Right now, it’s a mystery regarding what the San Francisco Giants are going to do ahead of the July 30 trade deadline.

Whatever direction they take is going to impact this franchise moving forward.

This is a market favoring the selling teams with so many contenders searching for additions who can help them get into the playoffs and potentially make a championship run. While the Giants don’t have a ton of attractive pieces, anything they sell will likely get them an inflated package in return.

Blake Snell is the one name who multiple teams around the league would love to get their hands on since he’s started looking like the elite pitcher he’s been throughout his career.

However, it seems like if San Francisco is going to sell, they are already having conversations regarding one particular player.

According to Mike Puma of The New York Post, they have discussed a trade that would send their star outfielder Michael Conforto back to the New York Mets.

This is a prime example of the Wild Card race being so tight that multiple teams are looking to add players. The Mets entered this season with the plan of trying to contend in the present, but also looking ahead to the future.

When they got off to a horrendous start, it seemed like they would pull the plug on their year.

Instead, they have fought their way back and hold the top Wild Card spot in the National League. Now, they reportedly are looking to add someone like Conforto who can help them get into the postseason.

For the Giants, the veteran outfielder has been seen as a player who could be on the move. He’s in the final year of his $36 million deal he signed heading into 2023, so if they don’t move him right now, they would lose him for nothing.

The emergence of Heliot Ramos in the outfield and Tyler Fitzgerald as a utilityman might make this decision much easier. San Francisco could sell off some of their fringe pieces like Conforto while still keeping this roster in tact for a late playoff push.

New York would only be getting Conforto as a rental, but the fact he spent seven seasons with them at the Major League level and slashed .255/.356/.468 during his tenure, should give them confidence he can come in and provide solid at-bats.

The Giants likely wouldn’t get a whole lot back in return, but something is better than nothing.

The Denver Broncos have had some good fortune with a trio of oft-injured players while getting some not-so-good news with a fourth. As they attempt to climb out of the NFL doldrums and improve upon Sean Payton’s eight-win first season, the Broncos need these players to step up.

These are positions that are widely considered a concern for the Broncos, as they need help with each. Those four positions: tight end, safety, linebacker, and wide receiver. Let’s examine each of these four players and why the Broncos are relying on them to get and stay healthy in 2024.

As training camp got underway, there was good news on the Dulcich front. He avoided the physically unable to perform (PUP) list and was ready to go as camp practices got underway. With a few days of practices behind them, it’s been good for the young tight end, but he’s always delivered solid practices when healthy.

As a rookie, Dulcich showed he could affect an offense, and while the time was limited, he also revealed why Payton was calling him the ‘joker’ before the 2023 season — until he got hurt before halftime in the season opener. In the 2023 season-opener against the Las Vegas Raiders, the Broncos’ offense completely shifted after Dulcich went down.

Without Dulcich, the Broncos ran 12 more plays for 11 more yards than when they had him and needed a defensive pass interference to help keep a drive alive. Dulcich was helping create favorable matchups for the Broncos offense, so his two catches for 22 yards don’t fully reflect his impact on that game before he pulled his hamstring. He only saw time in one additional game later on in the season, being sidelined with an additional foot injury.

Dulcich’s promise as a receiver is enticing. But his hamstring injuries date all the way back to his rookie year.

This is why the Broncos are still sticking with Dulcich despite the issue of staying on the field. He could be the guy for them at the tight end position, but he has to remain on the field. There’s no way around it, though; the Broncos are betting on a guy who has played 529 snaps over two seasons when the offense has played 2,208 snaps over that span, or 24% of the offense snaps. 

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Sterns is entering the fourth and final year of his rookie contract. After being a part-time rookie, he has barely played the last two seasons.

In fact, by the start of the 2024 season, Sterns will have played two regular-season snaps in over 700 days. The bad news is that he’s starting out on the PUP list, though he is expected back before the start of the season. 

Sterns was purported to be a part of a three-way battle for a starting safety spot, vying with P.J. Locke and Brandon Jones. The Broncos are looking to replace Justin Simmons, which is a challenging task.

Sterns was once tabbed as a starter, but the injuries have derailed that momentum. The loser of the three-way battle will likely still have a significant role on defense as the third safety, unless JL Skinner can win that spot. If Skinner rises up, the Broncos won’t be so dependent on Sterns snapping his injury bad-luck streak.

In the three years Sterns has been with the team, the Broncos have had roughly 3,370 snaps on defense, and he has played 587 of them, or about 17.5% of the snaps, with 53% coming in his 2021 rookie season. His injuries have been on the severe side, and while they don’t typically linger (like Dulcich’s hamstrings), they do cause the player to miss significant time.

Those injuries can also take a more significant toll on the player’s body than the smaller lingering issues. That said, after the second day of training camp practice, Coach Payton said, “[Sterns] has a long road ahead of him,” as he works back from his knee injury to start last season. 

Griffith is battling for the starting linebacker spot to replace Josey Jewell with Cody Barton. Griffith missed all of the 2023 season but played 591 snaps between 2021 and 2022, slightly better than Sterns.

Griffith, like Sterns, showed flashes of being a quality starter but has needed help staying on the field. Griffith has a chance to be a starter now, but like the others, he has to remain on the field. 

