How hard work, happenstance helped Broncos WR Troy Franklin position himself for Year 2 leap

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Troy Franklin saw the coverage he hoped for and pushed the throttle wide open.

He accelerated with a smoothness that undersold what came next. The wide receiver split Buffalo corner Rasul Douglas to the outside and Taylor Rapp to the inside and glided past both veteran defenders.

Bo Nix dropped a perfect pass over his right shoulder. Touchdown.

Not for the Oregon Ducks, mind you. For the Denver Broncos. In the NFL playoffs. On the road against the No. 2-seeded Buffalo Bills.

The opening-drive lightning bolt gave the underdog Broncos a first-quarter lead and a shot of adrenaline back in January.

When Franklin first hauled in the 43-yard score, he had one simple thought.

"I thought we were about to go stupid and win the game," Franklin told The Denver Post recently.

What followed proved far more sobering for Franklin and the young Broncos.

A 31-7 playoff drubbing.

A season that, in retrospect, for both receiver and team held promise but also came up short of what they wanted.

A season that featured signs suggesting 2025 could be different.

"I thought I had a pretty good year just for where I came in at and everything like that," Franklin said. "It wasn't perfect, but I didn't think it was bad. I finished the year strong and that's really all I care about."

That and making a major Year 2 leap, of course.

Franklin is making noise like that could be in the cards at Broncos training camp. He's playing confident and fast. He's catching the ball down the field and in traffic. He's attempting to show receivers coach Keary Colbert, head coach Sean Payton and the rest of the staff that he's got the whole playbook down and can play anywhere they want him to.

In the early stages of that pursuit, Franklin looks like a guy who could be the No. 2 option in the receiving group behind Courtland Sutton. There are other challengers. Marvin Mims Jr. is perhaps the favorite and certainly the most experienced, while Devaughn Vele is polished and rookie Pat Bryant intriguing.

Franklin, though, has the raw ability to scare defenses and, according to those who see him up close every day, a growing database of knowledge, releases and route-craft that should serve him well this fall.

"He's not thinking as much anymore. He's like me," Nix said recently. "When you go through the first year, you just get kind of drowned in installs and new technique, new fundamentals, new coaches telling you different things. It can be really hard. It can be challenging.

"It's not as easy as just going out there and getting open most of the time, which is what his natural gift is. Now I feel like he can take what he knows, and he can go out there and naturally get open."

The head-scratcher during the 2024 season: When Franklin did get open, he and Nix struggled to turn that separation into explosive plays despite their shared history at Oregon.

Nix targeted Franklin 19 times on passes that traveled 20-plus yards in the air during the regular season, according to NextGenStats. Franklin had just three catches for 85 yards on those targets.

Even with the relatively low probability of completing deep balls down the field, that equated to -29.3% against Next Gen Stats' expected catch rate. Franklin had some of the worst metrics in football when it came to deep balls.

There was a flat-out touchdown drop against Las Vegas early in the season after Franklin roasted corner Jakorian Bennett. A gettable one against Carolina in Week 8. Fourth-down almost-touchdowns that went begging against Baltimore and Indianapolis and a close-but-no-cigar third-and-6 in overtime at Cincinnati in late December.

But then came the touchdown against Buffalo and -- after the initial excitement -- a broader sense of calm for Franklin.

"In hindsight, it was kind of just like a weight off my shoulders, and it kind of let me know that I'm here and I'm meant to play in the NFL," he said. "It was pretty cool for me."

Franklin, though, also knew he needed a big offseason.

"My breaks and my whole game," were on the to-do list, he said. "... I just want to be a well-rounded player and just make sure I'm good all-around."

While training locally at Kula Sports Performance this spring, he, by happenstance, got introduced to Drew Lieberman. Lieberman specializes in receiver play and route running. Perhaps his most well-known client is new Broncos tight end Evan Engram.

Engram had just arrived in town, and he and Lieberman were looking for a place to work out in bad weather. They ended up at Kula, and there was Franklin.

"I saw him play some last year and he's a fast, twitchy, explosive kid who has never really been coached (before the NFL)," Lieberman told The Post. "The problem with sports now and the landscape of high-level football, the coaches move around so much that there's really no system for player development anymore. It's really just guys out there using their natural ability and making plays. ... He was just a kid I saw as this raw ball of clay who has all the potential in the world but just didn't have a full understanding of how to really, properly do things. And that's not a knock on his former coaches; it's more a knock just on the system.

"There's no time for player development."

Franklin only had so many offseason weeks to work with Lieberman, but he got in somewhere around a dozen workouts between Denver and two and a half weeks in Atlanta with other pass-catchers like New York's Wandale Robinson, Las Vegas' Jakobi Meyers and Chicago's Olamide Zaccheaus.

"He took to it really, really quickly and he ran with it," said Lieberman, who added that Franklin, "needed to learn how to play more powerfully."

Franklin learned, notably, from several guys who thrive in the slot. As a rookie, the 2024 fourth-round pick ventured inside or in motion at times but took most of his snaps from the perimeter.

"Him and (Meyers) meshed really well," Lieberman said. "They actually have some similarities. He's faster than Jakobi, but Jakobi has that twitch. Their workouts were pretty cool because they're similar size, similar build, and Kobi helped him a lot."

Franklin has shown just that in training camp's early days.

"He's having a good camp," Payton said Friday. "He's so much more versed in the system, the routes, he's playing 'Z' but he's also playing slot. So he's working at two spots. And then I would say you see his speed and the runaway that you began to see -- even in the Buffalo game in the playoffs, at Cincinnati (last year) -- he can stretch the field."

He reported about 5-7 pounds heavier, he said, noting that he wanted to get stronger without putting on too much weight too quickly.

"I have a nice weight I like to play at where I feel explosive and where I can do everything," Franklin explained. "Not too heavy and not too light. And I just have a lot more room to grow anyway. I don't want to put on everything right now."

He's put it to good use, showing signs from OTAs onward that a breakout might be in the offing.

He's tracked the ball well when it's up in the air. He's caught it consistently in traffic. He's worked back to it over leaping defenders.

And he's done what his natural talent makes look easy: Separate and get open.

"His releases from last year to this year have improved a lot and you can see it in 1-on-1s," said third-year cornerback Riley Moss, who sees Franklin's abilities as up-close as anybody. "It's been good work for us because there's a lot of guys like that that are twitchy off the line and then can get out and run."

That in turn leads to confidence, which leads to playing faster, which leads to more confidence.

"I'm getting a little bit more of, 'Hey, I'm open. Throw me the ball,'" Nix said with a smile. "And that's usually a good thing from guys like that who don't usually do that. I know he's confident right now, and he's practiced really well so far.

"I'm just excited to see him back doing what he does."