On Monday, Sean Payton sat through a reel of the Jaguars’ touchdown plays and worried about the one who’d gotten away.
Receiver Tim Patrick was beloved enough once, in Denver, to earn himself a three-year extension alongside Courtland Sutton in the middle of the 2021 season. But a promising career in burnt orange was sidetracked with a torn ACL in 2022 and a torn Achilles in 2023’s minicamp that Payton said “devastated” the building, and the Broncos cut bait before the start of the 2024 season.
Patrick, though, crossed Payton’s mind enough that the head coach texted him in the middle of the 2024 season, while the receiver was with Detroit.