"I'm Not a Receiver, I'm Just Ahead of the Curve": Colston Loveland is Sean Payton's "Joker."

Why so versatile?

Sean Payton is a pretty smart guy. Abrasive? sure…similar in any way to Kevin James? not really, but he is as sharp an offensive mind as we’ve seen in our lifetimes. He’s stubborn, but not intransigent, and he isn’t going to be left behind by the obvious direction of offensive football. As I have written about time and time and time again now, modern offenses are defined by their ability to run everything from the same groupings. At the end of the day, it’s all about tunneling your pitches, because defenses are too smart and fluid now for offenses to get away with anything less. If you’re segmented, defenses don’t ever have to defend everything, they can cheat, and if you can’t punish cheating, they will slow you down. Spread offenses that sacrifice run-blocking get sold out against, and so do condensed offenses that cannot spread you out. Sure you can try to do both, but if you don’t have individual guys that can let you do both without substituting, defenses need only look at who you put on the field to tell what you’re limited to. This is the new wave, and Sean Payton is well aware.

Because ESPN’s Kay Adams is the most talented interviewer in sports media, we got a hell of a nugget about what Sean Payton is looking for in the draft this year. What he’s looking for is something I’ve discussed before, in fact, he stole my term.

Despite the rise of spread defenses, the cat is never going fully back in the bag. Passing is more efficient than running, and being able to maximize the pass catchers on the field has become a non-negotiable. However, the natural way to counter these defenses is to play heavy, create extra gaps at the line of scrimmage with extra blockers, and run the football. So how can offenses achieve both at the same time with the same players?

Positionless players who can both block and run routes in space. A year ago, I thought that this would be where flex TEs take over the sport, and for some teams like the Green Bay Packers and Georgia, this is what is happening, but this role is not limited to the TE position.

Traditionally, the use of 2nd TEs and FBs in the run game has been to provide those extra blockers, with slot receivers coming on the field to provide an extra pass catcher on 3rd down. Historically, those three roles have been distinct but now, they have blended into a more positionless framework. Whether it’s a flex TE (Brock Bowers), blocking WR (Puka Nacua), or in some cases like the 49ers, the rare flex fullback, these players are used to give forward-thinking offenses access to their full playbook out of the same personnel grouping. Instead of having to substitute a slot or fullback into the game to do different things, the playbook is always open. I have begun calling this positionless role the “Joker,” as this card can represent any in the deck depending on how you want to use it. Some call it the “adjuster.” Regardless of what you call it, he forces defenses to defend both the spread pass game and account for extra gaps at the line of scrimmage without the luxury of substituting and matching up. Defenses now cannot key into certain tendencies based on who is on the field.

In an offense, this is the “F” position, as I outlined in the introductory pieces for Remember the Tight Ends. In short, there are, 90% of the time, 5 OL, a QB, 2 WRs (X and Z), a TE (Y), and 1 RB (H). The 11th guy, the F, is what determines your personnel grouping, as laid out by Kyle Shanahan below:

Nobody plays 10 or 20 personnel, least of all Kyle Shanahan lol

If you are going to keep defenses honest, this guy has to be able to oscillate between TE, FB, and WR jobs without sacrificing anything in the passing game. 90% of the time, your best move is to make this guy a WR and teach him to block, and flex ONLY Tight Ends generally have little value, unless they are outright able to fill a Wide Receiver role in the passing game, which is incredibly rare (Brock Bowers, Travis Kelce). At that point, for personnel deployment purposes, they’re just good WRs.

Payton’s Missing Piece

If you’ve watched football over the last 20 years, you know what Sean Payton is all about offensively, and why he loved Bo Nix so damn much. It’s all about being able to drop back and work the middle. Payton’s passing game is Andy Reid, Mike Holmgren West-Coast to the bone, and as a result, it’s founded in things like choice concepts, hi-lows, seams, horizontal stretches, and overall timing. The Broncos, however, are desperately missing a middle-field presence that can make this work like Payton had for so many years with Michael Thomas and Marques Colston before him. He needs someone in this role to make it all go.

