As famed country singer Kenny Rogers once crooned, "you've got to know when to fold 'em," and the Denver Broncos need to listen to that advice when it comes to one underperforming veteran.
That player? Tight end Adam Trautman, who is entering his sixth NFL season and has just failed to make much of an impact.
Last season, Trautman caught 13 passes for 188 yards and two touchdowns for the Broncos. He's caught more touchdowns in his two seasons with Denver than he did in his first three years with the Saints, but does that really mean much of anything?
Why the Broncos need to replace Adam Trautman
While there was hope when New Orleans spent a third-round pick on Trautman that he could develop into a solid tight end, that simply hasn't been the case. His best season was 2021, when he caught 27 passes for 263 yards and two touchdowns.
It's not that Trautman is necessarily a bad player, but the Broncos are a team on the rise with an exciting young quarterback, Bo Nix. The team needs to do whatever it can to surround Nix with talent that can lead to wins while Nix is still on his rookie contract.
One way Denver is trying to do that in 2025 is by adding tight end Evan Engram. Though he spent last year injured and played in just nine games, Engram is only a season removed from his best NFL campaign, as he caught 114 passes for 963 yards and four touchdowns in 2023 for Jacksonville.
Assuming Engram is healthy, he should take virtually all of the snaps as Denver's top tight end, relegating Trautman and whoever else makes the final roster to only getting snaps in sets with multiple tight ends on the field.
Theoretically, Denver can go into 2025 with Trautman as the No. 2 tight end, but is that worth it? Third-year player Nate Adkins caught three touchdowns last season and makes significantly less money than Trautman — per Spotrac, Trautman isset to make $4.5 million in 2025 while Adkins is set to make just slightly over $1 million. The Broncos could save $2.5 million this year by releasing Trautman or $3 million by trading him. The team also used a seventh-round pick on tight end Caleb Lohner and still have Lucas Krull on the roster as well.
So, the Broncos could move on from the underperforming veteran while opening up additional cap space to use on the rest of the roster?
I'm not saying it's a guarantee, but the Broncos could still use some new weapons for Nix and while there's about $16.5 million in cap space still to work with at the moment, every dollar can count. Moving on from Trautman likely won't impact the on-field product and would have the benefit of giving Denver a little more wiggle room to seek out remaining free agents.
Denver probably doesn't have to move on from Adam Trautman right now, but with Engram now on the roster, there's not much incentive to keep him around either. The team may as well make the move now so they can make better use of that roster spot.