Rodney Hammond Jr. earns Broncos rookie minicamp invite after breakout season

Rodney Hammond Jr. turned one big season at Sacramento State into a real NFL look, earning a rookie minicamp invite from the Denver Broncos after piling up 1,818 all-purpose yards and 13 rushing touchdowns in his first year with the Hornets. For Denver, the invite is less about a headline and more about evaluation: whether an FCS star with production, return value and enough versatility to matter on game day can survive a weekend built to sort through draft picks, college free agents and tryout players.

Hammond’s resume gives the Broncos several angles to study. He rushed for 1,213 yards, added a 99-yard kickoff return touchdown at Weber State and finished as a first-team All-Big Sky running back while also landing second-team all-purpose and kick return honors. Sacramento State also listed him as a second-team FCS All-American by FCS Football Central and Stats Perform, and he was a finalist for the Walter Payton Award, the FCS’s top offensive honor. Those are the kinds of markers that keep a player in the conversation when NFL teams start looking for more than just raw speed.

What Denver will be watching is how that production translates in a camp setting. Hammond’s burst showed up all season, especially in conference play, where he led the Big Sky with 132.3 rushing yards per game and topped 100 yards in seven of his final eight games. The Broncos also know his value is not limited to carries between the tackles. His return ability and all-purpose production give him a path to earn attention beyond a standard undrafted invite, especially if he shows the kind of balance and ball security that keeps a back on the field for more than one phase of the game.

Hammond’s path also makes the invite notable in the broader FCS pipeline. The Norfolk, Virginia, native and Booker T. Washington High School product spent four seasons at Pitt before transferring to Sacramento State, where he became the 35th Hornet to earn All-America honors in the program’s FCS era. That kind of late-blooming rise is exactly what rookie minicamp is designed to expose. Denver brought nearly 60 players into its 2025 rookie minicamp, including eight tryout players, and Hammond now gets his chance to turn one breakout season into a roster conversation.