Paxton Lynch’s shortened audition told us everything we needed to know

OAKLAND, Calif. — Entering Sunday afternoon’s game in the Bay Area, Paxton Lynch had six games to prove to the Denver Broncos’ brass he was their franchise quarterback moving forward after this season.

It only took two and a half quarters to find out the opposite was true.

In his first start of the 2017 season, the 6-foot-7 first-round pick from 2016 was touted as the physically-gifted and athletic quarterback that could make electric plays with both his arm and his feet.

“Making plays with his legs and his arm,” Broncos’ head coach Vance Joseph said after the game. “That was fun to see.”

The problem with Joseph’s statement, for Paxton, was it was about Lynch’s backup—the not as physically gifted, standing at 6-foot-3—Trevor Siemian. With 4:58 left in the third quarter, Lynch exited the game with an ankle injury and never returned.

What happened, or didn’t happen, in the two and a half quarters before his injury, however, was what will eventually define the last nail in the coffin for his potential to be Denver’s franchise quarterback.

On a dreary, wet day in Oakland, the rain and sloppy weather was emblematic of No. 12’s performance right from the get-go. On his first pass attempt of the season, Lynch saw Bennie Fowler wide open on the right numbers for what would have at least been a first down, if not a touchdown. The pass was overthrown, dropping to the ground and forcing an early three-and-out.

The next two pass attempts didn’t go as planned, either. An Allen Barbre holding penalty negated what would have been Lynch’s first completion of the season to Andy Janovich. Three plays later, Paxton finally got his first completion of the season: a four-yard loss to Jamaal Charles.

From there on out, the Broncos’ offense under his guidance wouldn’t perform much better.

At the end of the first quarter, Lynch had negative one passing yards. However, it was the third play of the second quarter that doomed Lynch. With a 2nd-and-goal from Oakland’s one-yard line, Paxton was picked-off in the end zone, turning a potential Broncos touchdown instead into Raiders ball, which they ended up taking for a touchdown of their own.

“We had been working on it all week,” Lynch explained on the interception. “Either I was going to run it or throw it to [Virgil Green]… I saw ‘Virg’ flash open and I had the confidence in myself to make the throw. I threw it to him and it just got batted around to a couple of guys and fell in his lap when he was laying on the ground… At the end of the day, I probably could have pushed it to the pylon and seen what could have happened after that.”

The problem wasn’t that it was simply an interception, it was an interception one yard away from a touchdown to a team that was historically bad at taking the ball away. That marked the Raiders’ first interception on the season. Up until that point, they had gone 357 pass attempts without a pick.

“The interception just can’t happen when you know you have points on the board,” Lynch said after the game. “You got a chip shot field goal at the least and then you kind of force one and turn the ball over.”

At halftime, his offense had put up 50 total yards of offense, including 11 net passing yards. At one point in the second half, before Lynch exited, Denver had more penalty yards (70) than they had offensive yards (56).

By the time Lynch left due to injury, the Broncos’ offense had yet to score a point and was on pace to put up just under 100 yards of offense for the entire game, which would have been their worst offensive output of the year by far, and one of the worst in the franchise’s history.

The worst part about all of it for Lynch was it was against one of the NFL’s worst pass defenses of all time.

“I thought Paxton was doing OK,” Joseph said of his initial evaluation of Lynch. “We had a couple of plays that we missed with Paxton. Obviously, our first seven out of ten drives were three-and-outs, so it wasn’t good enough. But I was proud of how the guys finished.”

The positive finish Joseph talked about was entirely under Siemian. In Lynch’s eight possessions—not including the one-play drive to end the first half—the offense had five three-and-outs and one turnover—Lynch’s interception. In the other three drives of the game, led by Siemian, the offense had one three-and-out and two touchdown drives—one for 93 yards and another for 75 yards.

After the game, the team didn’t know the extent of Lynch’s ankle injury, but even if he’s available for the team’s next game on Sunday against the Miami Dolphins, Joseph may have already seen enough of Lynch.

When asked who will be the starting quarterback in Week 13, Joseph said, “I’m not sure. We will watch the tape and see where we are. We will see where Paxton is with his injury. Obviously, we will do what’s best for our football team next week.”

Against the Raiders it was clear: Paxton Lynch isn’t the best option for this football team. If Joseph does indeed do what is best for his football team—and based off Sunday’s performance that would be Siemian—Lynch’s audition in Denver will have ended just hours after it began.