Evan Engram Camp Update — August 16: More Blocking, and Denver Says That Is the Plan
2026 NFL Season · Monday, Aug 17
Denver is using Engram more as a blocker and run-game piece this camp, framed as a setup for play-action work in Davis Webb's offense. The roster risk from June has gone quiet, but the shape of the role the catches depend on is shifting.
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Evan Engram is spending training camp doing more blocking, and Denver insists that is a feature. Per Lou Scataglia at Predominantly Orange on August 12, the Broncos are using Engram more in blocking situations and run-game involvement, deliberately setting up more play-action work in Davis Webb's offense, where he remains the vertical threat at the position. Bo Nix framed it the same way: more involved in the run game and blocking, and therefore potentially more involved in the play-action game.
The June read on Engram was a two-part bet with one loud risk. The bet: his catch volume is real, he drew a genuine starting share of Denver's targets last season and has a hundred-catch season on his resume, and one touchdown on 50 catches is about the most extreme scoring drought a player can post on real volume, the kind that arithmetic alone says corrects. The risk: the roster spot itself. He carries a big number in the final year of his deal with little guaranteed, an insider had floated that he might not survive to camp, and Denver drafted two tight ends behind him.
This week moved both halves, in opposite directions. The risk got smaller. There is no reporting of the cut chatter that shadowed him earlier in the offseason, and he remains on the roster through the Atlanta game, being coached into a bigger conceptual role rather than eased toward a door. Teams do not build play-action packages around players they plan to release. But the bet got murkier. The June case was built on targets, and a camp identity built on blocking can cut either way. The optimistic reading, the one Nix and the beat are selling, is that the blocking buys deception and the play-action shots buy touchdowns, exactly the correction the thesis wants. The skeptical reading is that blocking snaps are blocking snaps, and every one of them is a route not run.
Does the June read hold? COMPLICATED. The survival risk faded, which helps, but the target-volume engine of the case now depends on Webb's play-action design actually throwing him the ball.
Next week: Engram's routes and targets when the starters play Green Bay, and whether the two rookie tight ends cut into his snaps. We'll check next Sunday.
_Data via nflverse._
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