DENVER – Rookie quarterbacks are having success all over the national football league. Dak Prescott has the Cowboys at 4-1, Carson Wentz has the Eagles at 3-1, even Jacoby Brissett led the Patriots to a blowout win over the Houston Texans. Behind that success, you can find some or all of a few common themes: A strong running game, strong offensive line protection, early leads, etc.
On Sunday afternoon, Denver Broncos first-round pick Paxton Lynch got none of those things.
On his way to an ugly 23-16 loss, Lynch found himself down 10-0 from the jump, was sacked six times and saw his team amass just 84 yards on the ground—18 of which came from him, while he was running for his life.
It was a perfect storm.
“We have to help him better,” head coach Gary Kubiak said after the game. “We got down early in the game. We were committed to running the ball today, and we tried to do that early. We did not run the ball well. We get down by 13, something like that, and we were struggling to protect him. We put him in a really tough situation. That’s not the type of game you want to put him in.”
“They are a team that plays a lot of three-deep zone,” he added. “You have to be very patient about what you’re doing. When you get down 13 to them, if you can’t just chip away and get yourself back in the game, you start holding the ball and trying to get it down the field too much. It’s tough. It was a very good plan on their part. They did a great job.”
To the naked eye, it was a concerning performance for the rookie quarterback. He looked uncomfortable and was inaccurate throughout the game. On the outside, it may have looked like Lynch let his previously-undefeated team down. On the inside, they felt they let him down.
“It’s not on Paxton, it has absolutely nothing to do with Paxton,” Emmanuel Sanders said definitively. “It’s about the team. Offensively, defensively, special teams, we just didn’t bring our A-game today.”
When a team talks about a “next-man-up” mentality, they talk about every single player on the roster raising their game to pick up the new guy. The Broncos did quite the opposite, with much of Lynch’s supporting cast seemingly having their worst outing of the season, including the defense that has always had a knack for picking up a struggling QB.
On Sunday, the team simply didn’t have it and Lynch—who certainly did not play his best even under the tough circumstances—was put in an extremely tough position. The perfect storm left the Broncos with their first loss since before Christmas.
Team wins. Team losses.
“We got our butts kicked today,” Sanders concluded. “We have to take the butt-kicking and move on.”
Lynch said after the game he learned a lot from the experience, the Broncos and their fans learned what happens when a rookie QB is put on an island.
