Can you imagine—your dream has come true, you touch down in beautiful Denver Colorado, greeted at the airport by team officials and ushered into a private vehicle. As you come over the hill towards the UC Health Training Center you see the massive Denver Broncos logo on the side of the Pat Bowlen Fieldhouse in the forefront accented by the beautiful Rocky Mountains.
Okay, so nothing can be perfect.
“It was a little tough to see the Bronco at first because of the snow,” Denver Broncos first round pick Paxton Lynch said with a laugh. “The snow was a little bit different from being in Florida. The white sand was in the sky, in Florida the white sand is usually on the ground.”
But don’t worry Lynch was able to enjoy Colorado’s true colors when he came here for his pre-draft visit.
“I really enjoyed my time here in Denver,” he recalled. “I know when I left I was calling my family members and my friends telling them how much I loved the place and the scenery and the mountains, you really don’t get to see mountains in Florida.”
Another thing you don’t get to see in Florida is three Lombardi trophies in one building, that’ll go far towards warming you up from the 34-degree, sleeting weather.
“Once I got here and walked into the building, it felt like home,” Lynch said from the podium in the team meeting room. “Kind of like when you get recruited out of high school to go to college, you walk in and you know that’s where you’re going to be for hopefully all four years. Here, you’re whole career. When I walked in, I felt good. I felt like I was wanted here. Like I said, I’m excited to spend a lot of time here and be around this coaching staff and all these players.”
It was the second big a-ha moment of the young quarterback’s NFL “career.”
“When you’re looking at that TV, and they say, ‘The Denver Broncos have selected Paxton Lynch,’ You know it’s official,” he remembered of last night, a moment that brought him to tears. “I’m kind of glad that it’s over with. Now I have a team, I have a family to be a part of. I’m ready to get to work.”
That family has already begun to welcome him.
“Demaryius Thomas texted me, Mark Sanchez, Trevor Siemian, C.J. [Anderson], a couple of those guys have texted me,” told the newest Bronco. “I know Emmanuel [Sanders] reached out on Twitter. He texted me as well. They were just congratulating me and letting me know that it’s time to get to work. I’m ready for it. Like I said, I’m ready to be a part of a team and ready to get back to work. I’m diving into it.”
In a room that included John Elway in the flesh and a plethora of pictures of Peyton Manning, Lynch admitted he molds his game after the next-most pictured quarterback in the room.
“Cam is my guy,” he said, standing directly beneath a picture of the Panthers No. 1 being sandwiched by Von Miller and Derek Wolfe. “When he was at Auburn, he was the guy that I kind of mimicked my game after.”
Now, he’ll try to mimic the legacy of the guys wearing Orange in the room.
“If you would’ve told me when everybody declared for the draft that I’d be playing for the Denver Broncos, filling Peyton Manning’s shoes, I would have told you you’re crazy, you know?” He said. “But the opportunity that presents itself here with these other quarterbacks and this coaching staff, it’s probably the best situation I could’ve ended up in.”
The Super Bowl champions found themselves in quite the conundrum at the quarterback position, so they took a page out of the book of former Memphis head coach, Justin Fuente, “He was the guy everybody turned to to save the day,” he said of Lynch.
“More often than not, he did.”
