If you want to know how much wide receiver Jaylen Waddle is bringing to the offense this year, just ask the defense.
“[He’s been] everything that he is expected to be,” said safety Talanoa Hufanga, who played against Waddle when he was with the Dolphins. “I’m super excited that he is on our side.”
But that doesn’t make practice any easier.
“People forget that we have to go against him in practice. It’s not the easiest, but it’s also a good thing for us to practice,” Hufanga added. “Going up against the best
is what we want.”
Specifically, Hufanga pointed out, it’s Waddle’s ability to disguise his route and keep the defense guessing that’s so difficult to defend.
“His ability to make every route look the same is pretty important,” Hufanga said. “I think as a defender, when you can make a 10-yard stop (route) look like a go, a 10-yard dig look like a go, out route, it makes everything look the same and puts pressure on your backpedal as a DB. For him to bring that to our team is a blessing.”
That ability will definitely make his quarterback happy. And that’s probably why Bo Nix was excited to be among the contingent that took Waddle to dinner his first night in Denver.
“Bo is definitely a competitor. He loves talking ball. He loves just being around, being around the guys,” Waddle said. “I think he’s going to be a great leader. I can just see the traits from him just day-to-day and everything. If he sees something, he’s going to tell me about it. Then we kind of pick each other’s brains and try to get on the same page as best we can.”
Although Nix is sidelined during OTAs as he fully recovers from offseason ankle surgery, Waddle is not worried about chemistry with his new quarterback.
“Bo is a tremendous player; he’s a playmaker,” Waddle said last week. “When you got a guy like that slinging the ball, I don’t think it’s going to take much time.”
While Hufanga may have a love/hate relationship with defending Waddle in practice, left tackle Garett Bolles has only love because he knows as much as Nix what No. 17 will mean for this offense.
“Our team was just missing that one piece,” Bolles said about Waddle on NFL Network. “We were missing that electrifying dude that could come across the middle, get the deep ball, have that speed around that edge, hand it off to him as he goes in motion, and all the above.”
Bolles added that Waddle isn’t taking anything away from Courtland Sutton.
“With him and Courtland, it’s going to be hard for defenses to scheme us up when you’ve got two electrifying receivers,” Bolles said. “He brings that juice, and we couldn’t be more blessed to have a big-time playmaker like that.“
Running back Jaleel Mclaughlin texted his brother after practice last week and told him, “Waddle is the truth.”
“Just watching his routes is different,” Mc “He’s different man. …How crisp his routes are is amazing.”
