Report: Broncos TE Albert Okwuegbunam Drawing Trade Interest
Many (including yours truly) speculated that Albert Okwuegbunam's healthy-scratch deactivation prior to Monday Night Football meant the third-year tight end is not long for the Mile High City. Others have confirmed such suspicions.
Per ESPN's Jeremy Fowler, the Broncos are "getting calls on their tight end depth," with Okwuegbunam drawing the "most interest" ahead of the Nov. 1 NFL trade deadline. Fowler's hearsay was echoed Thursday by league insider Aaron Wilson.
The 118th pick of the 2020 draft — a holdover from the previous regime — Okwuegbunam has increasingly fallen out of favor with new head coach Nathaniel Hackett. His offensive snaps dwindled from 44 in Week 1 to zero in Week 6, passed on the depth chart by the likes of Eric Saubert, Eric Tomlinson, and Andrew Beck.
The sudden emergence of third-round rookie TE Greg Dulcich, who tallied 44 receiving yards and a touchdown in his Broncos debut, has made Okwuegbunam an expendable asset despite Hackett's insistence to the contrary.
“We need everybody on this team. I wish we can have everybody up," he claimed Tuesday. "Unfortunately, we don’t get every single person up. Dulcich was looking healthy, and we wanted to give him an opportunity. We had to make a decision on that one, and we went with Dulcich.”
A strict pass-catcher who's struggled with consistency, Okwuegbunam has one year remaining on his $3.295 million contract. The Broncos would save $1.905 million total against the cap in 2022 and 2023, and eat $374,522 in dead money, by dealing him elsewhere prior to the deadline.
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