After spending four years in the Canadian Football League, Diontae Spencer went to training camp with the Steelers last season but failed to make their 53-man roster. He was then picked up by the Broncos.
Spencer initially struggled to transition from the CFL to the NFL but it didn’t take long for him to become a dangerous returner in Denver.
“The one thing he did is he used to really study the punter and the kicker,” special teams coordinator Tom McMahon said during a Zoom conference call on June 11. “He knew where that ball was going to be kicked the last seven, eight games much better than he did the first six. That gives you a head start with your back underneath the ball. You have time now to just think about the catch and think about the return versus when he first started out, the NFL punt game is much different and so is the kickoff game. It was hard for him [initially] to get under those balls before the ball was ever punted.”
Spencer adjusted and learned to study and prepare himself for NFL kicks. After averaging 29.1 yards per kickoff return and totaling 208 yards on punt returns, Spencer earned Pro Bowl alternate honors as a returner last year. Entering his second season with the Broncos, Spencer is now even more familiar with the NFL game.
“Number one, I think he can win pre-snap now,” McMahon said. “Where he’s headed, to me the sky’s the limit. He can run. He’s got courage. He’s a rare small guy that can return kickoffs up the middle.
“We have a lot of schemes that we asked him last year to return up the middle and he hit it up the middle. I think the biggest thing that he’s got to do now, he’s just got to work on breaking those tackles. If he can break through and run through — he’s gotten stronger here in the offseason so we look forward to seeing what he can do.”
Spencer is still the favorite to return kicks for Denver this season even after the team added KJ Hamler in the second round of the draft. If Hamler is as good of a receiver as the Broncos hope he is, Spencer will be asked to handle most of the return duties so Hamler can focus on contributing on offense.
