How many tight ends will steal snaps from Greg Dulcich in 2023?

You could make the case that Greg Dulcich was the NFL’s top rookie tight end last season. 

The 23-year-old caught 33 passes for 411 yards and 2 touchdowns. Tennessee’s Cigoziem Okonkwo was the only rookie to outgain him.

And Dulcich did it while dealing with a hamstring injury that kept him out of most of the Broncos’ offseason and seven of their games. On a per-game basis, no rookie tight end outgained him. Only nine total tight ends outgained him per game.

While Dulcich appears to be on the path to becoming one of the game’s top seam stretchers, he doesn’t come without flaws. As a blocker, Dulcich leaves plenty to be desired. His technique improved throughout the season but he lacks the strength and base to hold up against defensive ends or linebackers consistently. He’ll continue to add strength as he develops, but expecting him to ever become a notable blocking threat is probably a bad idea.

In the modern NFL, you can almost count the number of tight ends who are good at blocking and produce big numbers in the passing game on one hand. Travis Kelce, George Kittle, Dallas Goedert, Mark Andrews and a couple of others. Even if Dulcich never becomes part of the league’s elite tight ends, he can still be incredible effective. 

But the question as he enters his age-23 season is how and how much will the Broncos use him?

Sean Payton’s first action as head coach was to invest $140 million into the offensive line, a sign that he may be trying to play a ground-and-pound, bully-ball brand of football. After Russell Wilson’s disappointing first season in Denver, that’s probably the Broncos’ best bet. Unless Dulcich made major strides as a blocker this offseason, he isn’t a natural fit. 

The vast majority of running plays go to the strong side—the side the tight end lines up on. Ideally, a tight end in a run-heavy system would be a player you’d be excited to run behind. Coaches can scheme around a poor blocker on the edge with double-teams or by running up the middle or to the weak side, but if you’re unwilling to run behind your tight end—which may not be totally true of Dulcich—then you’re giving the defense an advantage in the ground game.

In a perfect world, you’d love to be excited about running behind your tight end and also be excited about getting him open downfield in the play-action passing game. As noted above, few of those players exist.

The Broncos have two receiving tight ends, Dulcich and Albert Okwuegbunam, and three blocking tight ends, Chris Manhertz, Adam Trautman and Tommy Hudson. All five of these tight ends will be competing for roles, and a couple will be competing for jobs. The first domino to fall will be Dulcich.

If he shows up to camp as a dominant blocker, he’s going to be the tight end on the field whenever there’s a tight end on the field. In the more likely situation that he looks similar to last year, he’ll probably be used similarly to last year.

About 52% of Dulcich’s 2022 snaps came when lined up in the slot or as a boundary wide receiver. The other 48% come as a true, inline tight end. When the Broncos flex Dulcich to the slot, they can make him less important to the running game and give him a little more space to work with in the passing game, hopefully against a favorable matchup.

Last year, the Broncos were without Tim Patrick and Marvin Mims wasn’t yet on the roster, so playing Dulcich in the slot meant taking away reps from Kendall Hinton. This year, putting Dulcich in the slot means taking reps from Patrick or Mims, a tougher pill to swallow. In some ways, Dulcich is competing with the receivers for reps as much as he’s competing with the tight ends.

The Broncos hardly used Dulcich in the backfield, but a creative Sean Payton offense could mean he gets more snaps as an F-back (which is more commonly called an H-back in other offenses.) By moving Dulcich into the backfield he could get a moving start when trying to make a block. By motioning him from the right side to the left, or to various other spots in the backfield, the Broncos could complicate how the defense reads Dulcich; it won’t be as easy as seeing Dulcich lined up on the right and guessing that the Broncos probably aren’t running right.

In short, Dulcich could be used more in the slot because that’s where he’s at his best, or less because the Broncos have so many receivers to get on the field. He may be able to hold onto his inline reps but that’s no guarantee, and growing his inline role probably depends upon him improving as a blocker. He may see more work out of the backfield, as Payton could see that as a way to minimize his flaws while still reaping most of the benefits of keeping Dulcich on the field.