(Video Credit: WD4L Saints Vids)

Payton needs Marques Colston back, but remember, in the modern game, that guy can’t *just* be a receiver, he needs to add in the blocking.

Colston Loveland: Flex Tight End, Not Slow Receiver

Flex-only football players are not actually versatile, they’re limited. We galaxy-brain ourselves into thinking that a TE who can’t play TE is anything but a slow WR, but Colston Loveland is not one of these players.

While it isn’t his strength necessarily, Colston Loveland is a fine in-line blocker who most likely possesses the capability to be a functional one in the NFL. You don’t have to be a mauler, but you can’t be such a liability that you create limitation in how you can be used. Loveland is not just a WR, he is able to play Tight End, and thus can be judged against other TEs in his receiving ability.

This is more than you need from an F like Marques Colston (or in this case, Drake London), all you need those guys to do is dig out that 7th guy from the 2nd or 3rd level in the run fit. It just shows that Loveland won’t need to be limited to 12 personnel, he’s an every-package starter able to move between the F and an actual Tight End role depending on grouping. This is important for draft value. Establishing this, we can easily delineate what an every-down role in an NFL offense will look like for him.

The Joker

Loveland is a PHD in route-running. He has as deep a bag of releases and steps as any pass-catcher in his class and has the quickness and precision to make them count. He’ll mostly assume the slot role for Payton, and morph the Broncos into a heavily 12 personnel-based team. Choice routes, juke routes, digs, all the underneath change of direction stuff Payton loves to work in the dropback game but lacks a guy for, that’ll be Loveland’s first job.

But if you watched Marques Colston back in the day, you know that the F position in Payton’s offenses runs through the seams, which is one of Loveland’s most developed skills. His ability to read and react to coverages, whether it’s working into space, avoiding reroutes, or beating matches, makes him a dependable demon in the seams against any coverage structure the defense may roll out.

He’s not a burner by any stretch like a Tyreek Hill, but his ability to accelerate and sink sharply into breaks at full speed allows him to separate on any position of defensive back, including outside corners. He can credibly sell speed against off-corners in his space releases with a confident and aggressive get-off.

One of his best pitches is the “circus” route, which is an outside WR route. The ability to sink into and explode out of breaks on a string, as well as the detail he utilizes to get defenders out of phase, allows him to play way smaller than his 6’4, 245 or so frame.

While he won’t be needed as much on the outside with Sutton, Payton loves slants and choice routes from the X as well (Michael Thomas’ entire career), so Loveland may be asked to take his slot expertise outside as well.

Especially when they get into empty.

The “joker” part is that, in addition to doing all the above, Loveland can credibly attach to the formation and provide an extra big to create legitimate heavy formations that defenses have to treat as such. We established earlier he can handle himself in-line primary blocking (true in-line blocking) the DE (just enough), so digging out support defenders and handling 2nd/3rd level body-types as a secondary blocker is light work for him.

Denver’s biggest strength as an offense is its offensive line, so that ability is going to create a ton of conflict for defenses who want to treat him like a space player in 12 personnel. They will be able to seamlessly go from empty to real 12, 2 TE attached physicality and pound the rock without substituting. As such, the defense has to honor it all at once. As discussed, with his in-line presence, when they do want to get into true 11, he doesn’t have to leave the field for them to keep defenses honest enough.

Riding Forward

There is no denying what Payton has already achieved in Denver. He cut against the grain and has found success with a QB many (including myself) were skeptical of because he knows exactly how to identify the right skillsets for what he wants to do. Despite all of that, it’s not complete, and his offense doesn’t have the tools to run it the way he wants to run it. If it were so easy as getting a receiver, he’d do it, and frankly Emeka Egbuka would probably do a lot of this better than Loveland does. As I established in my “Joker” piece from last summer, many of these guys are WRs a lot like him. Payton though, may want to join the NFL’s best offenses on the ground and make his Joker a bit more punishing of a figure to complement his OL. This class has the perfect Tight End to do it.