Building road-grader reputation
Once a basketball player, Broncos tight end Manhertz specializing in blocking
Sean Payton saw basketball highlights sent by a friend and envisioned the next hooper-turnedtight end.
Jimmy Graham Version 2.0, maybe.
A red zone dynamo and matchup nightmare in the passing game.
“No football experience,” Payton recalled. “He was a basketball player.”
Well, Payton may have missed on the eventual role Chris Manhertz, the kid in the video, would fill, but not on the football chops.
Eight years after a rookie try out, they’re reconnected.
Manhertz, now 31, spent 2015 on New Orleans’ practice squad before Carolina scooped him up early in the 2016 season and kept him through 2020. Then he spent the past two years in Jacksonville before signing a two-year deal with the Broncos in free agency.
His specialty is not 50/50 balls, the football equivalent of rebounding, but instead blocking.
“I would say within the last five years, he has been one of the better run-blocking tight ends,” Payton said.
How did that happen? Manhertz figured out while on the practice squad in 2015 that he was pretty darn good at moving people off the line of scrimmage.
“I was just trying to get acclimated to the game of football,” Manhertz told The Post recently. “But over time I got confident in what I was doing against the No. 1 defense with the Saints while I was on the practice squad. You build that confidence and you think, ‘I belong here.’”
He certainly did, and he’s made a lengthy career out of it.
The 6-foot-6, 255-pounder has played in 104 games and, according to Pro Football Reference, piled up more than 2,300 offensive snaps as he enters his ninth NFL season. He’s been targeted a grand total of 36 times and has 24 catches to his name. Those work out to career marks of one target per 65 snaps played and 2.5 receiving yards per game.
He may not rack up stats, but he provides something perhaps even more valuable.
“You know exactly what you’re getting from him which allows you to game plan easier on Wednesday and Thursday nights,” Payton said.
Second-year tight end Greg Dulcich knows where to find Manhertz. Out on the practice field. Early. Like, 30 minutes before practice starts, though it seems even earlier than that.
“He’s really the guy who’s out here earliest, he’s out here at like
midnight the night before practice,” Dulcich joked Friday. “We’re kind of piggybacking off of him. Having a guy like him, having leadership like that in our room has been really valuable.”
The basketball coaching staff at Canisius College can probably attest to that. He started three years as a power forward there, averaging 7.7 points and 7.7 rebounds over 95 games (94 starts) from 2011-14.
“There’s a lot of traits that are transferable,” Manhertz said. “You have footwork, you have working in space, spatial awareness, little things like that that translate whether it’s the pass game or the run game. Once I transitioned and I kind of found my role and found my niche, I just tried to master it and surround myself with people that have done it — pick tackles’ brains and things like that.”
Manhertz has seen a lot on the football field and learned a lot, too. He’s refined his game and turned himself into one of the most reliable run-blockers in the business.
“A lot of it is strength, but more so it’s technique,” he said. “You have to be a technician at what you do, have good targets and good angles. But more importantly, the thing that separates good blockers from average blockers is just the mentality. Just having the want-to and having the right mindset to know that you’re just going to go down there and get your hands dirty.”
If Payton and the Broncos are as committed to running the ball as they say they’re going to be, Manhertz is going to be a busy guy.