Amid the football recruiting gold mine of southern California, Greg Dulcich slipped through the cracks.
As a receiver at St. Francis in La Canada Flintridge, Dulcich didn’t have any college offers coming out of high school. He ended up at UCLA as a preferred walk-on, when then-Bruins tight end coach Derek Sage saw the potential in a wiry 6-foot-3, 210-pound freshman.
“You watch his high school highlight tape, he’s just running by people on deep balls consistently and making tough 50/50 catches,” Sage recalled. “I wondered why he wasn’t getting offered… He was just a classic tweener (with his size) who was super under-recruited.”
Now, Dulcich returns to his old SoCal stomping grounds as a promising talent for the Broncos — a bright spot in a dismal year for the league’s worst offense (15.6 points per game). In his first NFL homecoming in October, when Dulcich made his debut at SoFi Stadium in Week 6 against the Chargers, he caught two passes for 44 yards, including a 39-yard score that was the Broncos’ lone touchdown.
That performance cemented Dulcich as the team’s starting tight end over Albert Okwuegbunam, who has barely played since. Dulcich has 29 catches for 372 yards and one touchdown in nine games after missing the first five weeks with a hamstring injury. He is the team’s primary receiving tight end, with veterans Eric Saubert, Eric Tomlinson and Andrew Beck usually serving as blockers.
“I’m happy with the progress that I’ve made since coming back from the hamstring,” Dulcich said. “There’s still a lot to improve on and things to work on down the stretch, but I wanted to come in here and earn the coaches’ trust, and do whatever I can to help the team. It’s nice that I’ve been able to do a bit of both those things.”
The Broncos’ third-round pick at No. 80 overall, the 6-foot-4 Dulcich was the third tight end off the board in this year’s draft, behind Colorado State’s Trey McBride (the John Mackey Award winner went in the second round at No. 55 to the Cardinals) and Virginia’s Jelani Woods (third round, No. 73 to the Colts). Dulcich has outperformed both players in terms of catches and yardage.
Sage believes Dulcich is only scratching the surface of what he can do in the NFL, especially if he mirrors the success he had at UCLA where he went from walk-on to two-year starter.
The turning point in Dulcich’s college career came in 2020 when his play at spring practice earned him a scholarship. Daily helpings of his mom’s calorie-packed Croatian meat pies during the COVID shutdown helped the tight end beef up, going from around 230 pounds to 245 over a couple of months.
“He came back from the shutdown and he was making explosive plays, catching every ball, making explosive blocks, beating scholarship corners and running by people just like we saw on his high school film, and just like we’ve already seen him do this year with Denver,” Sage said. “That was his big breakout — he had probably the best three days of practice ever (prior to earning the scholarship) — and you’re seeing those same signs on a different level this year.”
While the Broncos are still experimenting with their usage of Dulcich — they’ve lined him up inline, in the slot and even out wide — the rookie is also adjusting to the league. After racking up 182 receiving yards across his first three games, Dulcich only had 11 yards receiving in three of his past six games, including a quiet performance in last Sunday’s win over Arizona.
Offensive coordinator Justin Outten believes Dulcich is “really advanced for his age (22)”, but the rookie feels like the ebb-and-flow of his production this season leaves something to be desired.
“With the run game, I want to continue to work on my fundamentals and my blocking technique, and I want to move people around better on the line,” Dulcich said. “In the passing game, these defenses are really good at disguising things, so I want to get better at my pre-snap recognition of things, more savvy in my routes and my route tree stems, being able to separate better.”
Head coach Nathaniel Hackett has seen how defenses have responded to Dulcich’s potential. That’s posed a challenge for getting the rookie the ball as much as the Broncos would like, but the opposition’s respect for Dulcich is also an indication that he’s doing the right things in order to become the dynamic playmaker the team needs in the future.
“We’ve seen a lot of different defenses and they have tried to limit him — whether they have manned him, put a better guy on him, cloud him, or all of the different things that they do defensively to be able to try to stop him,” Hackett said. “He’s been able to find some sweet spots, understand where he fits within the zone coverages and win versus man coverage. He’s really coming along.”
