Paton said the team evaluated a list of players on Wednesday that they would consider trading up for, and both have shown the ability to find key contributors when moving back.
“You just want to have flexibility,” Paton said. “You want to have an open mind. We talked last night about potential target players that we would go get. You just never want to be closed-minded. We’ve traded up where I’ve been, and we’ve traded back a lot. It just kind of depends on what’s behind you, as well. Last year, we felt we could trade back five or six picks and still get [tight end Greg] Dulcich, based on the teams behind us. You do a lot of these exercises, and we’ll continue to do them. We’ve done them the last two weeks. There are not a lot of surprises because we’ll talk through every scenario. We’re both open-minded to move up and move back. It just kind of depends on where it is.”
No matter where the team picks, their chief goal will be to find contributors — no matter when that contribution arrives.
“We have a clear vision for where these players are [in their] first year, second year, third year and throughout their career,” Paton said. “We discuss that. Every time we read an evaluation on a player, and we discuss that. Now, it is very hard to get an impact player in the third round, but we’ll have an idea how he fits with our team [in his] first year, second year, third year — [as a] potential starter, marginal starter, solid starter, maybe a special teams player in Year 1 and eventual starter in Year 2. We have classifications for each player we evaluate no matter what the round is.”
As Payton explained, the Broncos don’t want to pass up on a player simply because he may take more time to develop.
The Broncos may have that luxury — and the choice to take the best player regardless of position — because of the holes they filled during free agency.
“That’s the significance of the free agency process,” Payton said of the importance of filling needs in free agency….
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