K.J. Hamler’s role with Broncos makes a breakout season unlikely

On Friday, the Denver Broncos are expected to take their first selection of the draft in the second round. After missing most of the 2021 season with a torn ACL, 2020 second-round receiver K.J. Hamler has impressed during the offseason, with general manager George Paton saying that Hamler is “well ahead of schedule” in his recovery.

After catching a pass from new Broncos quarterback Russell Wilson in workouts earlier this week, Paton raved about the speedy receiver.

“It’s unbelievable. There’s one time, he ran an out route over there. I just kind of nodded my head saying, ‘Wow!’ It’s just great to see,” Paton said. “We don’t want to rush it too fast. We want to do what’s right for him. It’s about that process, and making sure we don’t push it too hard or we’re pushing it enough. Just making sure we’re doing all the right things to get him out there when he can.”

Wilson also offered encouragement to the 22-year-old wideout.

“To see a guy like K.J. Hamler get healthy and to be working his way into practicing and playing? It’s been really excellent,” Wilson said.

At 5-foot-9 and 180 pounds, it’s easy to imagine Hamler as similar to the Seahawks wideout Tyler Lockett, Wilson’s reliable deep threat for seven seasons. Similar in size to Hamler at 5-foot-10, 180 pounds, Lockett’s speed fit perfectly with Wilson, who’s renowned as the most aggressive deep-ball passer in the NFL. But the former third-round draft pick possesses two things that the Broncos’ former second-rounder doesn’t – great route-running skills and great hands.

“He’s a very explosive, very twitchy, very fast kid — we all know that — but, yet, he couldn’t get out of a break very well,” receivers coach Zach Azzanni told The Athletic’s Nick Kosmider. “So as fast and quick as he was, if he had to run an intermediate route, he could get covered.”

Azzanni saw improvement on that front in the first three games of the 2021 season, before Hamler injured his knee, and those skills can continue to be refined.

As far as Hamler’s ability to reel in catches while streaking downfield go, well, that’s still a work in progress. If he’s to be used as anything but a decoy in Denver’s offense this fall, his focus on catching the ball will have to improve dramatically. Given his remarkable speed, it’s understandable why he might occasionally be caught catching a glance at the field before he’s fully caught the ball, but that habit will have to be eradicated if he’s to become a weapon for Wilson, and a reliable cog in what the Broncos hope will become a scoring machine.

By all reports, Hamler’s seemingly on track for a potential breakout season, but something more difficult to overcome than his injury is likely to hold him back – the depth chart.

Hamler had 30 catches for 381 yards and three touchdowns on 56 targets in his rookie campaign of 2020, and there’s no question that Wilson is an infinitely better passer than Drew Lock, who was sent to the Seahawks in trade that landed Wilson in Denver. Fellow rookie and first-round pick Jerry Jeudy led the way with 52 catches for a team-high 856 yards and three touchdowns on a team-high 113 targets, and Tim Patrick was reliable as ever, leading the team with six touchdown receptions. As the third wide receiver, Hamler could be deployed either outside or in the slot, and was on the field enough to pose a real threat to defenses.

The problem for Hamler? He’s no longer the team’s third wide receiver.

Courtland Sutton’s return to health last season led to a sizeable new contract, and his status as the Broncos top dog isn’t in question. Patrick, thanks to a new deal of his own, is at bare minimum a reliable No. 3 behind Sutton and Jeudy, who’s expected to make a leap forward, as well. That makes Hamler the No. 4 receiver when he’s healthy — and given Wilson’s history, that may mean that he’s not in for all that much work this fall.

Since Lockett came into the league in the 2015 season, Wilson’s offenses haven’t used four wideouts very often. Over the last seven seasons — in which Wilson’s started all but three games (97.4 percent) — here are the average number of targets for each of Wilson’s receiving options.

WR1
Average Targets (2015-21) = 113
High = 132 (Lockett, 2020)

WR2
Average Targets (2015-21) = 92
High = 129 (Metcalf, 2020)

WR3
Average Targets (2015-21) = 54
High = 69 (Lockett, 2017)

WR4
Average Targets (2015-21) = 21
High = 36 (Richardson, 2016)

TE1
Average Targets (2015-21) = 67
High = 98 (Graham, 2017)

TE2
Average Targets (2015-21) = 25
High = 37 (Olsen, 2020)

RB1
Average Targets (2015-21) = 39
High = 47 (Carson, 2019)

RB2
Average Targets (2015-21) = 19
High = 24 (Carson, 2018)

Certainly, Wilson’s approach to offense began to differ with Seahawks coach Pete Carroll over the last two seasons, but the distribution of his passes since the season in which the Broncos won Super Bowl 50 have remained remarkably consistent. On average, his No. 4 wideout usually ranks seventh or eighth in targets over the course of the season — there are simply too many mouths to feed to expect much more than that.

If Hamler reached that average of 21 targets this season, a little more than only one per game, he’d see roughly one-third of what he did in his rookie campaign. If he’s healthy, it’s likely he’ll have more than that; after all, the Broncos don’t even know who their second tight end is at this point, but it’s entirely possible that with the return of Melvin Gordon — Wilson’s one-time teammate at Wisconsin and an excellent receiver out of the backfield — the No. 2 running back position is in line for increased work, as well.

Without injuries, which the Broncos obviously have had enough of from their wide receiver corps, it’ll take a series of spectacular performances in limited opportunities to leap over either Patrick or Jeudy, and even if Hamler managed that, it wouldn’t happen quickly, given that the hope is that he might be ready for the beginning of the regular season.

All of that adds up to one inevitable conclusion. When the Broncos drafted Hamler, they were hoping for at least a knockoff version of then-Chiefs-now-Dolphins speedster Tyreek Hill. They haven’t gotten that yet, and they’re not likely to this season, either. The real question, in fact, is how much they’ll need Hamler at all. It’s time to pump the brakes on the “breakout” talk.

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