ENGLEWOOD, Colo. — Drew Lock’s not afraid to speak his mind and shoot it straight.

When he was healthy, we knew about.

When he was itching to practice, he told us.

On Wednesday, he believed he was ready to start his first game in the NFL. He told us.

“I’m prepping to be a starter,” Lock simply said.

“If [Vic Fangio] needed to pull the trigger and start me this week then I’d be ready in all aspects mentally and physically,” the 23-year old rookie stated with confidence, explaining what he told his head coach to convince him he was ready to make his first start.

“I just talk about mentally being ready as far as prepping like I’d be a starter for multiple weeks in a row,” Lock continued. “Physically, obviously, there’s the question about is your thumb ready, accuracy, just reassuring him that after these two weeks and including this third week of practice that I’d be ready to go.”

Lock believes he’s ready. And it appears he’s trending to be Denver’s starting quarterback as his team snaps in practice will increase from roughly 20 percent last week to 75 percent this week.

But Drew didn’t always feel like he was ready to be the starting quarterback, despite always possessing the confidence that can be detected further away than a spray of Clive Christian cologne.

“I felt like I needed to get back and takes some reps,” Lock said, not upset that he wasn’t playing when he began practicing. “I’ll always be a confident guy and feel like I’m comfortable and feel like I’m ready, but being able to come back for two weeks, get good reps with the scout team, take a couple with the first offense. I definitely feel like I’m back to being super comfortable.”

“As far as me actually thinking I’m ready, that first week was a trial, kind of a trial run—getting my feet back underneath me, feeling out the game a little bit,” he continued. “The second week was like ‘Alright, I’m going to act as if the next week after this week then I would come in and play.’”

Lock passed his own test, feeling “good” after last week’s practices.

“I felt like, if needed, I would be able to come in, I would be able to compete. I would be able to complete balls, and that comes with how confident I am with the base that I have right now and the little things I’ve been working on,” Lock said, explaining how his progression over the last three weeks led him to feel comfortable taking over this week.

In Lock’s first two weeks of practice, which began on Nov. 12, the 6-foot-4 quarterback wanted to show the coaches he had improved foundational parts of his game, such as footwork and accuracy.

“Now it’s how well can you execute the game plan, how well do you know it, can you go out there and run it clean with the offense and just show that if they were to put me out there, it would be a clean-cut game,” Lock stated.

If No. 3 is called to be Denver’s No. 1 quarterback on Sunday, as all signs would point to, he’s going to bring the same confidence level to the field and play his game.

“I’m just going to go out there and be myself,” he said calmly. “Just be what I’ve been to get me to this point, and if that means making some plays when people might think I’m doing too much, then so be it. That’s just who I am as a quarterback. I’m going to stick to my guns and stick to who I think I am as a Q.”

It’ll be up to Drew to make sure this is his time. While he’ll split reps with Brandon Allen in practice, Lock will receive a majority of the reps, and the decision is “mainly based on how Drew does,” Fangio said on Wednesday.

“Hopefully, I end up being here for a long time,” Lock said with a smile. “I want to try to build this into something special.”