ENGLEWOOD, Colo. — Brandon Allen is a mystery to the NFL, Broncos fans — and, to some degree, to the Broncos themselves.
His work in practice behind Joe Flacco was limited until this week. He joined the team one day after the 53-man roster deadline, making him just the second quarterback since the 1987 strike season to start for the Broncos without being a part of the team in that year’s preseason.
But at least Brock Osweiler, the other member of this minuscule fraternity, had started for the Broncos before. He had 23 career starts — including two in the postseason — to his name before the Broncos thrust him onto Lincoln Financial Field to lead them in what would be a 51-23 shellacking at the talons of the Philadelphia Eagles two years ago.
Even to the wide receivers on whom Allen will lean, he is an unknown quantity.
“Honestly, I haven’t had too much work with him,” Courtland Sutton said. “I’ve seen him work a little bit with the scout team and then seen him throw a little bit during routes on air, but I haven’t gotten a lot of work with him.”
“I haven’t seen much of Brandon,” added DaeSean Hamilton. “I’m around him every single day, but he hasn’t been in the huddle with us much and stuff like that.”
Allen has been in scout-team huddles — which means that until this week, the first-team defenders actually saw more of him han the top-line players on the offensive depth chart.
“I’m not going to judge a guy off a scout team,” cornerback Chris Harris Jr. said, laughing. “I don’t want to do him like that.”
Safety Justin Simmons was willing to judge … and he liked what he saw.
“When he’s back there at scout team, we’ve told him multiple times, ‘You know what the card says, but based on what you see, throw the ball around. Make plays if you can with your feet, because we play a lot of quarterbacks like that, who extend the play,'” Simmons explained.
“I feel like we’ve gotten more than great looks with him week-in and week-out — a guy that can move. He has a tremendous arm. He throws the ball really well, really accurate, and so I don’t think I’m too worried about the plan on that side of the football. I just know we can help him out a lot if we do our side and execute.”
One thing that was apparent to Hamilton was Allen’s confidence.
“He’s a confident guy. He wouldn’t be in the NFL if he wasn’t a confident guy,” Hamilton said. “He’s smart. He knows this offense. He’s been watching Joe do it, obviously, this entire first half of the season. He came in at the end of training camp and basically just picked it up, hit the ground running.
“So it’s him being the confident quarterback that I know he can be, and all the guys around him, all the players from top to bottom being there to make his job easier and being good support for him.”
The coaches who work with Allen know a bit more. But much of what offensive coordinator Rich Scangarello leans on is his ability to get young, relatively inexperienced quarterbacks up to speed on short notice, something he did with C.J. Beathard, Jimmy Garoppolo and Nick Mullens with the San Francisco 49ers as their quarterbacks coach in 2017 and 2018.
“I think it’s just a matter of us playing together, doing our best to protect him, allow him to be at his best, be comfortable and getting him in a groove,” Scangarello said. “Then we’ll go where the ball has to go.”
That spurred a follow-up question a moment later: What exactly does it mean to “protect” Allen, to allow him to flourish?
“You’ve got to put the best plan around him with the people you have that match up the best style with their play,” Scangarello said. “In the end, [I’ve] been through this a little bit in the last couple of years and I’m excited for Brandon.”
And therein lies the hope for Allen: that Scangarello can extract the same sort of unexpected proficiency from Allen that he did from Mullens last year with the 49ers.
It’s not that Mullens was great by any stretch. But he was capable. His passer rating of 90.8 and his ESPN QBR of 53.8 last year are both better than Flacco’s numbers with the Broncos this season (85.1 passer rating, 47.7 QBR).
So is there something from Mullens that could lend itself to Scangarello’s work with Allen?
“I don’t think so,” Scangarello said. “I think every guy is a little bit different. Brandon got here toward the end of the [preseason], but he’s done a great job. He’s smart.”
Smart enough to handle everything thrown at him? Hamilton believes so.
“I know he’s a smart guy,” he said. “He’s obviously into the game plans week in and week out. He knows what’s supposed to be going on. He’s in our ear on the sideline. He’s like another extension of Joe when we’re on the sideline after drives.”
Of course, Allen has to be more than that in taking his work to the field. But he has done enough to spur confidence from his teammates.
“Honestly, I think he’s going to be fine — more than fine,” Simmons said.
