What Will Jaylen Waddle Do For The Broncos' Offense? | Film Room

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1:03against top global competition, with high stakes and high drama. That's magnificent. What a moment. What a strike. See who makes their case to join the roster, to represent the stars and stripes. As the road to the World Cup continues. USA versus Portugal, Tuesday, March 31 at 60N Eastern. Live on TNT and HBO maps. The Broncos made one of the biggest splashes of the off season by trading a first round pick and more for Jalen Waddle. What will Jalen Waddle do for the Broncos offense? We're going to dig into the tape to find out. I'm Henry Chisholm from DNVR Broncos and today we're going to dig into the tape and a couple of stats to figure out who Jalen Waddle is and to start figuring that out we have to go all the way back to the beginning. He's from Texas. He was an incredible high school football player in Texas with offers to play college football just about anywhere. He was a consensus top 10 receiver prospect in the entire nation and wound up choosing BAMMA, joining a long

2:04list of great BAMMA receivers. Immediately led the NCAA punt return yards, became a two time all SEC performer and was off to an incredible start to his final collegiate season, that 2020 season when the SEC only played other SEC teams because of the pandemic. But unfortunately, that season was cut short because he broke his ankle in the fifth game of the year and didn't return until the national championship, which BAMMA won. Despite the injury, Jalen had shown enough for the dolphins to take him with the number six overall pick. You combine the 43740 yard dash with the production that he had and he was clearly an elite receiver prospect, despite being five, nine and a half and about 180 pounds. That size didn't really hold him back at BAMMA, but there were some questions about whether it could come up in the NFL so far, so good. Because of that size, though, they put him in the slot as a rookie where he had 1,000 yards before they bumped him back outside. Now, over the course of the past five years, a lot has changed with the dolphins. They traded for Tyree

3:05Kill in Jalen Waddle's second year to a tag of Iowa started off hot wound up with the second cussions was in and out of the lineup. And even when he was playing, wasn't always his best self toward the end of Jalen Waddle's time in Miami. We're going to dig into the 2025 tape first to see what Jalen Waddle looked like most recently. We're going to start by looking at a couple of deep routes. So that's what you think of when you think of Jalen Waddle because he's one of the fastest receivers in the entire NFL. And that's why you see him get cushion like this. You're going to see this sort of space just about every time a corner lines up against Jalen because if you don't, he's just going to run right by you. But that cushion continues throughout the play. You'll see there's still that space. And right when Jalen flips his hips right here, he's able to keep his speed through the break and create a little pocket after he just runs right in front of Mike Jackson's face. Boom. Plenty of room to go and make a throw which to a tag of Iowa does. This post route to me is kind of the bread and butter for Jalen Waddle. The speed which keeps the defense

4:10sitting back allows that space in the middle for him to break into. Here's another example. Again, you look at the cushion. It's a big, big cushion. And because of Jalen Waddle speed, once again, you see the defender on his heels creating the room to break back inside. And this time he peels it up field. And he's gone. Now a perfect throw would just hit Jalen and stride. And instead he has to turn around a little bit. Still winds up in the end zone because he's just so fast. He had that much separation for a touchdown. These deep routes all pair together. And when you only have one defender on that side of the field, he's just about impossible to stop unless you gamble. Here's Marlon Humphrey and all pro cornerback who maybe isn't the best version of himself at this point in his career, but is still a veteran corner who knows what he's doing. And he's seen these post routes on tape. There he is. You'll see flips his hips just a tick before Jalen Waddle flips his hips. And that allows him to make this break before Jalen does. And he's

5:13able to get a hand in to break up the pass. Again, why does that work? Because he cheated. He guessed on the route. Well, the dolphin saw him guess on that route and knew that the only way to stop Jalen Waddle on a post route is to guess. So what do they do? See the same matchup up at the top. And this time you see the one big step inside from Jalen Marlon Humphrey bites. But oh, he runs right past him. Marlon Humphrey, the all pros on his knees and you've got all this space to work with. The deep balls a little bit under throne, which is a shame, but it's still a big play gets the dolphins inside the ten. And that's kind of how you see the post route work because the only way to take it away is to guess. And if you're the dolphins, you know how to take away those guesses or beat you when you do guess. And one more, just because I said the press right here, if you line up this close to Jalen Waddle, he's going to run right by you. We wondered coming out college, whether the size would mean that when you get to the NFL, when he gets pressed

