ENGLEWOOD, Colo. — The wait is over. Again.
For the fourth time in his career—and the second time this season—Paxton Lynch was named the Denver Broncos’ starting quarterback for the team’s final game of the season on Sunday against the Kansas City Chiefs, Vance Joseph announced on Tuesday.
With one caveat.
“He wasn’t quite ready last week, so hopefully he’s ready to go this week,” Joseph said, referring to Lynch’s sprained ankle that wasn’t fully healed and kept him from playing this past Sunday’s game against the Washington Redskins. “That was kind of the plan last week, if he was healthy enough to play. This week, that’s the plan to play Paxton.”
Although Lynch’s ankle kept him from playing just two days before—even though Joseph said the ankle was at 90 percent in the lead up to last weeks game—when asked on Tuesday if he had any concerns about his ankle moving forward, Joseph said he wasn’t too concerned about the ankle holding Lynch out this time around.
“We want to see him play,” Joseph stated many times in the nine-minute press conference. “That’s been the goal the last couple of weeks, and that hasn’t happened, so we want to see him play live bullets in football games.”
The only time Lynch saw live bullets in the 2017 season was Nov. 26 against the Oakland Raiders in the Black Hole. Fittingly, with the game being in Oakland, Lynch didn’t make it out of the Black Hole after suffering a sprained ankle midway through the third quarter.
Before suffering the injury, Lynch had a day to forget, only throwing for 41 yards with zero touchdowns and one interception while not putting a single point on the board.
Since his uninspiring first start, he’s been healing, rehabbing and backing up Brock Osweiler. While Osweiler didn’t help his own cause with his performance Sunday against the Redskins, the Broncos are turning to Lynch, not because of anything he’s done, but simply to see what the first-round pick can do not that the season is all but over.
“With it being a quarterback issue going into the offseason, we want to see him play to see what this player is,” Joseph said, not instilling loads of confidence in any of the quarterbacks on the roster.
However, when asked if he views this as Paxton’s final try out for the Broncos, Joseph firmly stated, “I do not. We simply want to see this guy play… It’s simple, guys, we want to see him play. Very simple.”
As a self-appointed “big fan” of Lynch just last week, offensive coordinator Bill Musgrave will be tasked with building an offense—or at least many plays—catered to Lynch’s non-prototypical style.
“Anytime he’s playing we incorporate some different running schemes for the quarterback, different movement plays for the quarterback,” Joseph explained. “Obviously that’s one of his best attributes is his legs, so we always use that part of his game to have success in the offense.”
Saddle up, because if Paxton’s ankle is ready to run on Sunday, the Broncos will end the season with a good hard look at the quarterback they hoped would take the reigns of the franchise for many years.
