For 90 minutes on Wednesday, I sat with my mouth open in a chair having oral surgery. The only thing more painful than that was watching the Broncos quarterbacks try to run Gary Kubiak’s offense.
Awful.
Kubiak ripped all of his quarterbacks after practice and especially The Pirate, Paxton Lynch. It was a sweltering hot day and the players simply seemed to poop out. Not a great day for my mouth or the Broncos. But, perhaps things have to be awful to get better. If that’s the case, it was a stellar day for my gums and for gunslingers, because things felt and looked horrific.
“Open Wider.”
Who in the world likes hearing that when you are desperately trying to open your mouth as wide as you can? I can’t help it. Believe it or not, I was born with a small mouth. Indeed, somethings in life just can’t be helped.
Mark Sanchez will always be known for the Butt Fumble. It’s not his fault. He was destined to be the butt of jokes for the rest of his life. There’s nothing he can do about it. He was asked to sign a Butt Fumble picture the other day and he told the wiseguy with the photo to beat it. Can you blame him?
Would you want to be remembered for the worst moment of your life? The problem is that there are so many times in practice during camp where Sanchez reminds us all, he’s just not that good. Whether it’s a pick six for a 100-yard touchdown or going three-and-out leading the ones against the twos or missing receivers by 10-15 yards on timing throws, Mark Sanchez can’t escape the fact he’s Mark Sanchez.
Trevor Siemian is a complete unknown. He absolutely has his moments, but nobody knows if these highlights really matter because he’s never played in an NFL game besides taking one kneeldown snap. We see some cool things in practice, but trust me we saw cool things out of Chris Simms, Patrick Ramsey, Jarious Jackson, Zach Dysert, Tom Brandstater, and Tim Tebow. Okay, we didn’t see a lot of cool things in practice from Tebow, but it was always kind of cool to actually see Tebow… wasn’t it?
On Thursday, the temperatures were cooler and so were the heads of the coaches. Play was more consistent, while not incredible. All three QBs led their team down the field for a game-winning field goal attempt. Brandon “I have zero competition” McManus made all four game-winning field goal attempts. Of course, Mark Sanchez only gained seven yards and McManus drilled a 61-yarder while Siemian led the team down the field for a 28-yard chip shot for McManus, but hey, don’t sweat the small stuff, it all sort-of worked.
Meanwhile Paxton Lynch is firmly entrenched with the three’s, but when things broke down, he was quick to break things off and run. When he did so, he looked great. It’s likely, you want that option in the Red Zone. Sanchez and Siemian can also run, but they don’t possess the size and strength of Lynch. Let’s face it, this QB situation is a mess.
After practice, Kubiak sort-of sighed and rolled his eyes talking about the situation. It would’ve been so much easier if one guy or another seperated himself… one hasn’t. Kubiak said what we all know is to be true. We have to wait for an actual game to get a handle on who really deserves the job.
It’s a QB competition amongst the mediocre and it can be painful to watch. You wish you could hop in the Delorean and time travel ahead two years when Paxton Lynch very well may be the most dynamic QB in the league – he has that potential. But, we have to be patient. Even when a moronic question was asked to Lynch about him being a starter, he knows that while the thought of that day may be nice, the reality of the situation is that you may want to take at least one snap with the number one team before you contemplate leading an NFL team.
So, as we go through this QB torture, just sip, rinse and spit, take a pill and just chill. It will all be over soon.