6:15because you don't see the press very often in college, he might just get swallowed up at the line of, line of scrimmage. But the releases from Jalen allow him to win these just about every time. So there he is. He gets the inside step. He's off and running. You see that big separation. And here's another problem we see. So there's the ball in the air. Sometimes with Tuha, you see him put the ball in a spot where you wouldn't expect him to. So like right here, there's nobody in this middle of the field. So what do you do? And just lead him up in there. He's fast. Just let him catch the ball and run. He's already looking over that shoulder, looking over that shoulder and Tuha leads him all the way back outside. And Jalen makes an incredible play to go and catch this. But there are a bunch more examples on tape where Jalen wasn't able to adjust and make the catch. Not really his own fault, but because Tuha was off on some of those deep balls. I think this might be a good time to pause and talk about the deep ball from Bonix. Because Tuha's game is not predicated on hitting the deep shots. He's pretty accurate generally. But in the past couple of years, the arm strength is dried up even more. So they're more lobs

7:16being he has to be even more accurate to get all the timing synced up leads to more underthrows. And those were a consistent problem with Bonix. The problem has been more so the overthrows. Now in the first 11 weeks of the season, bow through 24 over throws. But from after the by week on, the final seven games, including the playoff game, he only threw four overthrows and had five games where he didn't throw a single one, which Jalen model hitting him on these deep balls will kind of be the key to hitting having a 13, 1400 yard season. And bow late last year showed that he was capable. So maybe that's a change. Maybe bow has finally figured out the deep ball after struggling all the way back to his time at Oregon. Or maybe it was a bit fluky. But as of now, both deep ball feels good. Should be able to take better advantage of these deep passes than to a tag of ILO is able to. Let's jump to the speed out. This might be what Jalen model is best at. He winds up

8:19with about 30% of his routes being out routes and a lot of them with a quick little speed out. You see him at the top here steps up breaks out. Again, it's that outside release to gain just a step of leverage. And he's too fast and keeps too much speed through that break. So this little separation right here winds up being that bigger separation right there and an easy completion. This is something that we actually see over and over with a bunch of different variations. This one will be synced up with some play action, which means that you can't break too quickly. There's only this much space to work with. So you got to take your time before you get out there so that this play action can work. So they run the play action. It's big inside release. Throws him right by breaks outside. And it's wide open for a catch. And again, the space becomes even bigger the longer the route takes because Joe and Waddle is so fast so quick. He just keeps separating. There's a lot to like. One more one more thing we should look at the middle of the field. Just a big in breaking route. Again, it's off play action. You get the linebackers sucking

9:24up. And you have this space through this window right here. The tough part of this throw again, when we start talking about bonix is that you have to throw with anticipation. At this time, he's still behind the linebacker. You have to make this throw right here for when he's past the linebacker. That's something that Tua is very good at. He has some deficiencies but throwing with timing, throwing with touch is something that makes him still a starting caliber quarterback in the NFL. And Jill and Waddle of Freak turns the corner and he's off for a touchdown. So talked about the timing on these throws. You also need to be able to throw with touch. Again, here's this big separation. This big gap because the corner is scared of getting beat deep. That allows the post route. It also allows you to make more of these flatter breaking routes, basic routes, in routes where Jalen is very successful. The throw very important on these though. See two linebackers here in order throw. He's

10:24going to be over here. Right pass his fingertips. Right pass. Here's his fingertips. And Jalen catches it. It's a little bit of a high pass, a little bit behind him, but that was the only place you could put the ball. In the middle of the field, Jalen Waddle is incredible. And the box 10 to 20 yards down field in the middle of the field. So we'll look at here's your line of scrimmage. So we're looking from here to here in the middle third of the field. That's where Jalen Waddle is incredibly productive. He was third in the NFL and catches in that part of the field. Unfortunately, Bonix struggles a little bit throwing over the middle of the field. Last year about a 53 pass rating, which was 30 second out of 33 quarterbacks in that part of the part of the field. The only one worse was Spencer Ratler average pass rating about double bows. Part of it to the weapons, part of it might be bow. And so you put these two guys together and you wonder which one's going to win out. Are you now going to be a productive offense in the middle of the field because you have a great middle of the field weapon or is the quarterback limited?

11:24That might be the biggest question for Bonix with this edition. All these plays that we've looked at so far have been from the middle portion of the season. So the 2025 season was really broken into three parts for Jalen Waddle. First four weeks, he's wide receiver two behind Tyree Kill. Then weeks five through 10, he's the wide receiver one after Tyree Kill's injury and he's also very, very productive in that time. But from week 11 on, while still being wide receiver one, the numbers dropped off a bit. And the reason those numbers dropped off was because defenses treated him differently. So we're going to look at some examples of how defenses took him away. Here's the speed out again. I talked about their different variations. So sometimes you have Darren Waller down here, sometimes they'll run a clear out, sometimes they'll run a little pick if it's man coverage. This is zone coverage. They wind up just running the clear out, take this corner out of there, wide open space. And that's that's your match up with this much of separation between

