The Broncos quarterback situation is a mess, and that’s about all they could have hoped for.
Here’s the deal: John Elway, Gary Kubiak and the Denver Broncos were dealt a miserable hand. In the span of a month, they had their Hall of Fame quarterback retire and his heir-apparent run off to Houston, leaving the team with just one quarterback on the roster, a seventh-rounder with one snap in his NFL career — a kneel down.
That, my friends, is not ideal.
Unfortunately, though, that’s the starting point in which we have to review Denver’s decisions, because, no matter how much we don’t like the truth, here are two important facts: Manning was always going to retire, and from the moment he was benched in Week 17, Osweiler was never going to re-sign with the Denver Broncos, no matter how much money Elway offered him.
Is that anybody’s fault? No, not unless you believe the Broncos should have protected Osweiler’s feelings by keeping him on the field. Otherwise, Denver was going to end up a creek without a paddle no matter what they did.
So, again, that leaves us in a position where Elway and Kubiak were left to pick up the pieces after a gas explosion, and they didn’t have many tools to work with.
Colin Kaepernick? Josh McCown? T.J. Yates?
If you believe any of those names are significantly better than Mark Sanchez, then you must be a grass-is-always-greener type of guy — sorry, but those guys are not good. At the end of the day, any veteran the Broncos could have brought in was going to be no more than an inconsistent, temporary option.
Instead, the Broncos invested in Paxton Lynch, their quarterback of the future, and it looks to be paying off. Had they paid Kaepernick $15 million, had they given up a second- or third-round pick to get McCown or Yates (which is what they were asking for), they would have been investing far too much into this season to have ever considered trading up in the first round for another quarterback — Sanchez and the conditional seventh-round pick they gave up to get him, was a cheap enough price that they could still allocate assets towards the future.
So, for me, I’ll take Lynch. It’s not pretty. It probably won’t be successful early on. But after being dealt one of the most difficult hands any Super Bowl champion has had to face, I’m not sure how the Broncos could have fared any better.
Whether Kubiak puts Lynch in at the right time or not, that’s a different question.
In the meantime, though, here’s how it could turn out this season:
Best-Case Scenario: Paxton Lynch fulfills our wildest dreams
There are a lot of ways the Broncos quarterback position could go, but there’s none better than Paxton Lynch lighting the world on fire.
We can dream, right?
Lynch has all the physical tools to be an elite quarterback in the NFL. What he’s lacking is the mental aspect, and that’s to be expected. Still, it wouldn’t be a shocker if he developed quickly and exceeded all expectations. It’s been done before, and it’ll be done again.
The Broncos would be unwise to count on Lynch this season, but it would be a welcomed surprise if he was able to contribute early.
Worst-Case Scenario: The Broncos have the worst QB-group in the NFL
I don’t think anybody would be shocked if the second-year seventh-rounder and the first-round rookie completely flamed out. At face value, it certainly doesn’t look good. And while I believe they’ll end up in the middle ground of both extremes, it’s possible that this becomes the year from hell for the Denver Broncos.
If this scenario comes to pass, they better hope the rest of their roster is playing at historic levels, because they’ll need it.
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