From the very first play of the 2016 season, Demaryius Thomas knew something wasn’t right.
“At first I wasn’t [in pain], but after the first game against the Carolina Panthers, that’s when I started feeling all of the pain” Thomas said. “It came back after one hit, the first play of the game. And that’s when I felt my hip again. It just lingered.”
As the Denver Broncos’ Pro Bowl wide receiver would come to find out, that hip injury wasn’t going anywhere anytime soon.
Despite an injured hip, Thomas went on to a rather productive 2016 season. He started all 16 games, catching 90 passes for 1,083 yards and five touchdowns, earning him a trip to his fifth consecutive Pro Bowl.
While Thomas put up solid numbers in 2016, he’s experienced a regression in receptions, receiving yards and touchdowns each year since 2014 when he caught 111 passes for 1,619 yards and 11 touchdowns.
In two years under former Denver Broncos head coach Gary Kubiak, Thomas didn’t play like the Demaryius Thomas of old. 2017 could be a different story.
A happy Thomas took the podium at UCHealth Training Center following Thursday’s OTA practice.
“This is the best I’ve felt my entire career,” Thomas said. “That kind of helps as well. If you go out without pain, you can run routes on this side or that side. It’s basically getting equal now. There’s more joy. I’m having a lot more fun. I’m not worried about guys covering me on one side or the other. I’m enjoying it.”
Thomas will enter the 2017 season with not only a clean bill of health, but a clean slate. He’ll have Mike McCoy, his offensive coordinator during the first three years of his career, calling plays for him once again.
Since becoming the primary receiving target in 2012 under McCoy, Thomas has posted five consecutive 1,000-yard seasons and been to five Pro Bowls. He’s ready to pick up where they left off after the 2012 season, in a pass-oriented offense.
“It really didn’t matter to me,” Thomas said of the switching of offensive coordinators, but admitted, “Of course, I’m a receiver, so I like to catch the ball. We used to run more with Kubiak’s offense. I’m excited about having this old offense back.”
“There are a lot of the same concepts that we ran back in the day,” McCoy said on Thursday about his current offense. “He’s done a great job of picking it up, and he’s a great resource for the players. Having Demaryius and [WR] Emmanuel [Sanders] in the system also – they’re way ahead of everyone else right now.”
McCoy will also inherit a clean slate to kick off the 2017 season, as well. Since leaving the Broncos after the 2012 season to accept a head-coaching job with the San Diego Chargers, only two players remain from McCoy’s old offense.
“The common themes are Demaryius and [TE] Virgil [Green],” McCoy said. “Other than that, everybody is new. There are plenty of new bodies here since – and that’s this league, there is turnover every year.”
McCoy will be tasked with improving a Broncos offense that finished 22nd in scoring and 27th in yards in 2016. McCoy doesn’t worry about the past, though.
“I’m more worried about the future and what we’re doing moving forward,” McCoy said. “You go back and analyze, regardless of where you are or what team you’re on, you analyze the pluses and minuses. Really, we focus more on moving forward and what type of system we want to implement here and what we want to do. I don’t want to overanalyze what they’ve done in the past. There are a lot of really good things, some things you’d do differently, some things we aren’t doing. The big thing is implement our system moving forward.”
With Mike McCoy back in the building and a healthy Demaryius Thomas, the Broncos might have found a way back into the productivity they experienced years ago.
