No ifs, ands or Butts
Feeling healthy, Broncos tight end is ready to reward franchise’s commitment
One of the best parts of Broncos tight end Jake Butt’s offseason: He is ineligible to train at the team facility.
Per NFL guidelines during the coronavirus pandemic, only players with existing injuries, like outside linebacker Bradley Chubb and tight end Austin Fort, can work in the team’s weight room.
Butt is healthy after missing all of 2019 with left knee surgery, his fourth major knee injury since 2014. He was cleared late last season and has stayed that way.
“My knee’s good,” he said in a phone interview Friday. “Doing everything running and lifting. This offseason has been a little bit weird for everybody, having to bounce around and train anywhere you can, but I’ve still been getting good work in, feel good about things and excited about playing ball again.”
When the Broncos open the season Sept. 14 against Tennessee, Butt will have played only three meaningful games in the previous 1,351 days. A lot of watching (which was tough) and a lot of rehabilitating (which was really tough).
This offseason, Butt altered his training tact.
“Pretty much my whole life, I’ve never turned down any extra work,” he said. “Now I’ve had to adjust and be smarter about things. I just can’t go play basketball on the weekend.
“Sometimes, less is more, which goes against my DNA, but it’s something I’m trying to learn.”
Butt said he is doing the same full workout plan as his teammates, with the focus on “strength training, speed and agility, movement, balance, things like that.”
Adversity has been a constant for Butt since he arrived at Michigan.
Playing for the Wolverines, Butt tore his right ACL in a spring 2014 practice and again in his final college game, the Orange Bowl on Jan. 1, 2017.
The Broncos drafted Butt in the fifth round (No. 145 overall) and he used his rookie year to rehabilitate. In 2018, he was sailing along during camp and the first
three games, playing 97 snaps and catching eight passes for 85 yards. Week by week, it was expected his role would expand. But he sustained a torn left ACL in a midOctober practice. Another season over.
Last year, Butt was managed during the offseason program and missed three weeks of camp (July 21-Aug. 11). He played 11 snaps in the Aug. 24 preseason game against the Los Angeles Rams and felt he had turned a corner. Soon after, though, on the team plane back to Denver, he experienced knee soreness and was shut down.
Butt had surgery to take out 3040% of his meniscus. The Broncos had the option of returning him from injured reserve, but opted to keep him sidelined.
The Broncos have stood by Butt through the injuries.
“I don’t know a lot of people that have been through my situation and the team would still be hanging there with them in Year 4,” he said. “It really speaks a lot for the organization and what they think of me and I’m very appreciative. It’s not a guarantee — they’re not telling me I’m making the team by any stretch or rolling out the red carpet. I still have to go out there and work and earn it.
“But the fact they’re standing by me and giving me an opportunity, it obviously means the world to me and I’m going to try and go out there and prove them right and prove myself right.”
Butt faces a difficult task. The Broncos signed Nick Vannett and drafted Albert Okwuegbunam, and Butt, Fort, Noah Fant, Jeff Heuerman, Andrew Beck and Troy Fumagalli all return.
“You look around the tight end room and I don’t see a single weak spot,” Butt said. “There are a lot of talented guys. Guys with experience, some younger guys and everybody brings their own thing to the table. There isn’t a single person in that room who feels they can relax or take a day off because there is so much talent and somebody will pass you.”