Broncos Mailbag: What is wide receiver Courtland Sutton’s ceiling for 2024? Could incentives spur career year?

Denver Post Broncos writer Parker Gabriel posts his Broncos Mailbag weekly during the season and periodically during the offseason. Click here to submit a question.

What do you think is the ceiling for Courtland Sutton this year? He’s a highlight reel with moments of brilliance, but he’s never put up consistent enough numbers in his career so far — probably due to the lack of a consistent quarterback. Can he be a 90-catch, 1,400-yard receiver this year? Will he even lead the team in catches or yards with the addition of Josh Reynolds and Tim Patrick coming back?

— Mike, Denver

Hey Mike, good questions and thanks for leading us off this week.

Courtland Sutton has a chance to put up big numbers this year not just because he’s in the second year of the offense with Sean Payton and because of Jerry Jeudy’s trade this spring to Cleveland, but also because he’s the type of player who makes a perfect security blanket for a young and/or inexperienced quarterback. He’s also got a slate of new incentives that can earn him up to $1.5 million above his base salary and roster bonuses as he achieves them.

So to answer your questions: I don’t think I’d go as high as 90 catches if I was predicting 2024 output for Sutton, but that mark is feasible. A 1,400-yard season would mark a terrific year but would also be a major surprise. His career best is 1,112 in 2019 and he’s averaged 792 the past three years. In that span, Sutton averaged between 13 and 13.4 yards per catch. At 13.4 per, he’d need 105 catches to crest 1,400 yards.

What would you say if I gave you 74 catches for 962 and six touchdowns? Given that Sutton hasn’t been above 64 catches or 829 yards since he missed most of 2020 with a torn ACL, those marks still seem optimistic but not so aspirational as to be out of the question.

Sutton’s definitely not benefited from the quarterback situation in Denver, though there are plenty of receivers who put up big numbers with bad quarterback play. Exhibit A: D.J. Moore, now the holder of a brand-new $100 million-plus contract in Chicago. He’s gone for 1,100-plus yards four of the past five years between Carolina and Chicago with his primary starters as Kyle Allen, Teddy Bridgewater, Sam Darnold/Baker Mayfield and Justin Fields.

At this point Sutton’s the favorite to lead the 2024 Broncos in catches. The competition might be steeper on the yards front. Perhaps Marvin Mims Jr. can take advantage of an expanded role. Or perhaps the ball will get spread around enough that Reynolds, Patrick or somebody else can be around the top of the heap in that department.

Hey Parker, love your work! My question is about the tight ends. ESPN has Adam Trautman listed as the No. 1 guy on the Broncos depth chart. His production seems to be pretty limited in his four years in the league. Wouldn’t Greg Dulcich (if he’s healthy) or someone else who’s more of a receiving threat be a better option for the offense?

Also, do you think Jonah Elliss is going to have an impact in his rookie year? He was beastly with Utah and I could see him being fun with Nik Bonitto in the coming years.

— Quincy E., Lakewood

Yeah good question on the tight ends, Quincy. Not to sound too coach speak-y, but this is one issue with depth charts. They don’t have a lot of nuance unless you add a bunch of context to them — hey, we should do something that in The Denver Post one of these days!

Trautman right now is likely to play the most snaps among the Broncos tight ends, just as he did last year. In 2023, he was the guy they used most frequently as kind of a jack of all trades. They trust him as a blocker and he knows what he’s doing in the passing game, even if he’s not particularly dangerous after the catch.

Still, that doesn’t mean that other tight ends won’t feature prominently in the offense. If Greg Dulcich is healthy, he’s the team’s best receiver from that position. We’ll see if Lucas Krull can make the jump from good athlete to good player. Nate Adkins has a good shot, too, to carve a role as a guy who can motion around the backfield and be a sturdy blocker.

Why do all sports writers think we need a 365-day diet of Bronco “news”? There are other teams who treat players with respect and Sean Payton isn’t the answer to the Broncos’ woes. Who cares?

— Pamela Bell, Thornton

Hey Pamela, thanks for writing in. I would be all for it if the NFL wanted to go dark for more than a couple of weeks in the summer, but I don’t make the rules. If you are looking for excellent coverage from any of the other sports on the Front Range, you can find them in this very newspaper and on this very website!

My job is to cover the Broncos and the NFL and, for better or for worse, the league keeps marching toward trying to conquer all 52 weeks of the calendar.

So how long will it be before Sean Payton gets testy and snaps at his players or the Denver media this preseason?

— Ed Helinski, Auburn, N.Y.

C’mon, Ed! Have a little faith. In actuality, though, Payton made it clear from the start of training camp that the relaxing, summer, offseason program vibe is done. His go-to metaphor is that reporting for camp is like getting on an aircraft carrier for several months at sea. The vibes can still be positive, but the nature of the mission becomes not just known, but your every-day existence. With that comes a different level of intensity and, therefore, the occasional blow-up. Comes with the territory, whether you’re aboard the big ship or just reporting on it.

Thank you, Parker. Always grateful. No question. Let’s go BO-RONCOS! Best sports coverage in the great state of Colorado. Heartfelt thank you to everyone at The Denver Post.

— Dennis Murtha, York, Pa.

Appreciate the kind words and support, Dennis! It’s a fun group to work with and certainly there’s no shortage of stuff for us to cover.

Hi Parker, it feels like we’re making too big of a deal that Bo Nix is the only first-round quarterback taken by a Sean Payton-led team. It’s not like he was going to take a QB high in the draft with Drew Brees on the team, right? Also, are NFL experts nitpicking that Nix didn’t throw downfield very much in Oregon? It seems like he was executing the offense he was asked to run. Thanks.

— Brandon, Rogers, Minn.

Hey Brandon, a good way to end things today and an entirely fair point. The best reason to have not selected a quarterback in the first round is because you spent 14 years with a guy who arrived in town as a Pro Bowler — albeit one with major questions about a shoulder injury — and became a Hall of Famer. You could argue that New Orleans should have done more to land a quarterback of the future before Brees retired. Payton tells the story often about thinking they were going to get Patrick Mahomes in 2017 before Kansas City traded up one spot ahead and grabbed him at No. 10. Plus, when you’ve got a guy like Brees, it’s easy to say you should be thinking about a succession plan but you also want to put as many resources around him as possible to try to keep taking shots at winning the whole thing.

All of that is to say that there’s a pretty good reason why Payton hasn’t done this before. That, however, doesn’t make it any less compelling.

As for Nix’s arm strength and repertoire, yeah, he ran the offense he was asked to run at Oregon. He showed a bit of hard edge when he got introduced here by pushing back against the narrative of being just a short pass-thrower, saying, “Quite frankly, I completed a lot of long ones, too.” And he did. Payton said they took out the behind-the-line-of-scrimmage throws during their evaluation and Nix still led the country in several categories.

People see the big rainbow throws and say, “arm looks pretty strong to me,” and that’s fine. The question isn’t so much about whether he can step into a throw and huck it 55 yards on the go-ball. It’s more about if he can drive throws into intermediate windows 20-30 yards down the field, sometimes opposite hash, where you’re talking about putting the ball on a line for 40 yards in the air. Or on the run and trying to put a ball where it needs to be without a solid platform to throw from. Those are “arm strength” throws in the NFL. And that’s what we’ll all find out about together over the coming weeks, months and — if the Broncos and Nix get their way — many years.

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