Over lunch last year at a Jersey Mike’s Subs in Waco, Texas, Bill Peterson tried to convince Caleb Lohner to play basketball at the University of Denver.

He soon found out the rugged power forward also had football on his mind.

The 6-foot-7, 250-pound Lohner in the spring of 2024 had finished his second season playing basketball at Baylor after two years of hoops at Brigham Young. He entered the transfer portal, and was being courted by Peterson, who had just left Baylor as an assistant to become one for the Pioneers.

“I really tried to get him to come to Denver to play because I thought he would be great in (the Summit League),’’ said Peterson, now an assistant coach at Kansas State. “I really loved his skill set. He said, ‘Coach P, if I didn’t have this opportunity to play football at Utah, I probably would do it. I just got to see if I can do it. I don’t want to pass this up.’’’

Lohner had been offered a chance to play both basketball and football at Utah in his final year of eligibility, and Denver of course doesn’t have a football team. So Lohner accepted the Utes’ offer even though he hadn’t played football since the eighth grade.

As it turns out, Lohner ended up in Denver.

After a year in which he played 57 snaps for the Utah football team but scored touchdowns on all four of his receptions and also played for the Utes basketball team, he was selected in the seventh round of last month’s NFL draft by the Broncos.

On Friday, Lohner will take the field for the start of a three-day rookie minicamp at Broncos Park. Freddie Whittingham will be excited to hear how he does.

Whittingham is Utah’s tight ends coach and the brother of head coach Kyle Whittingham. He grew up in Provo, Utah, when his father Fred Whittingham was a BYU assistant football coach. While there, he got to know well the Lohner family, which includes Caleb’s grandfather Richard Lohner and his father Matt Lohner, who once played basketball for the Cougars.

Lohner had attended Flower Mound (Texas) High School to play basketball as a freshman and sophomore before taking the court as a junior and senior at Wasatch Academy in Utah. Coming out of Wasatch, Lohner had taken a recruiting visit to Utah before deciding to attend BYU.

“I was just talking to him then and I said, ‘Have you ever played football?,’’’ Whittingham said. “He said, ‘Oh, yeah, I played Little League.’ I just said, ‘You should play tight end.”’

In his two seasons at BYU, Lohner averaged 7.0 points and 6.7 rebounds. Then he transferred to Baylor, where his averages dropped to 2.8 points and 2.9 rebounds in his two seasons. But Peterson said Lohner, who averaged 10.7 minutes in his Baylor career, played an important role.

“He was one of my favorite guys to work with just because he will run through a wall for you,’’ Peterson said. “He has such determination.’’

The Bears hand out an award called “Mr. 95” after games to a player who does unsung things on the court such as set picks, dive for loose balls and play staunch defense. Peterson said the name comes from what a player does the 95% of the time he doesn’t have the basketball. He said Lohner won the award about 10 times in 2023-24.

But playing football had remained on Lohner’s mind. Whittingham said Lohner called him after his first season at Baylor asking questions about football and Whittingham told him “it would be easier to make the NFL than it would be the NBA.” Then Lohner called again after entering the transfer portal following his second season with the Bears.

“(Baylor was) offering him a pretty big NIL package and we had a scholarship for him but we didn’t have any NIL money at Utah,’’ Whittingham said. “But he took the risk to do the football thing (as well as play basketball for the Utes). I just thought he had all the traits to be a tight end. He can run. He can jump. He has a 38-inch vertical leap. He has the frame. He has soft hands.”

For the Utes, Lohner last season had four receptions for 54 yards, with all his grabs going for touchdowns. He also caught a pass for a two-point conversion.

“We had a good tight end room, but we wanted to maximize his talent in the red zone,’’ Whittingham said. “If we had him for one more year, he would have been an every-down tight end and probably a Day 2 guy (rather than a Day 3 selection in the NFL draft).”

After averaging 2.8 points and 2.0 rebounds for the Utes basketball team, Lohner took part in the Big 12 pro day on April 4 in Frisco, Texas, and turned some heads. Whittingham said before the draft, in addition to the Broncos, Indianapolis, the New York Jets, Houston and New England all were showing interest in him.

Patriots coach Mike Vrabel put in a call to Lohner. A source said the Colts reached an agreement late in the draft to potentially sign him as an undrafted free agent before the Broncos foiled their plans by selecting him No. 241 overall.

Helping Lohner through the process has been Jack Tabb, his agent, who once was a tight end with New Orleans under current Denver coach Sean Payton. Tabb was signed as an undrafted free agent by Payton’s Saints in 2015 out of North Carolina before suffering a torn ACL in training camp. He spent that season on injured reserve before being cut by the Saints the following year, and he never got into an NFL game.

“They were in a spot where he needed to be helped through the pre-draft process but be kind of taught football a little bit,’’ Tabb said of what the Lohner family sought from him as an agent. “He’s a great young man. I met with them weekly throughout the basketball season just to get up to speed with terminology so it wasn’t (foreign) for him walking into those visits (with NFL teams before the draft). I think he showed he was a lot more up to speed than people thought he would be.”

Tabb said it’s “kind of come full circle” for him in having a client playing for Payton. He said he has a “ton of love” for Payton and that Lohner is in an ideal situation playing for the offensive-minded coach.

After Lohner was drafted, Payton said the Broncos are “excited” about his upside and he made note of his frame, “movement skills” and “eye, hand coordination.” He also pointed to once having with the Saints former basketball player Jimmy Graham, who became an All-Pro NFL tight end.

“When I made my pitch to (Lohner), I had compared him to Jimmy Graham,’’ Whittingham said. “And when he got the draft call, they put Coach Payton on the phone and he asked him if he’d ever heard of a tight end named Jimmy Graham, which was pretty funny.”

Lohner answered in the affirmative. And he was elated to be selected by the Broncos.

“I just feel extremely blessed,’’ he said. “I’m so excited to be a part of Broncos Country. … I just had some people at the University of Utah that just believed that I could be a high-level tight end and so I took the time to watch some film and take a visit there after I had graduated from Baylor and it’s one of the best decisions I’ve ever made.”

Whittingham is optimistic Lohner can become a solid NFL tight end.

“He’s a smart kid and he adjusted well as (last season) went along,’’ Whittingham said. “He’s a raw talent and he’s going to take some development but if the team is willing to invest in him, I think he’s going to pay off.’’

Meanwhile, Peterson has kept in touch with Lohner and reached out to offer congratulations after he was drafted by the Broncos. Peterson will be following his NFL career.

“I think if there’s anybody who can make it as a seventh-round pick, it’s him,’’ Peterson said. “He has a determination and a resilience to keep coming and keep fighting, and if somebody believes in him and takes him under his wing, he’ll make it as tight end in the NFL.”

As it turns out, Lohner did end up making it to Denver. But it was at the pro level and in a sport other than basketball.