Starting now, Drew Lock needs to show out or the Broncos should move on

It's now time for Drew Lock to "pop" on the field, writes John Davis, or the Denver Broncos need to move on and start fresh with a different plan

BY JOHN DAVIS

Nov 13, 2020, 7:22 AM Updated: 8:21 am

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It’s clear that each remaining game of the Denver Broncos 2020 season will be a referendum on quarterback Drew Lock. When Lock plays well, he’ll be the quarterback of the future. When Lock plays poorly, the Broncos should move on.

Depending on who you ask, Lock is the victim of circumstance through coaching or injuries. On the flip side, Lock looks bad regardless who they have surrounding him.

The constant back-and-forth on Lock’s prospects will change depending on who you ask. That’s the problem. Lock hasn’t presented a convincing enough case that he is a future franchise quarterback.

I’m not out on Drew Lock, but if he stays the course the Broncos will be forced to move on. If the Broncos do decide to move on from Lock as the starter, they need a complete overhaul on how they approach fixing the quarterback position.

Since Peyton Manning retired, the Broncos have failed spectacularly when it comes to the quarterback position. The Broncos odd strategy has been to get a player that they hope is just “good enough” and try to surround him with weapons. Then while this is going on, the team hopes a young player develops behind him.

This has never worked because it’s ridiculous.

I’ve never seen a young quarterback “develop.” I don’t even know what that means. Aaron Rodgers and Philip RIvers were always good. They just played behind Hall of Famers. Young quarterbacks get better, but it’s usually clear from the beginning if they’re good or not.

In addition, young quarterbacks that go on to become franchise quarterbacks tend to play for organizations that have a plan.

The Broncos’ awful plan hasn’t worked.

In the 2016 draft, the Broncos selected Paxton Lynch in the first round. There’s not a lot they could do with their draft status as they had just won the Super Bowl and were picking late in the first round. The Eagles and Rams both traded up to draft Carson Wentz and Jared Goff, so the Broncos prospects on either of those players was zero.

The Broncos neglected to do their homework on Lynch. He lacked all the intangibles that a starting quarterback should possess. The mistake of drafting Lynch was compounded by the fact that Dak Prescott was available and wasn’t even drafted until the fourth round.

The decision to draft Lynch was a bad one, but what’s more egregious is the way in which the Broncos managed their first-round draft pick. Instead of starting their first round pick, Denver chose to go with former seventh-round pick Trevor Siemian, who had previously taken one snap in the NFL.

Lynch started two games due to Siemian injuries, but the team would quickly place Lynch back on the bench when Siemian was healthy.

This decision cost the Broncos. Had Denver started Lynch for all of 2016, they would have realized quickly that he was not the future. That would have given the Broncos the freedom to once again look to the draft in 2017 — one that featured Deshaun Watson and Patrick Mahomes.

Unlike Wentz and Goff the prior year, Mahomes and Watson were both there for the taking. The Chiefs traded from 27th overall to 10th overall to select Mahomes and the Texans traded up from 25th overall to 12th overall to select Watson. Basically, any team that wanted either quarterback bad enough could have drafted them.

Both the Chiefs and Texans went all in to draft their quarterback of the future. Mahomes is the best player in football, and despite Bill O’Brien’s best efforts to ruin it all, Watson is clearly one of the very best quarterbacks in the NFL. Had the Broncos had a better plan for Lynch in 2016, they could have pursued Mahomes or Watson in 2017.

The 2017 season was a disaster as the Broncos rotated Lynch, Siemian and the returning Brock Osweiler, and the result was a 5-11 record. That record earned the Broncos the fifth overall pick in the 2018 draft.

The 2018 draft was a big quarterback draft, and the Broncos were in prime position to draft a player to build towards the future.

But nope.

Denver opted to sign free agent journeymen and one-hit wonder Case Keenum to lead them in 2016.

With the fifth pick overall in the 2018 draft, the Broncos selected pass rusher Bradley Chubb. Not a bad pick. Not even close. He may have just been the wrong pick.

With quarterbacks Josh Allen and Lamar Jackson on the board, the Broncos passed on both. Currently Allen and Jackson are leading two of the best teams in the NFL.

