ENGLEWOOD, Colo. — It’s been nearly 20 months ago to the day that the Denver Broncos selected Paxton Lynch with their first pick in the 2016 draft.
On Sunday, he’s scheduled to make just his fourth start—of a possible 32 games in that stretch—with the team that traded up in the first round to pick him.
In a conference call with Denver media on Wednesday morning, Kansas City Chiefs’ head coach Andy Reid—the Broncos’ next and final opponent of 2017—had to hold back when speaking of the man John Elway hoped would be their franchise quarterback for the next decade.
When asked what similarities he noticed between Patrick Mahomes—the Chiefs’ rookie first-round quarterback—and Lynch, if there were any at all, Reid hesitated.
“Um, well listen, (laughs) first of all I don’t think I can talk about Paxton other than him being, uh, I thought a good player coming out,” the veteran head coach said, seemingly almost caught off guard by the question. “That’s what I thought, so—I don’t know what my restrictions are on talking about the other opponents.”
The perplexing part of Reid’s answer—outside of his hesitation, which he didn’t have in many of the other questions he answered—was there are no restrictions when it comes to talking about the opposing team’s players in terms of an evaluation.
Reid isn’t new to this, either. Of current head coaches, Reid’s 19 years of head coaching experience is second among active coaches, only falling short to Bill Belichick. With that in mind, for him not to know the rules and limitations of a basic conference calls doesn’t seem likely.
But instead of a current evaluation, or comparison, between the Chiefs and Broncos’ young quarterbacks, Reid continued to stick with a past evaluation of Lynch.
“I thought he was a good player coming out,” he said. “I can say that.”
By keeping it short and simple, Reid said plenty.
At the end of Lynch’s second season in the league, coaches still have to look back at his evaluation in college to not only find strengths, but also to get a comprehensive look at who he is.
In his previous four games of NFL action—including three starts—Lynch has thrown for 538 yards on 59.8 percent completion with two passing touchdowns and two interceptions for a passer rating of 73.3.
With Vance Joseph calling the Broncos’ quarterback situation an “issue” going into the offseason and many believing Denver will look elsewhere to find their quarterback of the future, after Sunday, the best evaluation of Lynch may still be his college days, just as Big Red suggested.