12:25these two. You love Jalen on the speed out. And there's your angle clearing out so much space to make this throw. But at this point in the season, defenses have seen all the tape. So what does the corner do? He steps up. He's not going to let you make this throw because he's seen this happen over and over and over. Leaving Darren Waller wide open for a big play. These are the sorts of things that defenses did. So when you look at the total numbers from last year, they aren't as pretty. But sometimes there are reasons why, like dropping this linebacker so that you can't get the slant to Jalen Waddle. You wind up with a double team or you jump ahead. You see dropping the defensive end so that you can't get the slant. You have the corner playing outside leverage. So the speed out is taken away. And just in case you want to go deeper, there's a safety. What does that mean? Basically triple teamed. You have a little triangle right there. This winds up in a double breaker. Again, in that triangle, there's just nothing you can do about that. And then you would think that you'd be able to hit one of your one-on-ones on the other side when you have that much attention

13:28given to one receiver. We can also look at some different ways they took away the crossers. Jalen Waller, the crosser is very productive. Getting up and going all the way across. Well, this is Tampa 2. These guys all just have their own flats. But with the linebacker, you're going to see him flip his hips specifically to take away the crossing route from Jalen Waddle. You're not letting him beat you on this route. Now, there's another way to do it. Bangles, one of the simplified, their defense wasn't great. You wind up, you want man coverage. So you go man across the board. But the safety rotates down. So again, starts back here. Rotates all the way down. You have man. He's playing outside so that you have nothing over here. But this robber, a whole defender jumps down to take away once again, the crossing route. So he's right here. You can't make this throw. Two guys with eyes on Jalen Waddle. I mean, one-on-one. I think this safety counter rotates over here. But you're not able to be successful because none of the other dolphins, weapons were able to do anything. So those

14:28are a few examples of how defenses were able to take Jalen away. We're going to look at one more play. Because back in 2022, Jalen had the most productive season of his career. And this is the biggest play of his career. Went for 85 yards and a touchdown. Again, it's your big crossing route like we talked about. It's coming all the way. Tyree Kill clearing out the other side of the play action sucks these guys up and there's all this space. Catch it, turns the corner, gets up field, often running for a touchdown. Helps the Tyree Kill is fast enough to get down, field and throw a block. But that is the final point to me. When you look at some of the questions about why Jalen wasn't as productive in the past couple of years, the biggest thing is probably to attack a Veloah and then you look through the other weapons and say, wow, Greg Dolcich was their number three receiver last year in terms of receiving yards behind Jalen Waddle and Devon H. Ann. Darren Waller was right up there. Theo, like they were just lacking other threats. So teams could allocate resources to take him away. But the third reason he wasn't quite as productive is because those big

15:29plays did dry up. He has 14 plays of 40 or more yards in his NFL career. Seven of those came in 2022 when he had the 1300 yard season. Can he get back to that point? It's tough to say. He hasn't been quite as explosive in terms of production, but also there are some underlying metrics that might say his speed has taken a half-step backward. You know, in 2022 and 2023, according to next gen stats, he had 24 routes where he ran at least 20 miles per hour. The past two years, that's down to two routes of 20 miles per hour or more. A couple of those little things make you wonder if maybe this pure explosion isn't quite what it used to be, but in going back and looking the posts, the deep routes, the play against the Falcons where he's able to turn that corner and get up field, he's still plenty explosive and he's much crafter than he was at the beginning of his career. So I think that while you may have seen a slight step back there as a pure receiver, he's just so much more efficient of a route runner than he was at any other time in his career.

16:33So what's a big question for Jalen Waddle? What will he bring to the Broncos? To me, it depends on Bonix. If Bonix is able to take advantage of what he can do in the middle of the field, and all of a sudden the Broncos have a good middle of the field offense, this is going to be a home run move. You could see 1300 yards again. If the middle of the field isn't quite there, but Bo is able to hit him on those deep balls and those speedouts are keeping the offense on schedule, you could still easily see 1000 yards, 1100 yards, and a new dynamic element that opens other things up for the other weapons in the offense. But the downside is, if you are missing the deep balls, like Bo did early last year, unlike later in last year when he got figured out, or if he isn't as successful in the middle of the field, then that's where this could go wrong. But you basically have two different ways to make this move a success, and that's why I think it's a pretty good move for the Broncos. Jimmy Johns is bringing big Greek energy and your taste buds are about to feel it. Meet

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18:45against top global competition with high stakes and high drama. That's magnificent. What a moment. What a strike. See who makes their case to join the roster to represent the stars and stripes as the road to the world cup continues. USA versus Portugal Tuesday March 31st at 6 p.m. Eastern. Live on TNT and HBO Max.