Broncos Have A Big-Play Wild Card At Running Back

The Denver Broncos are looking for more big plays from their offense, and everyone is assuming it’s going to come from new receiver Jaylen Waddle. It was the big, bold offseason move from coach Sean Payton, after all, but it’s also raised questions about Payton’s stated belief that the existing group of receivers could provide it. 

But there’s another play who could do that, and he’s being overlooked. RJ Harvey showed his big-play chops in the preseason against the Green Bay Packers, as he made a nice over-the-shoulder catch on a ball that quarterback Bo Nix dropped right in the bucket, and it showed what Harvey can do when he gets the opportunity. 

“When the ball is in my hands, I’ve got to make one guy miss all the time,” Harvey said at the time in a recent piece by Nick Kosmider of The Athletic. “I’ve got to make ’em miss. When it’s crunch time, I feel like that’s when I really come alive.”

It’s a new development, as Harvey caught just 61 passes during his four-year career at Central Florida, and he’s had to learn wheel routes like the one he ran with Nix from the ground up. 

“He ran a bunch of wheel routes, but not anything with the complexity of what we do here,” running backs coach Lou Ayeni said. “… But we looked at the explosion and the playmaking ability, and we knew that he could be a guy who could help us in that area.

And for me, personally, he’s a former quarterback. I remember this with David Montgomery when I recruited him (at Iowa State), and with Josh Jacobs; they were both high school quarterbacks. One thing quarterbacks do is catch the snap every play. They play catch every night. It’s the same thing with RJ. All those guys had great hands, and once I said that with RJ, I said, ‘He’s going to catch 50 balls.'” 

It’s a bold prediction given the current jumble the Broncos have at running back right now, though. J.K. Dobbin is the man right now, and the perception is that Harvey is further down the pecking order, barely ahead of players like Tyler Badie and Jaleel McLaughlin, who was a painful cut last Sunday.

“There were more concepts in our first install than he probably had in his whole life,” Ayeni said. “Once he got comfortable, we wanted to be able to move him around and do different things where we can get him more involved in the passing game, get him out of the backfield where we can utilize him in matchups with linebackers and maybe even safeties. We knew we were going to add more to his plate. It was just a matter of time with him being ready.”

Coach Sean Payton was certainly impressed, but it will be interesting to see if that translates to more usage and opportunities  from new offensive coordinator Davis Webb.

“He’s becoming a complete back, three downs,” Webb said, “and that’s what he wants to be.”