What to do at QB?

[broncosfan_101]

32 minutes ago, broncos_fan _from _uk said:

I don’t know that he’s good. I don’t know that he’s bad. I do know that he has tripled his career offseason work this year (got injured 2 weeks in rookie year, obviously none last year) and has made huge improvements on the issues he had (making the right read, footwork, using his eyes to manipulate the defense, touch). 
 

kid has the tools and appears to be making strides on his deficits. Arguably won a competition where the cards were stacked against him (most of the starters were sat for his “start” and again when he came in on relief, while Teddy got multiple 4th down attempts to bolster his case), and despite not getting the nod is by all accounts continuing to be a great teammate and get better every day. 
 

people talking about not willing to take the shot, I fear we may end up with eggs on our faces ala the falcons after they traded Favre. We don’t know, let’s take the f-ing shot. 

You say this without mentioning that the competition was against Teddy Bridgewater. Deck stacked or not, he didn’t beat out Teddy Bridgewater, in year 3. Lock supporters love to bring up Josh Allen year 3, and Lock’s lack of offseason reps: Josh Allen didn’t get offseason reps going into year 3 and he still clearly found a way to get better. No excuses at this point. 
 

Again, 45 career SEC starts, 18 NFL starts, with marginal improvement. Josh Allen only had 25 college starts, in Wyoming, and turned pro after his junior year. Him and Lock are essentially the same age. His breakout came much earlier in his developmental curve than where Lock is right now. If Josh Allen’s improvement is unprecedented, why the hell should we have any faith that some significant jump is coming from Drew Lock?? 
 

If anyone still wants to go to the well of Drew Lock’s Untapped Potential, go nuts. But it sure looks empty to me. I’ll take my chances that Teddy can do enough to show off the young offensive weapons to Aaron Rodgers or DeShaun Watson* in hopes of convincing them to come here next season. 

[broncos67]

I’d also like to just point out, and yes, I know it’s preseason, but the Broncos offense under both Lock and Teddy has looked much better given the amount of points scored. Denver has scored, what, 60+ points in two preseason games? 
 

And listen if Teddy sucks this bad and Lock has all the potential in the world, then he’s gonna play again this season and we’ll see how he does. It’s that simple. Everyone needs to take a step back for a second. The Broncos are going to be going through a potential ownership change and just signed an incredibly highly regarded GM - despite what some people think about him. 
 

Paton clearly didn’t want a new QB at a time where he’s still feeling out the HC position. Was that the right move? We’ll see. But it’s not unprecedented. New GMs without an established, long term HC and QB should try and pair those two together whenever possible given how critical QB is. Cmon guys this isn’t new. 

[lomaxgrUK]

10 hours ago, germ-x said:

Drew Lock sucks.  The fact that Teddy Bridgewater couldn’t hands down win the job shouldn’t be seen as encouraging.  

This is a legitimate concern for sure. Even when you consider that everyone in the organisation would want Lock to turn the corner, the amount of time it took Teddy to beat out Lock is, well, not great.

I can still envisage a scenario where Teddy starts out well, but then when our film is out there, we can't out-scheme teams consistently and Teddy's physical limitations come to the forefront.

[broncos67]

1 hour ago, lomaxgrUK said:

This is a legitimate concern for sure. Even when you consider that everyone in the organisation would want Lock to turn the corner, the amount of time it took Teddy to beat out Lock is, well, not great.

I can still envisage a scenario where Teddy starts out well, but then when our film is out there, we can't out-scheme teams consistently and Teddy's physical limitations come to the forefront.

To be honest, I think Lock performed better than people expected and that made things more complicated. It's kind of hard to argue with the results of this preseason collectively (60+ total points, lots of sustained drives). They both played well. I think it would be different if they both played awful, but frankly I think the overall offensive performances under both QBs are getting lost here.

[lomaxgrUK]

36 minutes ago, broncos67 said:

To be honest, I think Lock performed better than people expected and that made things more complicated. It's kind of hard to argue with the results of this preseason collectively (60+ total points, lots of sustained drives). They both played well. I think it would be different if they both played awful, but frankly I think the overall offensive performances under both QBs are getting lost here.

But it's preseason where both players played good minutes with starting players (in particular on the OL) vs opposition that heavily rested their starters.

It's not easy to quantify, however I would say that the practices as a whole (given there have been something like 12-15 of them) account for more than the limited preseason, and the practices (from all accounts) have not been good at all.

I am certainly in the camp of thinking we can win football games with both; I don't understand why people wouldn't think that. That said, I don't think you can blame people for not being overly excited at Teddy being our starting QB, regardless of a very impressive couple of preseason outings.

