Devaughn Vele is flourishing; it’s time for the NFL to say ‘hello’ to him

Devaughn Vele has been the subject of comparisons from the moment he arrived as a seventh-round draft pick earlier this year.

First, there was Tim Patrick, the Broncos stalwart who became a productive starter before a torn ACL and a subsequent Achilles tendon sent his career on a sad detour into two seasons of rehab before he became a roster casualty when the Broncos trimmed their roster to 53 players after the preseason.

Broncos coach Sean Payton wasted no time laying out the Vele-Patrick comparison, doing so the day he was drafted. But then this week, he brought another name — that of the most productive receiver Payton has ever coached: former New Orleans Saints standout Marques Colston.

Colston, like Vele, was a seventh-round pick. He came aboard in 2006, Payton’s first season. By the end of his career, he had Saints records for receptions, receiving yardage, touchdown catches.

“He reminds me a lot of Marques Colston who I had in New Orleans for 10 or 11 years,” Payton said.>”And you know, just in our staff meeting [Monday morning] I said, ‘We gotta continue to find touches for him.'”

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There’s another layer to the Colston comparison, too. Vele has 361 receiving yards so far this season. That is already the most for any seventh-round rookie wide receiver since 2006.

The last Round 7 rookie wide receiver with that many yards? Colston.

58

That is the number of catches that Devaughn Vele would be on pace to have over a 17-game schedule based on his work since returning to the game-day roster after being inactive for four weeks earlier this season.

This is significant because the player to whom he has often been compared — Patrick — had a pro-rated average of 57 catches per 17 games during his two seasons (2020 and 2021) as a full-time Broncos starter.

Part of the calculus in releasing Patrick at the roster deadline was a hope that Vele could reach that level of production in time — perhaps by 2025 — with repetitions and the growth to come from them.

Turns out that he’s already there.

17

Consecutive seasons in which the Broncos have made the postseason when having a point differential of better than 5.0 points per game after 12 contests in a season.

With a plus-62 margin, the Broncos are at plus-5.2 points per game so far this season.

The only time the Broncos did not qualify for the postseason with a point differential at this level after 12 games was in 1976, when the regular season lasted just 14 games and only eight teams made the playoffs. (Had even 12 teams made the postseason in those days, the Broncos would have qualified as a wild-card entrant as the AFC’s No. 6 seed.)

2

That’s the number of rookie quarterbacks since at least the AFL-NFL merger in 1970 who have thrown at least 15 touchdown passes and 2 or fewer interceptions over a 10-game span.

Bo Nix became the second to accomplish this feat. The first was Dallas’ Dak Prescott in 2016.