The Denver Broncos are 5-9 and there are two games left in the season. They will finish with a losing record for the third year in a row. That’s a total disaster, right?
Sure, if you choose to look at it that way. Many fans of the Broncos will do just that. After all, the fanbase expects success year in and year out. But let’s be honest, this season wasn’t going to be successful.
There were fans and guys on radio stations making outlandish predictions such as the team going 11-5 this year, but what was that based on other than being a total Broncos “homer”?
The team was coming off two very poor seasons in which they were hardly competitive for the most part. The team had a first-year head coach and a brand new quarterback.
That’s not a team that is likely to go 11-5. And of course, they didn’t even sniff that level of success.
However, for one reason and one reason only, this season can be considered a success. You guessed it: Drew Lock.
The fact that the team put Lock in to see what he had was a big move, even if the organization wasn’t completely sold on him starting this season. It gave them the chance to see what he had.
Playing Joe Flacco or Brandon Allen was not going to bring about any talk of the future, since one of those guys is at the end of his career and the other is a backup, at best.
The success Lock had in his first two starts made one thing quite clear for the Broncos . . . they don’t need to worry about a quarterback with an early pick in next year’s draft.
That gives the team something it hasn’t had since Peyton Manning was the starter and that is the ability to build around a quarterback. That doesn’t mean that Lock is guaranteed to be the quarterback of the future, but it does mean the team has a guy that could be.
Trevor Siemian wasn’t that guy. Brock Osweiler wasn’t that guy. Paxton Lynch proved to not be that guy. Case Keenum wasn’t that guy and Flacco wasn’t that guy.
Lock possibly could be.
That’s exciting. Because going into the offseason, the organization and the fans don’t have to be worrying about who the quarterback is going to be. Instead, the team can use its picks to give Lock a better offensive line or to give him another talented target to throw the ball to.
A 5-9 record is no good. Being eliminated from the playoffs is certainly no fun. But looking at things from a realistic perspective, the Broncos did have some good come from the 2019 campaign.
As a result of this and things like the development of Courtland Sutton, the play of safeties Justin Simmons and Kareem Jackson and other promising rookies such as Noah Fant and Dalton Risner, the Broncos are a franchise with the arrow pointing up.
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