Well, if you expected a perfect game or a terrible game, you haven’t followed much of Paxton Lynch since he came to Denver. The rookie is, well, a rookie and like any other first-year man, he has his highs, and he has his lows.
The Broncos’ first-round pick had plenty of both on Thursday night in the team’s preseason finale, a 38-17 loss to the Arizona Cardinals. Lynch finished the game 13-22 for 214 yards, two touchdowns and one interception.
“I thought he did pretty good,” head coach Gary Kubiak told media after the game. “I mean, you take the interception away at the end—and that’s experience, they chance the coverage up on him, and he’s gotta make a better decision with the ball. He continues to make great plays because of his ability but it continues to be about consistency. I think the strides that he’s made since we got him have been very good, and we have to continue to make some more. ”
The game could not have started any better for the young signal-caller, his first pass of the night going 57 yards to the house thanks to a shifty move by Jordan Taylor who was victorious in a footrace to the end zone.
After that, though, it was mostly downhill for the rookie. Aside from an eight-play, 94-yard drive in the third quarter, Paxton and the offense didn’t move the ball consistently, at all. Lynch also making a costly mistake when his telegraphed pass was taken the other way for six.
The question going into the game was if the Broncos could head into the season with just Lynch and starter Trevor Siemian on the roster, opening the door to part ways with Mark Sanchez. Kubiak wasn’t yet ready to make that call.
“We have a lot of decisions to make on our team,” he said, dodging the question with a smirk. “We have decisions to make, running back decisions to make, we’ve got defensive line decisions to make, wide receiver… It’s not about one spot and what we’re going to do at one spot, it’s about what we’re going to do with the team.”
Lynch wasn’t ready to give a definitive answer, either
“Like I have said from the beginning, I am just going to keep doing my job and do whatever the team needs me to do,” he explained. “But I am going to be ready for whatever I need to do. Whether that is to push Trevor or go in the game and play.”
Kubiak, Elway and the rest of the staff have some big decisions ahead, but none loom larger than what’s in front of them at the quarterback position. If you show Sanchez the door, you are one play away from Paxton Lynch being your starting quarterback at any moment; whether he’s shown enough to make the Broncos comfortable with that will become apparent very soon.
Kubiak explained he and the rest of the brass plan to make most of their decisions by tomorrow morning.
