Here’s the catch: Brendan Langley reached a point

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ENGLEWOOD Sheldrick Redwine Jersey , Colo. (AP) —where he would rather receive passes than pick them off.So, the Denver Broncos third-year player is calling an audible and going over to the other side — from cornerback to wide receiver.No offense, he just prefers offense.“It’s going well,” Langley said of learning the ropes at wideout after Monday’s organized team activities. “It’s not really a transition for me. It’s going back to my natural element.”Langley has long floated between DB and WR. During his high school days in Marietta, Georgia, he was a standout at both. At the University of Georgia, he was primarily a defensive back. After transferring to Lamar, he began as a receiver (catching a 20-yard TD pass against Baylor) before moving over to defense that season (he had an 86-yard interception return for a score against Incarnate Word). In his two seasons at Lamar, he finished with seven interceptions for 135 yards while hauling in four passes for 51 yards.Given his versatility and quickness (4.43 in the 40 dash), the Broncos drafted the cornerback during the third round in 2017 . His rookie season, Langley suited up in 11 games on special teams, which included a 61-yard kickoff return against the Los Angeles Chargers. Last season, Langley was cut out of camp before being quickly signed to the practice squad. He played in five games on special teams at the end of the season.Still, he turned a few heads — on scout team. When the Broncos needed someone to mimic a fast wideout in practice, Langley was summoned into duty.“It felt natural Kaleb McGary Jersey ,” the 6-foot, 199-pound Langley said. “There weren’t too many hiccups to the learning curve. It felt good.”At the exit interviews following the season, Langley brought his iPad with him for his meeting with Broncos boss John Elway. He wanted to convince Elway that receiver could be his best way to help the team.“I had the film from scout team. I had my numbers from high school when I was receiver,” recounted Langley, who now wears No. 12 instead of No. 27. “I was ready to do whatever I had to do to convince him to let me make that switch.“But then Mr. Elway smiled and said, ‘I was going to ask you the same thing.'”This offseason, Langley’s been working out in California and hauling in 500 passes a day. He also watches film of receivers to study their route running techniques.Anything to catch on. Anything to ease the conversion from one position to another.He’s also picking up pointers from Emmanuel Sanders, DaeSean Hamilton and Courtland Sutton, who actually know firsthand what Langley’s going through. Sutton said he started out as a safety at Southern Methodist before switching to receiver.“It’s rough,” said Sutton, who had 42 catches for 704 yards last season as a rookie. “Even coming out of college, going into the league, I wasn’t fully fine-tuned to play this (receiver) position. For a guy who played receiver, moved to defense and then played defense when he first got into the league and is now making that transition to receiver while in the league, it’s tough. But he’s handling it really well. He’s learning as much as he possibly can from everybody. He takes a little advice from everybody.”Langley is banking on his experience as a cornerback to give him a helping hand at receiver. There are small details that can betray a cornerback’s tendencies.“I can tell by a corner’s stance what he’s playing,” Langley said. “If he’s flat-footed, he’s in cover-2. With one foot back, he’s going to backpedal. I used to do those same things.”Now, he’s hoping his best defense just might make for good offense.“In defensive back drills, sometimes you go into the individual drills and they’re like, ‘We don’t need a ball,'” Langley said. “That felt awkward to me. I need a ball at all times.” ALAMEDA, Calif. (AP) — Oakland may always be home for Marshawn Lynch, but Seattle was the city that truly made him a star.There was the “Beast Quake” run that set the tone for the Pete Carroll era with the Seahawks. The Skittles that rained down on the field after his big runs. The ferocious running style that inspired teammates.As much as those Seattle teams were known for the “Legion of Boom” secondary and Russell Wilson’s escape acts, the “Beast Mode” runs helped Seattle establish its dominance. That’s also been the missing ingredient for Seattle these past few years after he retired and then came back with his hometown Oakland Raiders.The Seahawks (2-3) will get an up-close look at Lynch again this week for the first time since he retired following the 2015 season. They travel to London to face the Raiders (1-4).