Cardinals reportedly meet with former Broncos tight end

The Arizona Cardinals have reportedly met with former Denver Broncos tight end Jake Butt about a possible role with this year’s team.

Looking at the current roster of the Arizona Cardinals, it’s difficult to find very many weaknesses. They’ve got one of the top young quarterbacks, arguably the top wide receiver in the NFL, and a defense full of talented playmakers.

However, there are still a few position groups that the Cardinals could look to improve before the start of the 2021 season.

Arizona’s current group of tight ends is not one that is going to strike fear into their opponents. So it wasn’t surprising to find out that the Cardinals reportedly brought in a former Denver Broncos tight end for a recent workout.

Former Denver Broncos tight end Jake Butt could be an underrated addition to the Arizona Cardinals roster

Jake Butt has been in the NFL for the last four seasons with the Broncos. However, Butt only managed to appear in a total of eight games since entering the league in 2017 thanks to several injuries.

The 6-foot-6, 250-pound tight end was a productive player during his college career at Michigan, catching at least 45 passes for 540 yards and three touchdowns in each of his final two years at the school. In his senior season at Michigan, he was a First-Team All-American and he won the John Mackey Award, which is given to the top college tight end in the nation.

However, after suffering a brutal knee injury in the final game of his college career (which included a torn ACL and nerve damage), his time in the NFL hasn’t gone according to plan.

After recovering from his initial knee injury, Butt wound up tearing his ACL again in 2018. This injury not only caused him to miss the majority of the 2018 season, but it kept him out of the 2019 campaign as well.

So in four years with Denver, he managed to catch a total of 10 passes for 90 yards in just eight appearances.

If Butt can stay healthy, his upside is tremendous, and this is probably what convinced Arizona to bring him in for a workout this week, as ESPN’s Field Yates reported.

Would adding him to the roster cause as much excitement for Cardinals fans as it would if they traded for current Philadelphia Eagles tight end Zach Ertz? Of course not, however, Butt could prove to be worth the gamble for a much lower price than what it would take for Arizona to acquire Ertz.