Broncos bringing back Tim Patrick makes sense for all parties
Mar 8, 2024, 10:47 AM
Tim Patrick was never coming back on his previous contract terms.
In a time of Broncos roster uncertainty, that might have been the biggest sure thing in the team’s work to cobble together a roster. Not with a 2024 cap figure of $15,571,668 from which the Broncos could easily excise $9.5 million by cutting the seventh-year wide receiver.
It was simply a question of whether the Broncos would release him or re-work the final year of his deal. Patrick’s entire 2024 base salary of $9.5 million was not guaranteed.
So, the Broncos will cut into that potential $9.5 million of savings by the eventual terms of Patrick’s one-year deal, an agreement first reported by KUSA Ch. 9’s Mike Klis.
But it will come with a guarantee that will likely be more than he would have fetched on the open market, given that he’s missed the last two seasons with a torn ACL and then a ruptured Achilles tendon.
Thus, there’s a mutual benefit. Tim Patrick gets a chance to re-establish himself. The Broncos get to keep a team leader and a player whose work ethic and diligence has been long admired.
HOW TIM PATRICK SHOULD FIT INTO THE BRONCOS PLANS
There is little question that when healthy, Tim Patrick is one of the game’s steadiest and most dependable wide receivers.
With boundless work catching extra passes before and after practice, Patrick transformed himself from an inconsistent presence in his first two years into a pass-catcher who at one point went 33 games without a drop, according to SportRadar.com.
Patrick dropped five of the first 32 on-target passes thrown his way as a Bronco. He’s dropped three of 107 since — although all three came in his last four games of the 2021 season, his last previous game action.
But “when healthy” is the unfortunate caveat for the 30-year-old Utah alumnus, thanks to back-to-back season-ending injuries that caused him to miss the entire Russell Wilson era.
On the one hand, Patrick is fresh. He hasn’t taken a game-time hit since Sean Payton was still the New Orleans Saints’ head coach. But on the other, the Broncos will likely have to be careful with him early.
The injury history means the Broncos must build a viable starting-receiver corps that does not include him. But if he remains available, he gives the Broncos a steady, move-the-chains presence they lacked the last two years.
