Tight end Adam Trautman was traded by the Saints to the Broncos over the weekend. It was exactly what he wanted.
“Absolutely,” Trautman told Mike Klis of 9news.com. “I was actually hoping to get moved. This was initiated by me personally. I’ve been waiting for a little bit for something to materialize and it just happened to be the Broncos, obviously.”
Trautman thought he wasn’t being used the way he wanted to be used in New Orleans.
“I feel like I was placed somewhat in a box,” Trautman told Klis. “They put a limit on what I could contribute and I felt like I could contribute a lot more. I was primarily used as a blocker. I thought I could do more and I didn’t want to get to the end of my career and think I could have done it, caught the ball a little more. . . . Whatever the case was, the team I was playing for just didn’t let me do it. I want a chance to prove I can do it because I believe I can and I have in the past.”
In 2022, Trautman caught only 18 passes for 207 yards and one touchdown in 15 games. The prior year, with Broncos coach Sean Payton coaching in New Orleans, Trautman caught 27 passes for 263 yards and two scores in only 13 games.
He was a third-round pick of the Saints in 2020. The Saints sent Trautman plus a seventh-round pick to the Broncos for a sixth-round selection.
He’s now reunited with the coach who was responsible for using him during the first two years of his career. He’s due to make $2.743 million in 2023, the final season of his four-year rookie deal.
