Does the former UDFA have a shot at making the roster with an influx of talent relative to last season?
MHR’s own Scotty Payne did a great review of the Bronco TE room earlier this week. In it he said that Krull is out of chances to show his potential in real games and not just in training camp.
Krull played 299 offensive snaps for the Broncos in 2024 and 133 special team snaps. He was targeted 23 times and made 19 catches for 152. Seven of his catches went for first downs. His longest catch was 23 yards. At 260 lbs, Krull was able to break two tackles and 67 of his receiving yards last season were yards-after-catch.
Krull ran 219 routes on his 299 offensive plays, meaning that he was only blocking on 80 plays. SIS shows that he was only pass blocking nine times. He did not have a blown block or allow a sack. But the coaches know that he is not a pass blocker as he has only been a pass blocker on 19 times in his NFL career. For comparison, Nate Adkins had 46 pass blocking snaps last season.
Krull had 34 run blocking snaps in 2024 and had one blown run block according to SISdatahub.com.
If we look at the blocking of the Denver Broncos TEs from 2024 we find this:
Trautman was the best run blocker, while Krull was poor at run blocking and so bad a pass blocking that he was hardly used. Trautman had 574 offensive snaps. Adkins had 420 and Dulcich had 120.
With Evan Engram in the fold as the move TE, Krull can claim that role any more. He definitely is not a plus blocking TE. He isn’t even the tallest TE in the room now with 6’8” Caleb Lohner potentially being the “jump ball” TE with his basketball background.
I really doubt that Krull gets a spot on the roster, with so many spots that will be taken up by WRs. The Broncos kept 4 TEs on the roster at the start of the 2024 season. There is an outside chance that Krull is the 4th TE coming out of camp, but there is a possibility he is a camp cut. He could end up on the PS, but Lohner is probably the TE that we are going to keep on the practice squad.
The Broncos did keep two TEs on the PS last season with Donald Parham and Thomas Yassmin, but Yassmin was a special case in that as an international player he had a special spot carved out for him on the PS.
The bottom line is that Krull has had plenty of chances to break through as a move TE in the NFL and he has not capitalized on them. His window may have closed.