The Keenum experiment ended terribly, and the Broncos moved on. For the 2019 season, the Broncos traded for Joe Flacco and drafted Drew Lock in the second round. Flacco hadn’t been impressive for a few seasons.

The Broncos now had a veteran on his last leg and a raw quarterback that was not drafted high enough to go all in on.

It was once again a plan that had no endgame. The Broncos hoped Flacco could once again be elite while hoping Lock would develop. Essentially, they weren’t all in on either.

Flacco wasn’t Peyton Manning, and Lock was a second-round pick that they didn’t want to play just yet, as they had delusions of playoffs.

Flacco injured his neck and missed the last half of the 2019 season. Lock would end up starting the final five games of 2019 and posted a 4-1 record. That was good enough to earn Lock the starting job in 2020.

The problem was the Broncos handled Lock poorly like they did Lynch. The team waited too long to name Lock the starting quarterback. He was injured for the beginning of his rookie season, but by mid-season he was ready to play.

The perfect time to play Lock would have been coming off the bye – Week 11 at Minnesota. Instead, the Broncos waited two more weeks to start him. Had Denver played Lock in Weeks 11 and 12, they would have seven full games to evaluate rather than five – a better sample size.

An argument could be made that Lock should have never been placed on injured reserve as a rookie, and the team should have had him ready to start once he recovered from his thumb injury. However, the team had veteran Joe Flacco as the starter. There was no plan for when to start looking at Lock. As long as he was on the bench, they could hope one day he would be the guy.

Lock without question earned the starting role for 2020 based on his play in 2019. The issue we might be seeing currently is that five games wasn’t enough to properly evaluate him. As was the case with Siemian and Osweiler, who both had hot starts, Lock may have been figured out. The Broncos did not have enough information to truly know he was the guy.

By not playing Lock as much as they should have, the Broncos may have cost themselves the opportunity to pursue Tua Tagovailoa or Justin Herbert in the 2019 draft.

The Flacco/Lock thing never made sense. It was another example of the Broncos afraid to go all in on a young quarterback. The team was so hesitant to play Lock, they played Brandon Allen for three weeks. Allen had zero NFL snaps to his name when he was named the starter.

Allen and Lock were Siemian and Lynch all over again. The problem with this type of indecision is that the Broncos never know what they have, and they don’t do enough to find out. The Broncos hope mediocre commodities like Flacco and Keenum catch lightning in a bottle while kicking the can down the road on younger players.

Had Flacco not been injured in 2019, who knows if we would have seen Lock at all.

For Lock, at this point, he needs to play consistent the rest of the year and improve. If his play doesn’t improve, they can’t move forward with him. If Lock doesn’t make an all-out convincing case for himself, the Broncos need to move on and implement a different strategy.

With the 2021 NFL Draft expected to feature Justin Fields and Trevor Lawrence, the Broncos need to go all in on their next quarterback quarterback. If that means trading multiple first round picks to get that guy, then so be it. Nobody thinks the Chiefs or Texans are stupid for trading first round picks to move up for Mahomes and Watson. Lynch and Lock were late first round and second round picks. That’s the dreaded “raw talent” portion of the draft for quarterbacks.

The Broncos have yet to try and draft one of the top prospect quarterbacks despite having the resources to do so. This hesitation has the team on the outside looking in.

The approach of getting a veteran and hoping a rookie “develops” in the process doesn’t work. The Broncos have tried multiple variations of this the past five years and the team has not improved.

It could be argued they’ve actually gotten worse year-to-year.

In the past five seasons the Broncos have missed opportunities to pursue Deshaun Watson, Patrick Mahomes, Josh Allen and Lamar Jackson. All four are in the upper echelon of NFL quarterbacks at the moment, and Tua Tagovailoa and Justin Herbert are impressive thus far.

Lock can still force the Broncos to keep him as a starter, just like he did last season. Lock must have more big moments than disasters at this point. He seems to want to be elite and willing to do everything he can to get it. Best case for everyone is that Lock starts to pop soon and proves he is the future. Currently, that looks like a long shot.

All the talent in the world doesn’t matter if you don’t have a franchise quarterback. It might get a team by for five or six games (see Tebow, Lynch, Siemian), but eventually the party is over. If Lock isn’t the guy, the Broncos need to go all in on a top prospect or else we will be discussing the offseason, by mid-season, every season.