involving grown-up games of red-light-green-light<\/a>, buoyed him to a big Year Two leap: 65 catches, 709 yards, six touchdowns.<\/p>\nFranklin hasn\u2019t yet had an end-of-year conversation with Payton, 10 days after the Broncos\u2019 season suddenly ended in the AFC Championship. But the 22-year-old receiver\u2019s mind is dead-set on his 2026 measurables.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m going to get a 1,000-yard season,\u201d Franklin told The Denver Post Thursday, in between rounds at Super Bowl Radio Row in San Francisco. \u201cI\u2019m going to double up the touchdowns. And receptions, I need to probably get about 80 or 100.\u201d<\/p>\n
So, Franklin was asked, does he see himself making that\u00a0leap?<\/p>\n
\u201cYeah, yeah, for sure, man,\u201d Franklin said. \u201cBecause I could\u2019ve done it this year. But I think, obviously, in the beginning of the year, things were a little \u2014 they weren\u2019t how they were in the backend of the year, just with how clean we were as an offense, penalty-wise, just being on the same page and stuff like that.\u201d<\/p>\n
The second-year wideout\u2019s sudden absence was a not-so-quiet subplot in the Broncos\u2019 10-7 loss to the Patriots, as Franklin missed his first game of the 2025 season with a hamstring strain. Franklin didn\u2019t have a catch in Denver\u2019s previous divisional-round win over the Bills. But his presence was sorely missed against New England, as head coach Sean Payton turned to a flurry of screens to try and generate some traction in the flurries of second-half snow that hit Empower Field.<\/p>\n
Franklin finished second among all NFL wide receivers in 2025 in screen catches and fourth in yards on screens, according to the NFL\u2019s Next Gen Stats. He, however, could only watch in the snow.<\/p>\n
\u201cKudos to the Patriots, man,\u201d Franklin said. \u201cThey got it done \u2014 when they needed to get those situations and have \u2018em, they had \u2018em. And they were just better than us that day, man, for sure.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt definitely sucks, though, not having the full team. I think it definitely would be different if we had a full team. But that\u2019s a part of the game, man.\u201d<\/p>\n
Franklin said his hamstring is now \u201cpretty good,\u201d hasn\u2019t needed surgery of any kind, and he\u2019s been back to running the past couple of days.<\/p>\n
He\u2019ll now go into his third season in Denver with a new position coach after Payton fired receivers coach Keary Colbert two days after the Broncos\u2019 loss. Payton made multiple references to reporters after the game that the Broncos\u2019 pass-catchers had too many drops in 2025, and Franklin was certainly part of the problem: he finished tied with teammate Courtland Sutton for the second-most drops in the NFL (eight), according to Pro Football Focus.<\/p>\n
Franklin shrugged off the room\u2019s struggles when asked about drops and staff changes in San Francisco.<\/p>\n
\u201cTo be honest, everybody in the league drops the ball, so \u2014 what are we talking about here?\u201d Franklin said.<\/p>\n
\u201cYeah, he said something about passes being dropped the whole year, whatever,\u201d Franklin continued, when asked if he\u2019d seen Payton\u2019s comments on drops. \u201cYeah, and I agree, to a certain extent. But, you know, even the best \u2014 quote-unquote \u2014 in the league are dropping passes. So it can go both ways.\u201d<\/p>\n
Franklin, though, does want to specifically continue working on his releases off the ball and strength in order to \u201cget me to that next step,\u201d as he put it. The 6-foot-3 receiver ended his second season in Denver weighing around 184 pounds, he said; he said he plans to add roughly 10 pounds in the offseason and report to training camp at 195.<\/p>\n
The Broncos\u2019 view on Franklin\u2019s development could heavily influence their offseason approach to a receiver group that finished paper-thin in the AFC title game after injuries to Franklin and rookie Pat Bryant. General manager George Paton said in a postseason presser that Denver is \u201calways looking to improve at every position,\u201d and the Broncos clearly need more depth in the receiver room.<\/p>\n
If they believe Franklin can hit another leap next to Sutton, as Franklin himself does, Denver likely wouldn\u2019t need to sell the farm for a high-profile name.<\/p>\n
\u201cJust be a little stronger, be able to just play through contact a little more,\u201d Franklin said, of adding muscle in the offseason. \u201cAnd everything else will be set.\u201d<\/p>\n
Want more Broncos news? Sign up for the Broncos Insider to get all our NFL analysis.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"SAN FRANCISCO \u2014 In their end-of-year meeting a year ago, Sean Payton told Troy Franklin that he wanted…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":732321,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2062],"tags":[232,1270,231,258,2426,7,1272,929,926,6,1011,1813,9,505,1275],"class_list":{"0":"post-732320","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-denver-broncos","8":"tag-broncos","9":"tag-courtland-sutton","10":"tag-denver","11":"tag-denver-broncos","12":"tag-denverbroncos","13":"tag-football","14":"tag-george-paton","15":"tag-latest-headlines","16":"tag-more-broncos-news","17":"tag-nfl","18":"tag-pat-bryant","19":"tag-sean-payton","20":"tag-sports","21":"tag-super-bowl","22":"tag-troy-franklin"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nfl\/116020881939963383","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/732320","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=732320"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/732320\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/732321"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=732320"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=732320"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=732320"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}