What You Need to Know:

-- Hamler was the 2nd WR Denver drafted this year, in Round 2.

-- He stands just 5’9 and 178 pounds.

-- Denver had just 1 WR top 52 targets last season.

The Size

Many draftniks spent the mock-draft season assigning Henry Ruggs to the Broncos. When the Raiders made that impossible, we had to wait just 1 more round for Denver to draft its speedster.

A hamstring injury kept Hamler from recording an official 40 time at the Scouting Combine. But he’s fast. He’s also tiny, though, and dropped a lot of passes over 2 years at Penn State.

The first part of that probably matters more. Since 2000, just 6 WRs have cracked 2,000 yards in the NFL after entering the league at 5’9 or shorter and 180 pounds or less. Cole Beasley leads that group at 4,049 yards (and counting). The other 5:

Jamison Crowder
Taylor Gabriel
Andrew Hawkins
Marquise Goodwin
Tavon Austin

Producing at the level of Beasley or Crowder would make a solid NFL career for Hamler, but it’s not an exciting comparison group for fantasy owners.

The Situation

What Hamler has going for him -- besides the speed -- is potential immediate opportunity. Courtland Sutton ranked 18th in the league in targets last year and 7th in target share. DaeSean Hamilton checked in next among Denver wideouts at 125th in targets (with 52).

Jerry Jeudy came off the board a round ahead of Hamler and figures to get the 1st shot at playing #2 wideout to Sutton’s lead. But there’s room for Hamler to earn the #3 gig quickly, with Hamilton and Tim Patrick the main competition.

How many targets will the Broncos spread around? That remains to be seen. New OC Pat Shurmur hasn’t proved especially run- or pass-favoring over his 11 seasons as an NFL OC or HC across 5 franchises. He takes over a Denver offense that promoted Drew Lock to starter for last season’s final 5 games -- and then signed the most expensive RB in free agency (at least among th…