[broncos67]

27 minutes ago, lomaxgrUK said:

But it's preseason where both players played good minutes with starting players (in particular on the OL) vs opposition that heavily rested their starters.

It's not easy to quantify, however I would say that the practices as a whole (given there have been something like 12-15 of them) account for more than the limited preseason, and the practices (from all accounts) have not been good at all.

I am certainly in the camp of thinking we can win football games with both; I don't understand why people wouldn't think that. That said, I don't think you can blame people for not being overly excited at Teddy being our starting QB, regardless of a very impressive couple of preseason outings.

For sure. Frankly, I am not excited about Teddy, nor was I really excited about Lock. I was excited about drafting a QB while we had a T10 pick, but I understand why we didn't. And I will not put a ton of stock in preseason- I never do. But my POV is that it's inarguable that we've performed better offensively in preseason than the last few seasons. Will that carry over? Doubtful. 

It's hard for me to put a lot of stock in training camp because I wasn't there. One thing that is abundantly clear is that a lot of typical training camp sources in local Denver media had such a strong pro-Lock bias/slant to their reporting that I really don't know that I believe what I read.

[lomaxgrUK]

2 minutes ago, broncos67 said:

For sure. Frankly, I am not excited about Teddy, nor was I really excited about Lock. I was excited about drafting a QB while we had a T10 pick, but I understand why we didn't. And I will not put a ton of stock in preseason- I never do. But my POV is that it's inarguable that we've performed better offensively in preseason than the last few seasons. Will that carry over? Doubtful. 

It's hard for me to put a lot of stock in training camp because I wasn't there. One thing that is abundantly clear is that a lot of typical training camp sources in local Denver media had such a strong pro-Lock bias/slant to their reporting that I really don't know that I believe what I read.

Agree with all of this.

Re: the bold - to be fair, there seems to have been a fair amount of consistency to the reports coming out of camp about how up and down both players have been.

[jsthomp2007]

Lock is toast.  He had a second season with Shurmer. A full offseason, and couldn't beat out a guy the Broncos traded for.  My guess there are things we don't get to see that go on in practice that gave Teddy the edge.  The Broncos don't have to, but I would cut ties with Lock now; trade him for a 6th or 7th rounder, or even something like a trade with the Texans straight-up for Tyrod where the Broncos would have a descent backup.

Then in the next draft you have to draft a few QBs, they have drafted everywhere else for players who are starting to bare fruit. Also, if Teddy isn't good this year, or is descent, you have to make a run for Rogers where the two draftees can sit behind him until Rogers is done.  In all honesty, I think this is the angle.  I think the real reason we didn't draft Fields is that deal with Rogers was about to happen, and then something else happened that caused the Packers to back off.  And if this is the case, again, just cut ties with Lock he will never be a starter, there is no potential there anymore.  He has a cannon for an arm, and seems like a good kid.  Maybe somewhere down the line he is the second coming of Jeff George where he will carve out a descent career, but he will never be a franchise QB. 

[AnAngryAmerican]

1 hour ago, broncos67 said:

It's hard for me to put a lot of stock in training camp because I wasn't there. One thing that is abundantly clear is that a lot of typical training camp sources in local Denver media had such a strong pro-Lock bias/slant to their reporting that I really don't know that I believe what I read.

What media are you talking about? I follow the local media very closely, not only from living here but being a part-time member of the media myself, and I saw the opposite. 9news was all over Teddy, Mike Klis and Rod Mackey couldn’t have been further up his a**, KOA was pro-Teddy and, yesterday, only 2 people on The Fan (one of them being DMac, who is the Skip Bayless of Denver media, taking controversial stances just for the sake of it) said they preferred Lock to Teddy, the other 10 or so were all “team Teddy.” Same with Altitude radio, Renck plays it down the middle because he’s a pros pro. The fan base wants Lock, the media wanted Teddy. 

[champ11]

1 hour ago, AnAngryAmerican said:

What media are you talking about? I follow the local media very closely, not only from living here but being a part-time member of the media myself, and I saw the opposite. 9news was all over Teddy, Mike Klis and Rod Mackey couldn’t have been further up his a**, KOA was pro-Teddy and, yesterday, only 2 people on The Fan (one of them being DMac, who is the Skip Bayless of Denver media, taking controversial stances just for the sake of it) said they preferred Lock to Teddy, the other 10 or so were all “team Teddy.” Same with Altitude radio, Renck plays it down the middle because he’s a pros pro. The fan base wants Lock, the media wanted Teddy. 

