Julius Thomas on contract talks: I want to be in Denver long term

Julius Thomas had a breakout season for the Denver Broncos last year and is entering the final year of his deal with the team. There has been a lot of talk about his contract status, and matters were not helped when team executive John Elway said last week that he does not consider Thomas to be in the same class as Jimmy Graham, who signed a 4-year, $40 million deal with the New Orleans Saints. Thomas only has played 23 career games, while Graham has scored 36 touchdowns over the past three seasons, so Elway’s remarks were understandable.

LBS caught up with Thomas at a pre-ESPYs red carpet event at the Montrian Hotel in West Hollywood last week and asked about his contract talks with the team. When asked if he wanted to stay in Denver longterm, Thomas said yes.

“Absolutely. I love Denver. It’s a great city. I really love that franchise, fan base, I would look forward to being there for a long time,” Thomas told Larry Brown Sports. “But it’s business. We’ll see what happens.”

Thomas also said he has been working hard all offseason on improving what he felt were weaker parts of his game.

“I’ve had a lot of fun trying to improve my run blocking and pass blocking,” Thomas said. “Also just certain parts of my routes. I was able to do some good things in the passing game (last year), but it wasn’t always easy to execute some routes. So I’m just trying to be a little bit more cleaner and overall do more to help my team.”

Though the Broncos were the highest-scoring team in NFL history and broke all sorts of records, Thomas told LBS he believes the team can do even better this season.

“We think we can,” Thomas said when asked about the offense this year. “We’re working towards that. That’s our goal.

“We went back and looked a lot of film from last year and saw all the different areas that we missed on. We have a perfectionist leading us and he’s definitely going to push us to be that much better this year.”