Horse Tracks: When Sean Payton drafts a running back or wide receiver it usually works out

There is a long draft history over Sean Payton’s multi-decade career as a head coach, so the sample size is big enough for our purposes.

As we continue to analyze the Denver Broncos draft class this week, we find little nuggets of information that, frankly, we never looked for in years’ past because the only thing that mattered was finding a quarterback. Now that Bo Nix is here, we get to have fun again.

In Sean Payton’s career as a head coach, he has drafted a lot of players in the first three rounds. However, looking at his picks in at the running back and wide receiver position produced a couple of interesting lists.

At running back, RJ Harvey is the third highest overall pick in Payton’s career. One could argue, that the other three guys on that list have all had impressive NFL careers. While Reggie Bush probably didn’t fully live up to his number two overall selection, he was pretty good with how Payton used him while with the New Orleans Saints piling up over 4,200 total yards and 33 total touchdowns in five seasons.

Of course, we all can remember how effective the Mark Ingram / Alvin Kamara combo was for a few seasons. In short, I think we can trust Sean Payton will find ways to give Harvey opportunities to do some home run like things in Denver.

The wide receiver list is interesting too, because it also include another Broncos’ draft pick.

Robert Meachem is probably the worst of the bunch and never really lived up to his first round hype, but the rest of the Saints’ picks have had outstanding NFL careers. While Marvin Mims Jr. is still on the ascent in his career, he is turning into an outstanding home run threat in the passing game and is a damn good kick returner too having earned Pro Bowl spots in each of his first two seasons as a kick return specialist.

The Broncos offense looks improved, but it’ll be interesting to see how that first down-second down running back competition looks come training camp. The biggest question is whether or not Audric Estime is ready to step into that type of role.

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