“He looks like he got faster,” linebacker Bobby Wagner said. “When he was here he wasn’t breaking away from people. Now it looks like he can break away from people. He looks quicker. Looks stronger. It’s going to be a dope challenge if they give him the ball a lot. They haven’t really been giving him the ball all that much. I don’t know if it’s because of scores or whatever, but definitely know he’s going to want to run the ball against us, so got to be ready.”Lynch is still going strong at age 32, ranking ninth in the league in rushing with 331 yards and still doling out the punishment on defenders that has him headed on a path that Raiders coach Jon Gruden believes will end at the Pro Football Hall of Fame.“It’s a credit to him that he can play like that week in week out, year in, year out with that style of play,” Gruden said. “He’s not looking to go out of bounds. He’s looking to make yardage after contact in every situation. I respect it about him. I think the league respects it about him.”The powerful runs and prodigious production come with a price at times. Lynch also has some quirks that can drive some in the organization nuts. There was the time in Seattle when he wore holdout safety Kam Chancellor’s jersey to practice, declared himself out of a playoff game just before the team left for Minnesota, or his refusal to do interviews despite NFL rules requiring them.The Raiders have seen that side of Lynch as well. He got ejected from a game last season when he ran on the field to try to break up a fight between close friend and then-Kansas City cornerback Marcus Peters and his own Raiders teammates. Lynch got suspended for a game for shoving an official.Then last week, in a scene that must have been all too painful for the Seahawks to watch, he tossed his helmet in frustration after teammate Derek Carr threw an interception instead of handing Lynch the ball on the 1-yard line. That brought back memories of the Seahawks’ fateful decision to throw a pass from the 1 at the end of the Super Bowl in 2015, only to have Malcolm Butler intercept Wilson at the goal line to give New England a Super Bowl title that Seattle had been poised to win.Despite those moments, Lynch is adored by his teammates for his honesty.“We loved that,” Seattle receiver Doug Baldwin said. “He was beloved in this locker room because of that. He would speak how he felt. If he was wrong, he would come back and apologize to the people he wronged, for the most part. You respected him for the man he was, not trying to act like something he wasn’t. He didn’t pretend with you guys in the media and come back to the locker room and act different. He was consistent in who he was throughout.”Lynch lasted just one more injury-plagued year with the Seahawks that was marked by his decision not to travel to a playoff game in Minnesota because he didn’t feel healthy enough — even though he had practiced all week and was a major part of the game plan.Lynch announced his retirement a month later by tweeting a picture of his cleats hanging from a utility wire shortly after the end of the Super Bowl, and stayed home for the entire 2016 season.But when the hometown Raiders announced plans to move to Las Vegas in 2020 Lynch was motivated to come out of retirement to play in Oakland.After a sluggish start in his return, Lynch is back to his old form. His 832 yards rushing since Week 12 last year are more than anyone other than Todd Gurley, and he still runs with the same ferocity he did as a much younger back.“It just comes down to him wanting to impose his will,” Raiders quarterback Derek Carr said. “He’s not going to quit at any moment on the field. I think that’s just Marshawn. He’s not going to quit on anything or anybody, especially his teammates. I think you see him running the same in the first quarter as the fourth quarter. … Marshawn is going to try and outlast people. That’s what makes him special.”Lynch’s best game of the year came two weeks ago against the Browns when he ran for 130 yards to give the Raiders their only win. It was his most prolific output since rushing for 157 yards in the NFC championship game against Seattle in January 2015.That’s the kind of performance that has both his current and former teammates believing his career should end at the Hall of Fame.“What he means to the game and he kind of reminds me of an Allen Iverson type where he changed a culture, changed the way people viewed the media, through the media, he’s himself,” Wagner said. “He’s a player that like you’ll never see again in a generation, so I think that represents a lot. I think by the end, all said and done, he’ll have the numbers to get in for sure.”