INDIANAPOLIS — Has Broncos coach Sean Payton ever been described as “nonchalant”?
If he hadn’t before, he has now.
Because that was a word that Nebraska running back Emmett Johnson used to describe the Broncos head coach after meeting with Denver team officials for a formal interview at the NFL Scouting Combine here this week.
“Coach Payton, man, he’s a great guy. Really nonchalant guy,” Johnson said. “And I learned a lot just in a short amount of time.”
Johnson, Washington running back Jonah Coleman and Notre Dame running back Jadarian Price were among the players who sat down in a suite at Lucas Oil Stadium with Broncos officials.
Those conversations take on a slightly greater meaning with running back being a “must” for the team heading into the new league year.
Friday, the club chose to allow fourth-year runner Jaleel McLaughlin to become an unrestricted free agent despite having the ability to issue him a $3.55 million restricted free-agent tender.
That amount would have had him making nearly $1 million more than J.K. Dobbins did last year, and none of it would have been been guaranteed, making him a cut candidate from the word “go” had he signed an RFA tender.
So, with McLaughlin and J.K. Dobbins now both unrestricted free agents, only RJ Harvey and Tyler Badie are under team control. The team remains high on Harvey’s potential, and while Badie can easily be brought back as an exclusive-rights free agent, that tender would not be guaranteed.
In other words, the notion of a complete reset at running back beyond Harvey is within the realm of possibility.
PASS PROTECTION WAS A POINT OF EMPHASIS IN THE BRONCOS’ FORMAL INTERVIEWS
Price felt he made it through the interview well. The Broncos are known for being a team that throws some curveballs at the players with whom they speak, trying to get a sense for their mental makeup.
“Just the questions they asked and the answers I followed up with, I thought I did pretty well, and I think they like me,” Price said.
Both Coleman and Johnson noted that Broncos brass focused on blocking during their 15-minute interviews.
“I was able to explain different things like pass protection, running the ball. And I think I like the fact that they were quizzing me with questions that I already knew answers to,” Johnson said.
Coleman felt he aced the test.
“We just talked about pass protection, and I killed it,” said Coleman, who started his college career at Arizona before transferring to Washington. “I was pretty much answering the questions before they would ask me.
“So, I went in the room and they pretty much broke everything down, like, this is how we teach our pass protection, and we got certain calls. If it’s a double mug with the safety off the edge, they just taught me, what their call would be to that, and just ran through some of my tape and asked me to call out the runs that I was running. And I was able to do that because they run a similar offense. And, yeah, pretty much reciting everything that they taught me.
“It was easy.”
The only problem is this: This examination doesn’t come with a grade. But if the Broncos select any of the trio, you’ll have an idea.