Caleb
Lohner.
Caleb
Lohner.
Utah
"Four catches, four touchdowns, 57 snaps: Lohner is not a football evaluation so much as a bet that a Division I basketball body can be taught the position from scratch."Pre-draft read
Lohner is a 6-7, 250-pound movement piece who played one season of college football after four years of Division I basketball, and Utah used him the way you would expect: attach, release into the red zone, win a jump ball over a smaller defender. The mechanics are a rebounder's — he boxes out, times the leap and finishes above the defender's hands.
The secondary trait is a basketball body control that shows up on the fade and the corner route, where he can bend a defensive back off his spot and shield the ball. He is a non-factor as an in-line blocker at this stage, with technique and pad level well behind his frame. The signature is the post-up rep in the low red zone, which is where every touchdown of his college career came from.
Tight end friendly play-action offense that uses 12 personnel and manufactures red-zone isolation looks for a big-bodied receiving option
Year 1: practice-squad developmental piece and situational red-zone package. Ceiling: a TE2 who plays 15-20 snaps a game as a matchup mismatch inside the twenty.
A run-first offense that asks its tight ends to block down on ends and lead through the hole, where his lack of in-line technique would take him off the field entirely.
He needs a staff with a track record of converting basketball athletes and the patience to hold a roster spot for two years.
Utah Football: Caleb Lohner Post Up Fade
The signature red-zone rep: box out, high point, finish.
Denver Broncos Select Utah TE Caleb Lohner In Seventh Round Of 2025 NFL Draft
Draft-day selection with college touchdown footage.
Sean Payton believes there's potential in TE Caleb Lohner
Payton explains the basketball-convert bet behind the pick.
Lohner is a developmental project in the purest sense. He spent 2020-21 at BYU and 2022-23 at Baylor as a basketball forward, transferred to Utah in 2024, and learned the tight end position on the job. Everything on the tape is athletic instinct: catch radius, hand-eye coordination, and a comfort competing for the ball in a crowd.
The football sample is almost nonexistent. He played 57 snaps in 2024 and caught four passes for 54 yards, every one of them a touchdown, plus a two-point conversion. That ratio is a novelty, not a projection. He has essentially no route-running library, no reps against pro-level leverage, and no meaningful blocking tape, and the concern was always whether the football habits could be built in time.
Boards treated him as a priority-free-agent-caliber developmental flier, the type teams stash rather than draft. Denver spent its final pick on him because the team has previously invested in this exact profile with Jimmy Graham, and at 241 the cost of a two-year lottery ticket on a 6-7 red-zone weapon is close to zero.
- 01
Red-zone catch radius
6-7 with a rebounder's timing, and he attacks the fade above the defender's hands rather than waiting for the ball to arrive.
- 02
Boxing-out instincts
years of basketball taught him to seal leverage with his body, which turns tight windows into catchable throws inside the ten.
- 03
Hand-eye coordination
plucks contested throws cleanly and adjusts to off-target balls, the trait that survived the sport change intact.
- 04
Frame and physical projection
a 250-pound body that can carry more weight without losing the movement skill that made him worth a pick.
- 05
Learning curve
went from zero football experience to a scoring role in one season, evidence that coaching sticks quickly with him.
- 01
Blocking is unbuilt
pad level, hand placement and anchor are all beginner-level, which keeps him off the field on early downs in a pro offense.
- 02
No route library
the college usage was fades and corners in the red zone; he has never been asked to run a full tree on time.
- 03
Sample size
57 college snaps and four targets is not enough tape to grade traits with confidence, and none of it came against pro-caliber leverage.
- 04
Football age
he turns pro at 23 with one season of experience, so the development clock runs against a roster-bubble player.
| Yr | Team | G | Rec | Yds | TD |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2024 | Utah | 4 | 4 | 54 | 4 |
| Career | — | 4 | 4 | 54 | 4 |
A dash means the figure is not published by a source we trust — never a zero we invented.
- Cameron RisingQB16%
- Brant KuitheTE10%
- Dorian SingerWR8%
#11 of 18 tracked contributors · Produced well above his snap share · Offense explosiveness 1.30 (p69) · CFBD — usage x PPA per tracked player
Big-framed convert who lives on practice squads and camp rosters.
The template Payton is chasing; requires a leap nobody should bank on.
Athletic body without a blocking floor, off the roster inside two years.
Everything above is the pre-draft evaluation. This section is what actually happened — updated year over year.
Lohner never got a regular-season snap as a rookie. Denver waived him at the 2025 cutdown, re-signed him to the practice squad the next day, and kept him there all season as a developmental body behind an established tight end room. He was elevated once, for the January playoff game, and finished the year with no catches. The Broncos signed him to a reserve/future deal for 2026, which tells you they still like the raw material enough to spend another camp on it.
In hindsight the pick was priced correctly. Nobody spends 241 expecting a contributor, and Payton bought the one trait that cannot be coached — a 6-7 frame with real hands — while accepting that everything else has to be built. The honest read a year later is that the flags held: without a blocking floor, a fade-only tight end has no path to Sunday snaps. He remains a project rather than a bust, because a seventh-round basketball convert who survives a full year on the practice squad is roughly the median outcome for this bet.