CANTON, Ohio — Preseason games are sloppy. A pre-preseason game? Sloppy would be a compliment.
The Denver Broncos beat the Atlanta Falcons on Thursday night in the 2019 edition of the Hall of Fame game, but in the words of Vic Fangio, “we weren’t doing cartwheels.”
In fact, if someone had done some gymnastics, it may have been the most exciting thing we saw all night, save for Juwann Winfree’s tip-drill, game-winning catch on 4th-and-14.
The unfortunate thing, in the eyes of many Broncos fans, is that the most exciting storyline going into the game, well, wasn’t very exciting.
Thursday night marked the first time most of Broncos Country got to lay eyes on Drew Lock, the team’s second-round pick and the Elway-deemed quarterback of the future. In seven series, Lock went 7-for-11 (63.6%) for just 34 yards. In his time on the field, the Broncos weren’t able to muster any points and didn’t move the ball much at all.
After the game, head coach Vic Fangio admitted he was in the same boat as the Orange & Blue faithful.
“I was hoping for more,” he said. “But I’m not surprised. You know, he’s still got a lot of work to do.”
So, what went wrong?
“I thought his accuracy wasn’t clean all the time along with his reads but, you know, that’s to be expected,” Fangio explained before getting even more frank. “We’ve got four more games. We’ve got to get him ready, more ready than he is right now.”
“Maybe I was thinking a little bit more than I had before,” said Lock.
It wasn’t all bad for the former Missouri Tiger as he made a nice throw across his body on a bootleg to the left side, and had a nice scramble to move the chains on third down.
In the locker room, it was clear that the gunslinger was a bit frustrated, but he’s not the type of player to reveal a lot of negativity.
“I think that’s what you can expect from an opener, a couple of ups, a couple of downs,” he said. “There’s a lot of things we can work on, especially myself.”
One of the perceived positives of Lock playing with the third team was that he would go up against a lower level on competition on the other side. But it also meant that the highly-talented quarterback would be surrounded by lesser talent, and that showed.
Lock had trouble getting comfortable in the pocket as he was under pressure, even taking two sacks in his time on the field. There was also a dropped pass from running back David Williams that would have gone for a first down and more had he hauled it in.
But, even with the struggles around him, Lock didn’t have his best stuff.
“I won’t give it a one to 10, I’ll rate it as a learning game,” he said when asked how he would rate his performance. “There are definitely things to learn there. I’m excited that I’m sitting here and that was my first time ever stepping out on that field, and it was the Hall of Fame Game, it wasn’t the Super Bowl or the playoffs. So, there’s a lot of things for me to learn and a lot of things for me to look forward to progress and get better.”
As it relates to Lock especially, the Broncos having five preseason games is a pretty big advantage. It’s clear that Denver doesn’t want to put the young QB into any regular-season games this year, so having that extra time in the exhibition portion of the schedule will be extremely valuable.
They’ve got a long way to go, but the kid will be ready when his number is called.
“You get your first taste of it, and you just keep wanting more,” he said. “The days are going to go by slow until our next game.”
