Broncos Roster 2017: Offensive lineman Ty Sambrailo

Name: Ty Sambrailo
Position: OT
Height: 6’5" Weight: 315 lbs
Age: 25 Experience: 3rd
College: Colorado State

If you felt your blood pressure rise a little at the sight of that name, that’s ok. Paxton Lynch, Trevor Siemian, and Peyton Manning do to.

Since being drafted in the 2nd round of the 2015 draft, Sambrailo has struggled to stay on the field, and that hasn’t necessarily been a bad thing because when he has played, the results have been horrific.

Sambrailo started three games at left tackle as a rookie before tearing his labrum in his shoulder and being placed on injured reserve. The hope was that he could get healthy and improve this past off season into a starting role, but he injured his elbow and essentially missed all of training camp.

He saw action in ten games, starting four of them at right tackle.

The Good

Sambrailo is extremely athletic and showed good movement skills in the run game in 2015 when healthy.

BSNDenver.com did an interesting film breakdown of Sambrailo a few weeks ago and saw some promising things from his 2015 tape as well. Here’s what they had to say: “The 2015 tape for Sambrailo was encouraging, more so than I remembered and more so than I ever expected”.

They mention his athleticism as well and also call out his quick feet in pass protection.

Additionally, it’s been reported that Sambrailo has put on about 15 lbs of muscle this off-season which is good news. This will be his first full off-season so hopefully he is taking advantage of it, and improving.

The Bad

I don’t want this to turn into an absolute roast piece, so I’ll be brief. Sambrailo should not have been on the field last year. His play was absolutely terrible and nearly got our two QBs killed on multiple occasions. He was completely responsible for Vic Beasely’s “breakout game” against Denver in Week 5 of last year.

He has ranked in the bottom 10 of all offensive tackles each year by Pro Football Focus, and made it into their “10 worst performers of the week” column every week he started.

The only silver lining about his play is that he was hurt and probably should have never been put in that situation from the coaching staff. It was clear that he had zero strength in his arm and lacked punch in pass protection.

Quotable

Head Coach, Vance Joseph likes what he is seeing so far from Sambrailo this off season when asked about him. “He’s looked athletic this offseason. He’s getting his strength back. He was with the first team today as a left tackle, so he’s doing fine. He’s coming along great.” At another presser, Joseph said that Sambrailo “has played well”.

“A lot of people think we don’t have a left tackle on our team,” said Elway. “We have a left tackle on our team. Ty Sambrailo played left tackle for us two years ago and was playing very well, but hasn’t been able to stay healthy.

- John Elway

Status

Sambrailo will likely make the roster due to the fact that he plays a premium position and is versatile. This is going to be a telling year to see if he can overcome all the injuries and poor play, and learn how to actually play tackle at the NFL level.

Unfortunately for Denver, the left tackle job is between he or Garett Bolles right now (I’m intentionally leaving Stephenson out). If Sambrailo is able to make some strides in training camp, he could surpass the rookie and end up being the starting left tackle for Denver in 2017.