There’s no shortage of Broncos news these days as the team added free agent defensive lineman Christian Covington after the 2020 NFL Draft.
There has been no shortage of Denver Broncos news over the past couple of months with NFL free agency, the 2020 NFL Draft, and so many different roster moves happening all over the place.
Just three days after finalizing their 2020 draft class, the Broncos made yet another roster move, signing free agent defensive lineman Christian Covington to a one-year contract.
The move was first reported by Adam Caplan and then made official by the Broncos.
https://twitter.com/Broncos/status/1255186773170196480
This is a fun move for the Broncos, and one that I had suggested a month ago. Covington was a player on the rise in his final season with the Houston Texans (2018) before he signed a one-year deal with the Dallas Cowboys in 2019.
He actually ended up starting more games for the Cowboys (6) than he did for the Houston Texans in either of the two previous seasons, but he was starting to rack up a nice amount of sacks and QB hits as a rotational player for the Texans.
For Covington, 7.5 of his 8.5 career sacks came when he was playing for the Houston Texans (2015-18) and his sack and pass rush numbers diminished in Dallas but he set a career-high last season with 28 tackles.
The Broncos brought in Houston assistant John Pagano on the defensive side of the ball, so there’s a connection there with Covington, but Covington is also reuniting with his college teammate (at Rice) Bryce Callahan as well as a number of former Houston teammates.
Christian Covington @thetangibleC4 on signing 1-yr deal w/ @broncos: 'It’s awesome, grateful and blessed to continue my career in Denver. I'm really excited to join this defense. It's a lot of reunions: K-Jack, A.J. Bouye, Bryce Callahan' @PlexAthlete @itsdannyarnold
— Aaron Wilson (@AaronWilson_NFL) April 28, 2020
Covington offers some nice upside as a rotational player for the Broncos, who already have a pretty deep and interesting group of defensive linemen led by Jurrell Casey, Shelby Harris, Mike Purcell, and Dre’Mont Jones. Behind those guys are DeMarcus Walker, rookie McTelvin Agim, and fellow free agent signing and another former Houston player Joel Heath.
As crazy as this sounds, everyone on that list besides Casey, Jones, and Agim is one a one-year deal or the final year of their deal. The Broncos are essentially auditioning for the 2021 season to find out if these guys will get multi-year deals in the future or if the Broncos will need to re-shuffle the deck in 2021.