DENVER — Zach Allen was pumping his Old Hickory, steel-pressed, maple-wood baseball bat up and down behind the Coors Field batting cage.
As he got the feel for the Home Run Derby for charity he was about to participate in, the 6-foot-5, 285-pound slugger talked about his day job, which is as a football defensive lineman for the Denver Broncos.
“Guys are itching to get to training camp which is really good sign,’’ Allen said, near the end of his conversation with a 9NEWS reporter.
VIDEO ABOVE: Broncos minicamp recap
Hold on. The Broncos’ two-month-long offseason program had just concluded about three hours earlier. Vacation had just begun. Allen would show off a Frank Thomas-like, one-hand follow-through power stroke in the second round, knocking a ball into the left-field bleachers.
Guys are itching to get to training camp?
“I’m excited to see where it is with us,’’ Allen said. “Because I know how the defense looks when it’s right. And it can be really good. We saw glimpses of it last year.’’
Allen had a solid first season with the Broncos in 2023. Having signed a big free-agent contract to replace Dre’Mont Jones, Allen played a remarkable 81% of the defensive snaps in all 17 games. He had five sacks and three more tackles for loss among his 60 tackles. He forced a fumble and deflected a pass.
Having played two years with J.J. Watt for defensive coordinator Vance Joseph in Arizona, Allen is at least equally as pumped about playing this year again for Joseph with the Broncos’ newly acquired defensive lineman John Franklin-Myers.
“It took J.J. and I really a year, maybe a year and some change to figure out how to play off of each other,’’ Allen said. “With John and I it took a week, week and a half.
“John is everything I expected. I think this new style, too, really benefits guys like (Broncos nose tackle) D.J. (Jones). When he was in San Fran he played a real similar style, that attack style, and he is really at ease and making as good of a go as you’d want.”
New style?
“It’s more attack,’’ Allen said. “Vance’s scheme is still the same but we were more of a read front last year. This year it’s more get-off. It’s the way we played in Arizona mostly. I’m really excited to see how it goes.”
Talk to Zach Allen and you come away thinking the Broncos can make a deep run in the playoffs this season. Then you remember the low expectations the oddsmakers (5.5 wins for over/under? Favored in only two of 17 games?) and national pundits have for this year’s Broncos and you pump the brakes.
Allen had not heard the pessimism. But he does feels the optimism.
“Every year you never know what’s going to happen,’’ he said. “The difference in talent across the NFL is so small. It’s all about culture. Last year, if you looked at the preseason stuff, it was all over the place. There’s always teams that no one expected to be good.
“All that stuff, you just can’t listen to it. You have to just control your own thing. The reason why sometimes teams with the worst record beats teams with the best record is the talent is pretty similar across the board.’’
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