The Denver Broncos and head coach Gary Kubiak are not talking about Ryan Clady in the past tense, but is the writing on the wall?
Denver Broncos head coach Gary Kubiak spent plenty of time addressing the media at the NFL owner’s meetings this week, and despite the cap implications he is currently having, the Broncos expect offensive tackle Ryan Clady at offseason activities and aren’t currently talking about him in the past tense…
“I would say right now we have a lot of versatility. That’s a good thing. Getting Stephenson, getting Okung— Ryan is still ours. Ryan is on our football team. Nobody mentions that. That’s still a possibility. You’ve got Ty and he’s got the ability to play inside or outside. Michael has a lot of experience now that he’s played a season for us. The good news is we went from being very thin to having some depth on that phase of our football team. It’s going to be very competitive and it probably wasn’t last year just by nature of injury and some of the things that happened. We felt like that was the No. 1 area where we needed to improve and John has given us a chance to do that.”
It’s clear at this point that the Broncos aren’t going to be moving forward with Clady in the plans on the starting offensive line, but his value in a trade is nothing if they talk about him like he’s already gone. Kubiak is doing his best to make it seem like Clady is still in the team’s plans.
“He’s part of our team. Our plan is to put Ryan back to work. We’ve obviously gotten better up front with some of our additions. We’ll see. The biggest thing for Ryan is getting healthy, getting back and ready to go.”
It’ll be interesting to see if Clady shows up to offseason activities, that is, assuming he’s still on the roster. the Broncos have an opportunity at additional draft capital with Clady still on the roster and available for trade. For a young left tackle, even coming off of a couple of major injuries, there should be at least some kind of market for the Broncos to get something decent, even though they don’t appear to have much leverage.