K.J. HAMLER CARD
Second-team All-Big Ten, 2019
Second-round draft choice, No. 46, 2020
Torn ACL, 2021
By Lenn Robbins
K.J. Hamler has been down this painful road before.
He transferred to IMG Academy in Florida for his senior season of high school. But Hamler tore his ACL before the first game and never played. Hamler went on to show game-breaking speed at Penn State and became a second-round pick of the Broncos.
After a promising rookie season in which he made 30 catches for 381 yards and three touchdowns, Hamler was poised for a breakout season in 2021. Instead, his heart was broken again when he suffered another ACL injury in the third game of the season.
No wonder why Hamler is so optimistic about his return in 2022.
"I'm not starting from scratch; I'm starting from experience," Hamler told reporters. "When people saw me running routes at 19, 20 miles an hour, seven months out and I'm running 25-yard outs and stuff like that, it's just -- it's a mentality.
“Twenty percent is mental. After you get past that hump, it's fine. So I really wasn't scared to go out there and do any routes or cut any type of way. I just try to do it how I used to, and it just felt normal."
Hamler can give the Broncos a big-time threat in the return game as well as forming one of the NFL’s most dynamic receiving corps along with Courtland Sutton and Jerry Jeudy. Hamler has experience at this comeback thing.