It has to feel good to be a Broncos fan right about now. After years of wandering the NFL’s quarterback wilderness and talking themselves into a never-ending stream of guys with names straight out of a CW teen drama — Case, Brock, Paxton and Trevor — football fans in Denver have hope.
Drew Lock, John Elway’s latest toss at the dartboard, is the inspiration for that hope. The 2019 second-round pick has started two games and won both of them. And on Sunday in Houston, he accomplished something that no other rookie had done in the modern history of the NFL.
With his performance today in Houston, Broncos QB @DrewLock23 is the first rookie in NFL history to have at least 300 passing yards and 3 touchdown passes in his first career road start.
— Patrick Smyth (@psmyth12) December 8, 2019
The numbers are great, but it’s throws like this one to fellow rookie Noah Fant that should really have Broncos fans giddy for what is sure to be a bright future…
Lock is not only leading his team to victories but he’s doing so in style. Elway looks to have a star on his hands, and Broncos fans finally have a young quarterback they can believe in.
Now let’s move onto the Eagles’ win over the Giants on Monday night. So Denver fans, you guys can head out. Thanks for stopping by.
*smiles as the Broncos fans file out*
OK, now that they’re gone, we can get serious.
This may have been the worst 300-yard, three-touchdown performance I’ve ever seen. Obviously, the bar is extremely high there — those games are usually pretty good — but I don’t know if anything that Lock put on tape, outside of that strike to Fant and a few out-of-structure plays, should have Broncos fans enthused about his prospects.
Let me get one thing out of the way before we go to the tape. Before the draft, I was not high on Drew Lock. And, like all humans, I have a desire to be right and that desire could very well be clouding my judgment here. But that’s what the clips are for! You don’t have to take my admittedly biased word for it. Decide for yourself.
I’ll also say this: You can cherry-pick bad plays from any quarterback and paint a bleak picture. But I think the plays I’ve picked out illustrate that Lock has no natural feel for the quarterback position, which is obviously a problem.
We’ll start with his first throw of the game. It’s a three-level flood concept off play-action. Every football team in the world runs some version of this. Lock does a poor job of reading it out but narrowly avoids disaster thanks to the Texans corner misplaying the ball despite being in the perfect position to jump the route.
Lock fails to read the leverage of the cornerback and how it relates to the route of his intended target. That’s one of the more important aspects of quarterback play, and it’s one that he doesn’t have a firm grasp on.
Here’s another instance. Casey Heyward jumps inside of Courtland Sutton, who’s running a corner route, giving Lock a rather easy read…
Lock, somehow, doesn’t see it initially and starts to scramble before coming to his senses and making a late throw that he gets away with.
But, hey it’s a touchdown! Who cares, nerd?
Yes, the result was good but this is bad process; and, in the long run, bad process eventually catches up to all quarterbacks. We’re looking at you, Bortles.
Lock has had a hard time getting the ball out on time in his two starts. It didn’t hurt him on the touchdown throw above, but here’s an example where it does…
That should have been an easy completion. Instead, it was an incomplete pass, and it could have been far worse. If that throw is on target, the Texans linebacker is undercutting it and possibly taking an interception to the house.
On this play, you can see both of Lock’s issues on full display.
With the slot cornerback playing with his back to the sideline (for whatever reason), Lock should known the out route is going to be open well before the receiver makes his break. Yet, Lock isn’t ready to throw until a few steps after the receiver comes out of his break. What could have been a nice catch-and-run turns into a so-so gain. This is bad quarterbacking that just happens to be working out.
On top of the bad process, Lock is still making the kind of head-scratching decisions that he had the reputation for making in college. Here he is trying to fit a pass into a window that clearly isn’t there…
And here he is throwing a duck into double coverage…
If you’re wondering why a big quarterback with all of the arm talent in the world dropped to the second round, these plays are a good illustration. Lock just doesn’t have a feel for the quarterback position and a strong arm only takes you so far. This is the kind of stuff you saw out of Jay Cutler (and that might be Lock’s ceiling) and the kind of stuff you’re seeing from Josh Allen — two comparisons I don’t think any Broncos fan will be comfortable with.
Granted, Lock is still extremely young and we’re only two games into his career. At the same time, these are incredibly simple reads that even a freshman in college should be able to make. There’s no guarantee that he’s ever going to figure these things out, either. There aren’t a lot of examples of quarterbacks who have shown no feel for the position at this point in their development and then matured into a consistent player. I don’t know if there are any examples.
Lock is undoubtedly a fun and talented player. The NFL would be better off if he did develop into the next Patrick Mahomes, a quarterback who just happens to have a bazooka for an arm. But at the moment, Lock looks like a guy with a bazooka for an arm who just happens to play quarterback.
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