Broncos Bring In Former Colorado WR for Tryout

Sheppard, 23, spent his first four collegiate seasons at Vanderbilt, posting 152 catches for 2,067 yards and 21 touchdowns while earning 2022 second-team All-SEC honors. The 6-foot-3, 190-pound wideout transferred to Boulder ahead of the 2024 campaign; he tallied 621 yards and six receiving scores across 13 games for the Buffaloes.

Several members of the Broncos organization — including general manager George Paton, head coach Sean Payton, and WR coach Keary Colbert — scouted Sheppard at his CU Pro Day. The Louisiana native eventually went undrafted and had a brief stint with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, who released him with a failed physical in May.

"Fifth-year senior with steady catch production over the last four seasons," reads his NFL Media draft profile. "Sheppard has good size and average speed. However, he will run routes below his optimal play speed and leaves too many routes unfinished. His ball skills are much better down the field than underneath and he toggles between a spectacular catch and a frustrating lack of catch finishing. He sees a high number of routes contested but lacks the feistiness to win those battles at a high enough rate."

Sheppard faces a severely uphill battle to crack a log-jammed Broncos WR room comprised of Courtland Sutton, Marvin Mims, Devaughn Vele, Pat Bryant, Troy Franklin, and special-teamer Trent Sherfield — all presumed roster locks.

A more realistic path will be via the practice squad, and Sheppard must overtake the likes of Michael Bandy, AT Perry, Jerjuan Newton, and Joaquin Davis to ensure his retention.

“We’re evaluating everything. We’ll watch the tape. They have a helmet and a jersey on," Payton said Tuesday of the tryout players. "We’re looking closely, ‘Can they help us? What’s the vision? What could they do?’ History has told me, personally, [that] I’ve found guys in this camp that weren’t on the 90 [-man roster] that later became on the 90 and then played the following year. So we have to evaluate them all.”