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It’s time to roll the dice: What can we expect from the Broncos on Day 3?

Andrew Mason

April 25, 2020

DENVER — Now is when you take some chances.

And usually those risks fall into one of a handful of categories.

The player with great film but subpar measurables.
The athletic unicorn whose on-field play doesn’t come close to his Combine or Pro Day numbers.
The prospect who has great tools, but has not figured out how to put them all together because of a lack of experience or other factors.
The undersized prospect who plays bigger than his stature.
The Division II/III or NAIA prospect who has scant experience against big-time opposition.
The all-star practice standout who made everyone take a second look at his film.
The player whose wait lengthened because of injury concerns.

It’s time to roll the dice.

Most of the players selected Saturday can fit into one of those aforementioned boxes. In the early 2010s, John Elway’s Broncos hit on a bunch of these types of players.

To wit:

TE Julius Thomas, Round 4, 2011: With little college experience and a strong performance in East-West Shrine Game practice, the converted basketball player fell into Categories 3 and 6.
DL Malik Jackson, Round 5, 2012: A classic example of a Category 3 player. The Broncos were patient with him, and it paid off; by the second half of his third season, he was a dominant interior pass rusher.
LB Danny Trevathan, Round 6, 2012: The laboratory specimen of a Category 1 Day 3 prospect. The film of him at Kentucky showed a player who was everywhere. His workout numbers didn’t mesh. The Broncos trusted the tape and found a linchpin of their Super Bowl-winning defense.
C Matt Paradis, Round 6, 2014: There is some crossover between Categories 1 and 4, and Paradis is prime example of this. Outstanding football I.Q. and technical prowess made him into one of the NFL’s best centers before hip injuries caught up with him.

Category 2 players have largely been ones the Broncos avoided, but in 2013, the Broncos used a sixth-round pick on Virginia Tech’s Vinston Painter, who had a superlative across-the-board Combine workout. He never played a regular-season snap for the Broncos.

But one category that has bitten the Broncos on Day 3 the last decade has been Category 7 — players with injury red flags. Although the success of Terrell Davis in 1995 remains enough to justify such gambles now and forever, the Broncos’ recent luck with players like this has been rotten, particularly with 2013 fifth-round edge rusher Quanterus Smith and 2017 fifth-round tight end Jake Butt, who was selected one pick before an All-Pro at the same position (San Francisco’s George Kittle).

There is just one category that has not been represented on Day 3 of the draft since Elway rejoined the Broncos:

Category 5, the lower-division stud.

Just two of the 75 players drafted by the Broncos in the Elway era through Friday did not come from FBS, and both were taken in the 2017 draft the team would rather forget: CB Brendan Langley (Lamar) and RB De’Angelo Henderson (Coastal Carolina, which did not join the FBS Sun Belt conference until the following season). But FCS is still Division I.

The last player outside of Division I (FBS or FCS) drafted by the Broncos was taken in 2006: guard Chris Kuper of North Dakota. UND left Division II for Division I after the 2007 campaign; by then, Kuper was already established as a starter and was en route to a career that would place him on the Broncos top 100 team last year.

Before Kuper, the last non-Division I player drafted by the Broncos was linebacker John Mobley from Kutztown (Pa.) in 1996. Before him, it was defensive lineman Keith Traylor from Central Oklahoma in 1991; he played 17 seasons and started in the Broncos’ two Super Bowl wins in the 1990s.

And a year earlier, the Broncos took a then-wide receiver from Division II Savannah State in the seventh round. That player converted to tight end early in his career, launching him on a Hall of Fame trajectory. That player, of course, is Shannon Sharpe.

And of course, the franchise’s most productive wide receiver was an undrafted Division II prospect: Rod Smith of Missouri Southern.

So the question isn’t why should the Broncos take a prospect like offensive tackles Ben Bartch of Division III St. John’s of Minnesota or Alex Taylor, a South Carolina State product who played basketball at Appalachian State before transferring.

The question is … why shouldn’t they?

DAY 3 BEST AVAILABLE

(Mase’s rankings in parentheses)