Orlando Franklin Ready To Make Best Of Move To Left Guard

DENVER (CBS4) – Offensive lineman Orlando Franklin did a good job at right tackle for the Broncos last year, but the team wanted to get bigger, stronger and faster in the middle of their offensive line.

So Franklin is now a left guard.

He wasn’t thrilled with the change at first, and even thought it might have to do with what he says was a poor performance in the Super Bowl loss to Seattle, but it’s all good now.

“It’s going well,” Franklin said over the weekend. “A lot of people don’t realize that I played two and a half years at left guard in college. As long as I’m on the field it doesn’t really matter, so whether it’s at right tackle or left guard this year, I’m going to be happy to be on the field.”

Fellow offensive lineman center Manny Ramirez said the line will be more physical with Franklin at guard.

“I think we will, just because we’re real big inside and we’re going to try to improve on running the ball this year from last year. So that’s the plan — that’s going to be part of it, for us to be more physical.”

The Broncos moved Franklin to guard because he’s athletic enough to make them a much more formidable group, and Ramirez — who has played plenty of guard in his career — is a great resource for him.

“When you’re at guard you pull a lot more than you would at tackle,” Franklin said. “But at the same time I think you’ve got to be a lot smarter at guard because you’ve got different times when you’re pulling the linebacker, the defensive end, you might be pulling for (one of the linebackers). … You’ve got to be on top of it.”

Franklin said the move means he’s “going to play football the way he wants to play football.”

“There’s little thing that we go through in a play, and maybe we have to tweak something here and there and we try to communicate it right then and there so when that play comes back around we’re able to not make the mistake or we could even make it easier on ourselves,” Ramirez said.


(denver.cbslocal.com)