What does an improved Troy Franklin mean for Denver?
By Adam Uribes
· Opinion
·
· 1 min read
"See that scoring catching that ended the 1st half on Saturday? That was a big boy, NFL catch that Franklin didn’t make last year."
Watching training camp last season and looking for number 16 to make a play meant being patient was necessary. It got so bad for the former 4th round pick that whispers of “showcase game” were being thrown around in the media-sphere here in Denver, and if that justified him making the 53-man roster last year, with any real impact being hard to land on. With the Broncos trading away THREE total picks to acquire the wideout, the move was open to criticism early on.
Franklin did end up coming on toward the end of the season, even catching the lone touchdown Denver would score in the loss to Buffalo back in January. Still, with Cortland Sutton back in the fold, Sean Payton looking to get Marvin Mims more touches, including premium dollars being shelled out for Evan Engram, there is the chance that any of the other wideouts, including Franklin, could be left out in the cold.
But after an offseason that saw Franklin get noticeably bigger without losing any of his 4.4 speed, he is starting to show up on the field. Of all the wideouts in camp so far, Franklin is easily one of the standouts. Daily reports of Franklin making house-call catches give the Broncos an interesting dilemma: how can Denver best utilize Troy Franklin?
Franklin doesn’t have quite the versatility that Mims has; he hasn’t lined up in the backfield, but Franklin is deft enough to make bubble screens interesting and even scored on a couple last year. It also looks like the wideout packed on the requisite size to hold up to the physicality of the NFL that he didn’t have last year. See that scoring catching that ended the 1st half on Saturday? That was a big boy, NFL catch that Franklin didn’t make last year.
This is still a passing-driving league, and you are more likely to see teams going three receiver sets versus lining up under center anymore. That means you need three wideouts to run those concepts, and Franklin would be a captivating addition to starters Sutton and Mims. Turn games into track meets and let defenses pick their poison of defending Mims and Franklin running deep or focus on Engram, Sutton, and Vele to tear up the defense’s underneath. A physically and mentally more mature Troy Franklin makes the offense better and takes it from an improving, but young, group to a unit that can be one of the league's best this year.
Franklin posted on his Instagram, boasting that the current group of Broncos receivers was “weapons of mass destruction”. Cheesy? Maybe. But for a team that has been more water pistol than WMD, any Broncos fan can appreciate an offense that has the potential to be in the top half of the league going into 2025. From Sutton and his circus catches, to Mims and Franklin running go-routes all day, and Engram ripping off chunks of yardage underneath, getting a score from anywhere on the field in a variety of ways will make this group actually dangerous.
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