However, out of all the players, no one has had a worse few years than Patrick, who suffered season-ending injuries in 2022 and 2023 training camp, a year apart. He’s back, and based on reports out of minicamp and OTAs, he’s back with a vengeance.

The Broncos have reworked their wide receiver room and even adjusted Courtland Sutton’s contract, but they still need Patrick back at a high level. Before each of the injuries in the last two seasons, some reporters suggested Patrick would be the Broncos’ top receiver. 

There is good and bad news for the injured players the Broncos are betting on. They need each other to step up, but even more importantly, they need each other to get healthy, stay healthy, and be available. That’s the first step to making something of the 2024 season.

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RENTON, Wash. – Coming off the best statistical season of his NFL career, Tre Brown isn’t being cautious setting lofty expectations for himself as he enters the final year of his rookie contract with the Seattle Seahawks.

After playing a career-high in snaps while starting seven games for Seattle last season, Brown has been a fixture in the team’s first-team defense throughout the offseason program into training camp, seeing the bulk of the snaps at left cornerback opposite of Riq Woolen in nickel and dime sets. Believing his best football has yet to come, he’s eager to show what he can do in a new defensive scheme implemented by first-time head coach Mike Macdonald.

“I want to be the best on the field this year,” Brown proclaimed before Friday’s third training camp practice. “I got high standards, Pro Bowl, All-Pro, nothing less.”

When healthy, Brown has performed at a high level for the Seahawks, including recording 10 tackles and a pass breakup in five games after bursting into the starting lineup as a rookie. That season, he allowed just a 47.1 percent completion rate and 59.7 passer rating on 17 targets, looking the part of a potential long-term starter on the outside.

But the former fourth-round pick out of Oklahoma suffered a patellar tendon injury midway through his rookie season and a lengthy recovery limited Brown to only six games and 21 defensive snaps in 2022, putting his status in the secondary up in the air, especially after the team invested a top-five pick in Devon Witherspoon in the 2023 NFL Draft.

Bouncing back thanks to a normal offseason without rehab, Brown wound up beating out incumbent Mike Jackson for the starting left cornerback job last summer. Even with him taking on a diminished role for the Seahawks in the second half after struggling with defensive penalties, he set new career-highs with 34 tackles and two interceptions, returning one of those picks for a crucial defensive touchdown in a Week 2 win over the Lions, along with adding two forced fumbles and a sack.

Since the start of spring practices in May, Brown has looked quite comfortable in Macdonald’s defense, regularly getting his hands on the football for pass breakups in team and 7-on-7 sessions. In Friday’s third practice, he frequently jostled with DK Metcalf, winning several battles between the two in the red zone period, including deflecting a goal line fade. He’s also taken on a more vocal role in the secondary with communication being emphasized by Macdonald and the rest of the coaching staff.

“It’s been a lot to learn,” Brown explained. “But it’s really simple, a lot of things that you just see out there. Everything is really kind of like simplified in terms of the defense and it builds confidence in everybody as a whole because, even though he throws a lot at us, but when you can see how we can do it, it brings so much more to the defense.”

As far as fit is concerned, Brown’s strengths should mesh quite well with what Macdonald has asked his cornerbacks to do in the past as the Ravens defensive coordinator, including playing aggressive press coverage on the outside. Per Pro Football Focus, Brown ranked first among qualified cornerbacks with an 88.5 coverage grade in press coverage, intercepting two passes and forcing five incompletions on 22 targets.

In a very limited sample size, Brown has produced a sack on two blitzes, and given Macdonald’s penchant for sending defensive backs in blitz and sim pressure packages, he could have more opportunities to showcase that aspect of his game in 2024. Aside from leaving a few too many tackles on the field, which plagued Seattle’s entire defense the past two years, Brown has also been a serviceable run defender in his three NFL seasons with 64.0 or better grades the past two years via PFF.

With much still to prove and free agency looming next March, Brown isn’t thinking about his NFL future and he’s solely focused on controlling what he can control in the present with another opportunity to show what he can do in front of a new coaching staff.

“I say it all the time, I’m a really nice player,” Brown said confidently. “I’m a player who makes plays, especially in crunch time, you always see me show up. And you’re going to see more of that this year.”

Looking towards a crucial season, Brown will be counting on a clean bill of health, as durability has been the biggest factor that has held him back from fulfilling his potential to this point. His knee injury suffered in 2021 ultimately cost him a full season’s worth of games, setting back his development and preventing the organization from fully investing in him as a starting option. He will also have to beat out Jackson, who started 21 games over the past two seasons, for the second time in as many years.

Assuming he can avoid the injury bug that plagued him earlier in his career, the 26-year old Brown hopes to demonstrate better consistency as an all-around player and in turn, earn the trust from a new coaching staff that he didn’t from the previous regime. Coupled with a scheme that he believes will best accentuate his strengths and skill set, he’s hoping to finally enjoy the breakout season he has been on the cusp of since breaking into the league.

“I’m still coming back from not having played for so long, so now that the game is slowing down for me, you’re gonna see a lot more of the production you saw from me last year.”