Chris Manhertz is the heavy favorite to play the second-most snaps at tight end. The 31-year-old tight end started 11 games for the Jaguars last year and has started 49 in his career. He couldn’t be more different than Dulcich.

At 6-foot-6 and 255 pounds, Manhertz is one of the most physically imposing players on the Broncos’ roster. He’s a couple dozen pounds from being a prototypical tackle and that’s how he plays. 

The Jaguars ran the ball on 65% of the plays that Manhertz was on the field for. Even on passing plays, Manhertz oftentimes stayed home in protection. During his career, he’s only run a route on 54% of the passing plays he’s been on the field for. The ball was only thrown his way eight times last year, and the average depth of target was 2.6 yards.

His career 2.5 receiving yards per game should be indicative of how he’ll be used in the passing game this season. He played three games with Sean Payton’s Saints and started two of them. The ball was never thrown his direction.

But don’t make the mistake of making Manhertz an afterthought. He’s a talented, productive tight end as a blocker. He hasn’t missed a game in any of the past three seasons and he started two-thirds of them. If Payton runs a heavy offense in Denver like he did in New Orleans—and all indications are that he will—Manhertz will be a part-time starter again with the Broncos.

The Broncos also traded for 26-year-old Adam Trautman late in this year’s draft, and Trautman figures to be the third player in the Broncos’ tight end rotation. Payton drafted Trautman to the Saints in 2020, and the third-rounder had been in New Orleans ever since.

Trautman is the most well-rounded tight end in the group but he isn’t nearly the receiver that Dulcich is or nearly the blocker that Manhertz is. For example, his 1.49 yards per route run last season was the best mark of his career and about three times Manhertz’s career mark. But he only posted 207 receiving yards despite starting 12 games because the team ran more than 60% of the time when he was on the field.

Trautman can be used as neutral option. He might be slightly more likely to block than provide a receiving threat, but not by enough that the defense will get a strong read on the situation. He can block in a wide zone run to his side, and he’s more than capable of catching a pass on a bootleg the other way. That’s a valuable tool for an offense. But putting Trautman on the field will probably mean that the Broncos are taking a more talented player off of it. 

The Broncos’ fourth—and maybe final—option at tight end is Albert Okwuegbunam. A year removed from potential breakout hype, Okwuegbunam is coming off a disappointing performance, contributing just 10 catches for 95 yards and one touchdown.

Okwuegbunam probably has the best straight line speed of the group, and his 40-yard dash suggest he has a significant advantage. He’s a fourth-year, fourth-round pick and he could be ready to turn the corner, but the clock is ticking.

I’m confident he’ll have a role in the offense. The opportunity to line him up next to Dulcich and take advantage of heavy defenses is too tempting. But he’s a big problem as a blocker, and Payton will have a tough time justifying run calls when Okwuegbunam is on the field. The defense can play the pass when they see the 25-year-old out there, and they won’t be punished for guessing wrong.

The key for Okwuegbunam to gain more than minimal playing time is to either significantly improve as a blocker or to grow as a receiver. Despite the physical tools, he has only provided flashes. His .69 yards per route run last year only ranked ahead of Devine Ozigbo, Montrell Washington and Brandon Johnson, out of 22 players who ran a route for the Broncos last season. For what it’s worth, Manhertz posted a 0.46 last season.

Okwuegbunam was put in a tough position last year with an underperforming quarterback, a over-performing rookie at his position and a play caller who didn’t know how to use him and eventually relegated him to the bench. A bounce back season would not come as a major surprise.

The Broncos have two other tight ends on the roster. Tommy Hudson is a 26-year-old who spent his first three seasons with the Titans before signing with the Broncos this summer. He’s a true blocking tight end and will have a tough path to the roster.

Nate Adkins is an undrafted rookie out of South Carolina who can move around the backfield and might be best in a quasi-fullback role. As an undrafted rookie, he’s a long shot to make the team.

As it stands heading into camp, the Broncos have some solid options and plenty of question marks.

On 3rd & 1, Manhertz will be on the field.

On 3rd & 10, Dulcich will be on the field.

But in neutral situations, the Broncos will have plenty of cards in their hand. The situation could be intimidating, but you could make the case that there’s nobody better to figure out how and when to use these tight ends than Sean Payton.