3 surprise Denver Broncos positions to target early in 2023 NFL Draft

2. Tight End

To say that Sean Payton had a less-than-glowing endorsement for the Denver Broncos' offense in 2022 when he watched the film would be an understatement. Payton noted that watching last year's offense was "hard" and he also didn't exactly have a glowing endorsement for second-year tight end Greg Dulcich, one of the Broncos' top picks in the 2022 NFL Draft.

"“We’ll see. We haven’t gone through every player relative to the evaluation process. Some of it was hard—the evaluation. Some of it was hard.”"

- Sean Payton (via Broncos PR)

I mean, you're typically going to get a pretty candid answer on everything from Sean Payton, it seems like, but when you're asking about a young player who was one of your better options in a dismal offensive season last year? This is not what you want to hear the head coach say at all. Now, Payton could be talking about how it was hard to evaluate Greg Dulcich fairly given the horrendous offense and Dulcich's own injuries, but it also seems like he might be dancing around the question a little bit to protect the player in the public eye.

Either way, I wouldn't be shocked to see the tight end position higher on the Denver Broncos' 2023 NFL Draft priority list than many people think.

I recently looked at a mock draft scenario where the best player on the board was South Dakota State's Tucker Kraft. This is a deep crop of tight ends coming out in the Draft and certainly, it's possible that the best player sitting there when the Broncos are on the clock at pick 67 and 68 overall is a tight end.

Although a lot of people assume the group of Greg Dulcich, Albert Okwuegbunam, and Chris Manhertz is going to do just fine, I think the Broncos might be looking for a more complete option at this position, and this is a spot where Sean Payton has historically been willing to invest pretty heavily.