I’ve p much noticed most former player media has been pro Teddy for the most part and non player media has been fairly pro Drew 

[AnAngryAmerican]

13 hours ago, broncos_fan _from _uk said:

I don’t know that he’s good. I don’t know that he’s bad. I do know that he has tripled his career offseason work this year (got injured 2 weeks in rookie year, obviously none last year) and has made huge improvements on the issues he had (making the right read, footwork, using his eyes to manipulate the defense, touch). 
 

kid has the tools and appears to be making strides on his deficits. Arguably won a competition where the cards were stacked against him (most of the starters were sat for his “start” and again when he came in on relief, while Teddy got multiple 4th down attempts to bolster his case), and despite not getting the nod is by all accounts continuing to be a great teammate and get better every day. 
 

people talking about not willing to take the shot, I fear we may end up with eggs on our faces ala the falcons after they traded Favre. We don’t know, let’s take the f-ing shot. 

This is spot-on. The biggest thing we need to all remember - and hold Vic, Paton, Shurmur, etc. accountable - is that the deck was stacked against Drew from the get-go. I've been saying it since February that if they bring in a veteran journeyman they will do everything they can to give him the job; that applied to whether it was Teddy, Dalton, Fitzpatrick, any of them. 

So anyone is out there, or on here, saying anything to the effect of "Drew couldn't beat out Teddy so it's on him" is mistaken. The deck was stacked against Lock from get-go. 

They made their bed, now they can sleep in it in my opinion. 

Edited August 26, 2021 by AnAngryAmerican

[AnAngryAmerican]

9 hours ago, broncos67 said:

Paton clearly didn’t want a new QB at a time where he’s still feeling out the HC position. Was that the right move? We’ll see. But it’s not unprecedented. New GMs without an established, long term HC and QB should try and pair those two together whenever possible given how critical QB is. Cmon guys this isn’t new. 

How do we know Paton isn't a big supporter of Vic? During his time in the NFL, Paton has been on teams that have had Dave Wannstedt, Jim Bates, Nick Saban (the NFL version), Brad Childress, Leslie Frazier and Mike Zimmer as head coaches. That's an unimpressive list if I've ever seen one. He could think Vic - who by his own admission doesn't even watch the offense in practice - is a great coach. He clearly thinks Shurmur is a good OC, he was on the Minnesota staff that employed him as OC. 

[jsthomp2007]

I am not sure why with Paton and Bridgewater why the universe is crapping in the fan's mouths while trying to shove watermelons up our a$$es. 

[broncosfan_101]

11 minutes ago, AnAngryAmerican said:

This is spot-on. The biggest thing we need to all remember - and hold Vic, Paton, Shurmur, etc. accountable - is that the deck was stacked against Drew from the get-go. I've been saying it since February that if they bring in a veteran journeyman they will do everything they can to give him the job; that applied to whether it was Teddy, Dalton, Fitzpatrick, any of them. 

So anyone is out there, or on here, saying anything to the effect of "Drew couldn't beat out Teddy so it's on him" is mistaken. The deck was stacked against Lock from get-go. 

They made their bed, now they can sleep in it in my opinion. 

It matters exactly 0% that the deck was stacked against Lock. If he can’t clearly outshine the journeyman-ist journeyman in Teddy Bridgewater, there’s absolutely nothing to get excited about. 

 

3 minutes ago, AnAngryAmerican said:

How do we know Paton isn't a big supporter of Vic? During his time in the NFL, Paton has been on teams that have had Dave Wannstedt, Jim Bates, Nick Saban (the NFL version), Brad Childress, Leslie Frazier and Mike Zimmer as head coaches. That's an unimpressive list if I've ever seen one. He could think Vic - who by his own admission doesn't even watch the offense in practice - is a great coach. He clearly thinks Shurmur is a good OC, he was on the Minnesota staff that employed him as OC. 

Paton witnessed first-hand how Shurmur coached up the minimally-talented Case Keenum, who has a similar skill set to Teddy. Not saying it’s gonna happen again, but it’s an understandable bet for him to make in the absence of a clear-cut #1 QB on the roster.

[lomaxgrUK]

28 minutes ago, AnAngryAmerican said:

So anyone is out there, or on here, saying anything to the effect of "Drew couldn't beat out Teddy so it's on him" is mistaken. The deck was stacked against Lock from get-go. 

They made their bed, now they can sleep in it in my opinion. 

50% of 1st team snaps all of OTAs, same for TC, same for preseason games with 1st team. What isn't fair about that?

You tell us - what exactly did Drew do to win this job? Specifically, what did YOU see to have such a strong opinion Lock deserves the gig? I don't understand.

Edited August 26, 2021 by lomaxgrUK