Denver Broncos RB Tyler Badie confirms change in how his name is pronounced

In the Denver Broncos‘ 26-7 victory over the Tampa Bay Buccaneers last Sunday, running back Tyler Badie exploded onto the scene. It wasn’t the first game where he made an impact on offense, but compared to how poor the averages of Javonte Williams and Jaleel McLaughlin have been this season, Badie’s average of 7.8 yards per carry stood out.

Perhaps fearful that an outside team would try to pluck him from the practice squad, the Broncos officially promoted Badie to the 53-man roster this week. The move could be a harbinger of a bigger role for the former Baltimore Ravens sixth round pick.

Since Badie joined the Broncos, the team’s PR department has pronounced his name and spelled it phonetically as “Bay-dee.” However, during his breakout performance last week in Tampa, the television crew pronounced his name “Buh-day.”

Badie solves the pronunciation problem by telling it DNVR that the TV broadcast was right.

“Buh-DAY,” he said through DNVR‘s Zac Stevens. “Let’s get it out of the way.”

The Broncos PR department is top-notch and goes to great lengths to ensure player names are pronounced correctly by announcers, commentators and pundits, spelling them phonetically in the annual Media Guide. So why the discrepancy regarding “Bay-dee” and “Buh-day?”

“I changed it myself,” Badie said through Stevens. “There’s a few other things going on, some family stuff that I’ll talk about later. But right now I’m just trying to focus on football.”

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And there you have it. Badie himself went to the Broncos after the Media Guide was released and told him about the pronunciation change, which is exactly what last week’s TV broadcast had done.

Now that that’s out of the way, Badie wants to focus on the ball, and so do Broncos fans. Now that he’s been promoted to the 53-man roster, could Broncos Country expect Badie to shoulder a larger share of the rushing load? Perhaps comments from Broncos offensive coordinator Joe Lombardi on Thursday could point to an answer.

“I think Tyler is an interesting story because he was a guy we were really excited about last year and he got hurt in training camp,” Lombardi said. “When he got healthy, things were kind of in flux and (we) thought he had a really nice camp. We were fortunate enough to keep him after training camp and I think we knew that one day this season would come where he would be called up and given his opportunities.”

As painful as it is to watch Williams crash into the backs of his blockers and McLaughlin quickly get swallowed up by tacklers, Badie’s explosive first step and vision for finding the cutback lane are refreshing. It almost jumped off the screen when studying the film – more than just an impact of tempo changes.

“I don’t think any of us were surprised by what he did,” Lombardi said of Badie. “He’s a guy we certainly held in high regard. I was excited when his opportunity came along. I kind of expected him to show up the way he did.”

Teams are pretty stubborn when it comes to the players hand-picked to be No. 1 on the depth chart, so while the Broncos would be foolish not to find ways to include Badie more often, it will be a surprise if it gets to this point at the expense of Williams’ touch share. There are always exceptions to the rule, but as Lombardi said last year regarding Badie’s health, things are “in flux” now, and that includes Williams as RB1 in the final year of his contract.

Broncos Country wants to see Williams — a 2021 second-round pick that the team traded up to draft — succeed and even land a second contract, but he has clearly held the offense back, leaving Bo Nix and company in dire straits for many seconds has brought – and third and long situations.

“I don’t know if you should do that, I don’t know if there’s a specific step you should take,” Lombardi said of Williams and McLaughlin’s low averages. “I mean, obviously Tyler came in there and had the big run, and he’s a guy that we really like. The run game is one of those things where not every run is a 20-yard gain, and you stick with it, assuming you know the players you have. Just because the stats tell you they’re not gaining yards doesn’t mean they’ve suddenly turned into crap. So you just keep giving them the ball and know it we’re getting better, the plan is getting better and we’re blocking better and better. Their big runs are coming.”

As you can see, it doesn’t sound like the intention is to eat into Williams’ touch share, whether that makes sense or not. In any case, expect McLaughlin’s bite at the apple to diminish as the Broncos look to give Badie a bigger role.

“It’s like anything; it’s tempting when you’ve played the ball a few times too early and you’re not gaining yards and just say, ‘To fix this, we’re just going to start throwing,'” Lombardi explained. “The run game is one of those things where if you stick with it, you’re going to score some runs. It’s just a matter of patience and it only gets better as we execute.”

Head coach and play-caller Sean Payton has remained committed to the run even when it hasn’t worked well for the Broncos. That patience paid off last week when Badie was inserted into the lineup in the second half, busting off a 43-yard run and helping the Broncos digest the clock and put the Bucs to bed.

In the NFL, however, the hot hand typically takes precedence, especially in a running-back-by-committee offense like Payton’s. The Broncos would be remiss to ignore Badie’s momentum just to keep the original plan “moving.”

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