FanPost

Green's Gotta Go: Either Down, or Out

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This is an opinion piece- feel free to disagree!

Sometimes it's prudent and even necessary to step back and re-evaluate a player in your head. We tend to pick up ideas about our team's guys and run with them for several years at a time. Usually that's just fine. Sometimes, though, the dude in the jersey stops matching the guy in your head somewhere along the way. When that happens, we need to look again and see the guy for what he is now.

Unfortunately, such is the case for Virgil Green.

I don't have anything against VG, just to be clear. I've pulled for him as hard as anyone over the last five or six years, and he's been among my favorite Broncos. Last offseason I began to get concerned about the breakout never quite happening, but I was convinced that 2016 was going to be Green's year. I tried to hold onto that faith, guys... but now? It's time to re-evaluate.

Virgil Green's 2011-2015

Green has been a fan favorite here at MHR for years. Overshadowed by Julius Thomas in 2013 and 2014, the 2011 7th round pick still managed to build up a mythos that is rooted in a couple of nice catches in his early years and the hope for an eventual breakout based on those flashes of potential. When the Broncos' relationship with JT began to deteriorate and fans became disillusioned with the talented tight end for decisions that many fans deemed selfish, Green was held up as the Next Big Thing at tight end. All Green needed was a shot, we said, and he'd run away with it. We just knew we had a high-end, starting TE just waiting to be unleashed.

So JT departed for sunny Florida, the 2015 season rolled around, and... nothing. Well, not actually nothing. Green had a "career year": 12 catches for 173 yards and a TD. But boy, that sure felt hollow beside Thomas's 43 catches for 489 yards and 12 TDs from a year before. On the other hand, many correctly pointed out that Green had gotten stuck playing second fiddle again: Kubiak brought in Owen Daniels, who ended the year with 51 receptions for 578 yards and 5 TDs, including some playoffs magic. Another fair point was that the offensive line was not good and needed our best blocking tight end's help protecting the aging, ailing Peyton Manning.

The 2016 Season

So 2016 rolls around. Manning has retired, and Daniels is gone. Green is finally the undisputed top dog at tight end. This is the moment! Carpe football!

Or not.

Green had himself another "career year", but... look: 22 catches for 237 yards and 1 TD? Career year is not a phrase anyone should want to see associated with numbers like that. Especially not for a guy who's spent more than half a decade in the NFL.

But the offensive line was absolutely terrible! He had to stay in to block! And the quarterbacks were young and inexperienced! It hurt everyone's production!

While both of those points are absolutely true, I'm sorry. Those excuses just don't hold enough water. The Broncos needed more from their #1 Tight End. A lot more. We needed a game changer, a threat over the middle, a safety blanket to rely on, a disruptive coverage mismatch against opposing linebackers and safeties; and most of all we needed a dangerous red zone threat. Unfortunately, we got none of that.

Was it the need to keep Green in to block? Undoubtedly he's our best blocking tight end. So shouldn't that explain it?

No, it wasn't that. Even in Kubiak's relatively TE-friendly scheme, Virgil only played 45% of the offensive snaps. He was on the bench half the time the offense was out there! We needed a guy who was so versatile and useful that he saw 80%+ of the snaps like Demaryius Thomas and Emmanuel Sanders did, not another role-player who only managed 12 more snaps for the whole season than Jordan "Turnovers" Norwood. So no, blocking duties go less than halfway to justifying Green's lack of production.

The same goes for the quarterbacks angle. A good receiving TE should be a safety blanket for his quarterback. But we saw little of that on the field from Green. And we saw it just as often from Derby and Heuerman as we did from Green. For instance, they played a combined 38% of snaps to his 45% and managed 14 first downs on 25 catches to his 13 first downs on 22 catches. Result: a negligible 3% difference on first down rate. Green is a veteran, but he doesn't actually bring anything special as a safety blanket for these young QBs.

Green has faced challenges year after year, and it hasn't been all that fair to him. But this is the NFL, folks. It isn't going to be easy- for anyone. And if Green was going to become the player we've all hoped he would, he should have overcome some of those challenges. He should have broken out at some point. He should have beaten out Daniels, or stepped up in 2016. But he didn't.

  • Six years as a Denver Bronco
  • 84 games on the active roster
  • 616 yards gained
  • 3 TDs scored
  • A cap hit of $3,300,000
  • Dead money of just $500,000

In the end, for Virgil Green it boils down to that. He has/had potential, but that potential has never been realized. And by now that dream is getting old and brittle. Despite our dreams for Green over the years, the Broncos do not currently have a true #1 Tight End. Not in Green, at least.

What Should the Broncos Do?

This spring we're going to enjoy one of the best Tight End draft classes in recent memory. It's not unlikely that six to eight teams could walk away from the draft with new starters at tight end this year. Frankly, folks, the Broncos need to be one of them. After six years with Green and multiple cheap, young players set to compete for the role in 2017, it should be settled: the window is closed, the opportunity gone. Virgil Green isn't the future at tight end in Denver.

There are two routes the Broncos should consider:

1) Cut Green. Let him search for greener pastures with our thanks and best wishes. Use the $2.8 million in cap savings to help bring in free agents in the trenches. Then draft a new TE in the first 3 rounds and use another late round pick or undrafted signing on a blocking TE like Scott Orndoff or Michael Roberts. Coach that kid up to help the line block and let him do it for 1/6th the price of Green.

2) Demote Green. Keep him on the roster, but as the #2 or preferably #3 TE. Draft a TE in the first 3 rounds anyway, but probably don't bother with adding a late pick too. Let the young guys compete for the pass-catching roles and grow into their potential as the future of the position. And keep the old hand around to mentor them and help the line block. Then thank him at the end of the season and cross your fingers in hopes of a 6th or 7th round compensatory pick when he signs somewhere else.

What do you think?

This is a Fan-Created Comment on MileHighReport.com. The opinion here is not necessarily shared by the editorial staff of MHR.