The Nevada product has averaged more than 10 yards per reception in his career but has never caught more than 15 balls. Last season, when he reached that career high of 15 catches, he also set a career-high in yards per catch at 14.4.
The chatter to get him the ball more seems to come up every year and every year Virgil Green feels the same way.
“Every year I come in thinking I can be the guy. I always feel like I can do things in the pass game,” he told media on Monday. “My specialty is being a physical guy up front in the run game and the pass protection game. I always come in thinking that I can be the guy in the pass game.”
In his time with the Broncos, Green has shared time on the field with proven TEs such as Julius Thomas, Owen Daniels and Jacob Tamme, to name a few, but with the most recent starter no longer with the team, the door is open for Green to be ‘the guy’ like he said.
“With O.D. (Owen Daniels) being gone, like you said, there is a better chance,” he told. “I really want to, in training camp, show that I can be not just the pass guy, but just the every-down tight end guy.”
In his sixth year, the 6-foot-3, 250-pounder will be competing with a fellow veteran in Garrett Graham, who compares nicely with Owen Daniels—even saying Daniels taught him “practically everything I know,” while the two were at Wisconsin and the Houston Texans together—and second-year unknown, Jeff Heuerman.
With the new crop of tight ends, there is also a new crop of quarterbacks and Green has already been getting in the good graces of projected Week 1 starter, Mark Sanchez, calling the chemistry “great” between the two of them.
“He watched [me] on film last and said some good things about the way I was moving, which I enjoyed to hear,” the tight end said with a smile. “I think the tight ends will see the ball more. . . I think the tight ends will have a great opportunity to get the ball.”
New quarterbacks, new tight ends, a new offensive line, it all makes for some question marks about the Denver ‘O’ but, for Green, it also makes for a clean slate.
“You get a chance to just start over, hit the reset button and just learn the more detailed things we need to do to be a more fluid offense,” he explained. “I think I could be real beneficial to this scheme, especially since we have younger quarterbacks that can get out on the edge. ”
For years now, folks have wondered why he hasn’t been more involved but with nobody solidified in from of him in 2016, it seems Virgil has nothing but a green light.
