How undrafted rookie ILB Karene Reid cracked the Broncos’ 53

The blend never screamed can’t miss, and plenty of folks have ended up missing on Karene Reid.

Cary Whittingham rattled it off, the memory of a linebacker who came to Utah’s Timpview High first as a physically underdeveloped underdog to his brother Gabe. Reid, as Whittingham described, was not especially tall (now 6-foot). Not especially thick (now 226 pounds). Not especially fast. No off-the-charts raw measurables.

“The thought was, ‘Yeah, he’s a great player, and he’s going to continue to play after high school,” Whittingham recalled. “But it’s hard to translate that into saying, ‘Yes, this kid’s an NFL player.’”

Years later, though, Sean Payton and the Broncos saw a “draftable player” — as Payton put it — within a profile that never really changed. For an hour in late April, after Re