On a cloudy day in Broncos Country, the silver lining won the day by simply walking away on his own two feet.
“He’s doing well. He’s feeling good,” Broncos coach Sean Payton said of rookie wide receiver Marvin Mims Jr., who returned to the practice field Monday after a hamstring issue.
“You are going to see him more and more this week. He’s going to be ramping up. We’re encouraged.”
The rest of the forecast? Hide your eyes. The Broncos’ wide receivers room doesn’t need a coach right now. It needs an exorcist.
Speedster KJ Hamler revealed he’s battling pericarditis, a condition that involves swelling or irritation of the lining around the heart, which is awful enough. And yet that somehow wasn’t the worst of it.
On the first day of contact at Broncos training camp, the most crushing blow of the day came high from light wind and low from a patch of slippery grass.
You can’t make this stuff up. Veteran wideout Tim Patrick appeared to slip during 7-on-7 drills while trying to plant. Left Achilles tear, sources tell The Post’s Parker Gabriel. On Aug. 2, 2022, a year ago Wednesday, Big 81 went for a pass down the sideline and blew his right anterior cruciate ligament in the process.
Patrick is a class act, win or lose, the sort of undrafted-player-makes-good tale you root for, the kind of professional adored by teammates and respected by cynical reporters alike. The football gods got this one wrong.
But whenever the NFL ecosystem closes a window, it inevitably opens a door, too. You just hope Mims, a 5-foot-11 quick-twitch type and second-round pick out of Oklahoma, has the wheels to run through it.
Patrick’s return for 2023 was supposed to make Mims a luxury item. Now?
Now the kid might become a necessity.
Payton’s not scared to push a special rookie, if that rookie’s Michael Thomas, Brandin Cooks or Willie Snead. In a perfect world, Mims could ease his way onto the field while ramping up to the game’s speed and physicality gradually. He could be teased in different slots and scenarios because Patrick could be trusted to handle the dirty work, the grunt stuff, down low. The quick hitches. The sideline outs. The red-zone acrobatics.
Five weeks to showtime, the Broncos are missing a burner in Hamler and a “hands” guy in Patrick. A reported 4.38-second time in the 40-yard dash at the NFL Scouting Combine earlier this year gives you hope for Mims on the speed front, at least.
But where Big Russ needs the most help going forward is probably on third downs and short fields, when the Broncos’ offense last fall ran the gamut from completely pathetic to darkly comic.
Patrick’s strengths were situational, not cumulative. He’s looked more steady than spectacular since he worked his way onto the depth chart, but the steady has been very, very steady. His drop percentages, per Pro-Football-Reference:
2020: 0.0% on 79 targets
2021: 3.5% on 85 targets
Courtland Sutton’s drop percentages, same source:
2021: 3.1% on 98 targets
2022: 8.3% on 109 targets
Jerry Jeudy’s drop rate:
2021: 1.5% on 56 targets
2022: 5.0% on 100 targets
And yeah, ex-Saint Marquez Callaway ticks some boxes. He knows Payton. He knows the system. He brings decent size (6-2, 204) to the table.
As for Callaway’s hands? Well …
2021: 4.8% drop rate on 84 targets
2022: 9.4% on 32 targets
And there’s the rub. Stranger things have happened, but it’s hard to picture Julio Jones or Jarvis Landry getting off the couch to sweat it out at Dove Valley before the end of August. Jeudy’s on the cusp of stardom. Sutton’s on the cusp of being labeled as the most overpaid wideout in the league. Big Russ needs a safety blanket. Payton needs a hero.
Broncos Country needs one, too.
Is that fair to Mims in the big picture? Heck, no. Then again, NFL karma has never had much time for “fair” once the pads come out. Just ask Patrick.
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