The summer before Gunnar Helm’s junior year of high school, Cherry Creek offensive line coach Det Betti stepped back for a moment during a practice and took stock of a rather appalling personnel discrepancy. There were 25 kids, give or take, in Cherry Creek’s wide receiver line. There were about three, in total, in their tight end group.
So Betti went over to Helm, standing among a clogged crop of receivers, a bigger kid who had yet to crack varsity.
Why don’t you try tight end?
“I remember him saying, ‘Well, Coach, I really don’t know how to block anybody,’” Betti told The Denver Post earlier this month.
Helm learned. He went to Texas out of Cherry Creek, an unheralded three-star recruit, and blocked for the majority of his freshman year. Then another. Then another. Before his senior year, a vacancy in the Longhorns’ tight end room popped open, and Helm went to tight ends coach Jeff Banks and told him he wanted to play in the NFL.
Now, Helm’s officially an NFL tight end, snapped up by the Tennessee Titans in the fourth round of the NFL draft at pick No. 120.
But he won’t settle at hearing his name called Saturday.
“Coaches say, ‘What do you want out of this, out of this whole thing?’” Helm told The Post earlier in the month. “And some guys are like, ‘Well, I want to say I played in the NFL.’ And I think that’s just kind of selling yourself short a little bit.
“I want to leave my mark on football.”
Helm broke out at Texas in 2024 as a pass-catcher, racking up 60 catches for 786 yards as one of the more productive tight ends in the nation. The Titans were in on a tight end in the middle rounds, a source with knowledge of the situation told The Post, and Helm will head to Tennessee to catch passes from No. 1 pick Cam Ward.
“I know this — he’ll compete his butt off for Tennessee,” Helm’s high school coach Dave Logan told The Post. “They’re getting a really good athlete, big athlete, that is gonna be versatile enough that they’ll be able to play him at different spots.”
He’s the second tight end from this class to see an NFL journey continue from Colorado, as the Rams took Littleton native Terrance Ferguson in the second round.
Horton to Seattle: The Seahawks snapped up another local product later on Day 3, taking Colorado State standout receiver Tory Horton Jr. in the fifth round.
Horton’s draft stock was affected by tough injury luck in 2024 after an ACL tear ended his final season at CSU. But he put together an impressive pro day at the start of April, with trainer Ricky Proehl — a former NFL wide receiver — telling The Post that Horton’s potential was “off the charts.”
“If he keeps training like he’s been training,” Proehl said, “he’ll be ready for whoever drafts him.”
Wester to Baltimore, Horn Jr. to Carolina: Two Buffs receivers went off the board in Day 3, as Colorado’s second-leading 2024 pass-catcher LaJohntay Wester went to the Ravens in the sixth round at No. 203 and Jimmy Horn Jr. went five picks later to the Carolina Panthers at No. 208.
Both will likely receive heavy special-teams interest at their respective landing spots, telling media at Colorado’s pro day they were willing to mix it up while fighting for a slot in a receiving rotation.
“I’m willing to take anybody’s job, that’s just a mindset I’ma have,” Wester told The Post in early April.
From Pueblo to Washington: Former Pueblo East product Kain Medrano, a linebacker from UCLA, went to the Commanders in the sixth round. It’s a terrific Colorado story, as Medrano racked up 72 tackles and 11 TFLs in his senior year at UCLA and will now head to Washington. In 2019, he broke his own state-meet discus record, a former field star out of Pueblo.
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