Denver Broncos desperately need WR DeAndre Hopkins
Arizona Cardinals wide receiver DeAndre Hopkins will be traded this offseason, and the Denver Broncos desperately need to acquire him. The veteran wide receiver will surely be hugely in demand, and George Paton has said that he’d be in on every deal, so a future Hopkins trade should be entertained.
Given the team’s current situation, who they are trying to hire as the head coach, and the perhaps shortened timeline with Russell Wilson, the Denver Broncos need to be as aggressive as possible to put together the most competitive team possible.
The team appears extremely interested in both Jim Harbaugh and Sean Payton. If the Broncos were to hire one of them, the already fast-ticking clock would tick even faster. Just think, if the team makes a huge hire like this, why wait around?
The team isn’t in a rebuilding phase nor are they a ways away from being good like some misinformed people in the fanbase think.
Being aggressive includes everything from making a splash hire to investing heavily into immediate impact players in free agency, and perhaps making trades.
This is where DeAndre Hopkins comes into play.
He was a rookie back in 2013 when he put up 802 receiving yards and two touchdowns. From 2014-2020, Hopkins only had one year under 1,000 yards, and that was in 2016, when he had 954 yards.
His career-high yardage total came in 2018, when he had 1,572 yards and 11 touchdown catches. Since arriving in Arizona in 2020, his production has remained the same. His 78.2 yards per game in Houston is nearly identical to the 77.0 yards per game mark in Arizona.
He also catches .6 more passes per game as a Cardinal than he did as a Texan. Overall, through 10 seasons, DeAndre Hopkins has 853 receptions, 11,298 yards, and 71 touchdowns. During his time in Houston, Hopkins missed just two games.
He has missed six games in 2021 and eight games this year, as he did serve a suspension to begin 2022. However, his production has not fallen off as he remains an elite target.
The Broncos have two good receivers that are healthy right now in Courtland Sutton and Jerry Jeudy. Jeudy has come on quite a bit in year three and is clearly the WR1 of this team. Sutton seems to have lost a bit of the big-play pizazz he carried with him early in his career.
He also seemed to struggle with drops a bit as well. Honestly, since returning from the torn ACL he suffered in 2020, I’m not sure the 2019 Courtland Sutton exists anymore, unfortunately.
I do think Sutton being packaged in some type of deal for DeAndre Hopkins makes sense. Given that Hopkins has shown the ability to stay on the field over his career, it would be a smart deal to make.
We’ve seen all of Sutton, Jeudy, Tim Patrick, and KJ Hamler miss significant time with their own share of injuries. Getting a talented player in the building like Hopkins and pairing him with Jeudy and Patrick would surely worry opposing defenses.
The Denver Broncos offense needs to display more consistency going forward, and adding a Hall of Fame receiver like DeAndre Hopkins makes a ton of sense.