Just when the Denver Broncos quarterback roller coaster had come to rest, it went from zero to 60 in one snap on Sunday afternoon.
Reigning AFC Offensive Player of the Week Trevor Siemian was slammed shoulder-first to the ground by Tampa Bay defensive tackle Clinton McDonald, sending him out of the game and into to the locker room. It was time for highly-regarded rookie Paxton Lynch to make his debut.
With the Tampa Bay sun nowhere in sight, the kid shined.
In late August, head coach Gary Kubiak told reporters that despite not being the starter, Lynch was still on the fast track, “You never know what’s going to happen,” he explained. The NFL’s unpredictability can be so predictable.
Coming in cold off of the bench, Lynch hit the field and out-performed last season’s No. 1 overall pick. Not only securing the lead but extending it, as the Broncos went on to blow out the Tampa Bay Buccaneers by a score of 27-6. When all was said and done, Lynch had completed 14-of-24 passes for 170 yards and a touchdown.
“You have to be very proud of him,” head coach Gary Kubiak told KOA radio after the game. “It’s his first time out, he’s on the road, a lot of stuff going on, he handles the football team to get out of here with a ‘W’… He has a big arm, you know. He’s a downfield-type thrower. The thing I like, he can avoid sacks. He moves, he got rid of the ball a couple of times on a couple of bad plays.”
As has been the case throughout the Gary Kubiak era, mistake-free football from the quarterback just about guarantees success, and Lynch delivered exactly that.
“My heart was definitely racing a little bit,” the rookie told KOA with a laugh. “[Quarterbacks] Coach [Greg] Knapp did a good job of calming me down, those guys in the huddle did a good job of calming me down. They had my back and we just kept rolling.”
Roll they did. Just as they did when Brock Osweiler came in for Peyton Manning or when Peyton Manning came in for Brock Osweiler or when Trevor Siemian took over for both of them. The Broncos just keep rolling. It’s what they do. On Sunday, they became the first team since the 1986 bears to put together a six-game winning streak with four different quarterbacks.
“That’s what Paxton’s here for,” Kubiak explained. “He went in, I really like the way he handled himself, it’s going to take all of us before this thing is said and done and we used another guy today.”
That guy had the biggest profile of any player they had yet to use, and his more-than-solid performance is sure to raise some eyebrows about who will be the starting quarterback going forward. For now, though, Siemian, who Kubiak said is day-to-day, will just do his best to get healthy.
As for Lynch, he’ll be primed for anything, just as he was on this day.
“I’m going to prepare the same way,” he explained. “If the opportunity presents itself, I’ll make sure I’m ready.”
It appears the Broncos have two pretty good quarterbacks on their hands, and as we saw today, that’s important in the NFL
