Say goodbye to development, it's winning time for the Denver Broncos

Draft and develop, draft and develop, draft and develop. You hear it over and over again in professional sports  because, well drafting and developing is important. It is, for many teams, the best chance at success and it’s why many young players get umpteen chances to prove themselves before being replaced.

With that said, for a winning team, there comes a point in the season when development is thrown out the window, when the only thing that matters is winning games now. For the Denver Broncos, that point came with 23 minutes and 18 seconds remaining in the final game of the season.

Head coach Gary Kubiak decided the time for seeing what Brock Osweiler had was up and, more importantly to that particular game, he decided the time for watching dudes run by Michael Schofield had expired as well.

Enter eight-year vet out of the University of Colorado, Tyler Polumbus. Polumbus came in at right tackle and thrived, helping the Broncos to 141 second half rushing yards and protecting fellow third quarter replacement, Peyton Manning, with class.

On Thursday, Kubiak announced that one of those men, Manning, would start next Sunday but, curiously, did not do the same for Polumbus.

“First off, I have a lot of confidence in Michael [Schofield],” stated the head coach. “Michael has played against some pretty good players. We’re young up front. That hasn’t changed. We have three first-year players starting for us up-front. Michael struggled a little in the game and Tyler came in and played well. It’s just another example, probably, of the way that we’ll proceed. I expect them both to contribute to what we’re doing.”

I’m not exactly sure what that means, but no matter what language I tried on Google translate, it never came out to say, “Tyler Polumbus will start.”

Polumbus indicated that he himself isn’t sure who will start, either.

“I have no idea what’s going to happen,” he said. “I’m just going to prepare the same way that I have for every game this year, and that’s as if I was going to be needed to play. I’ll be ready to play if they need me to play.”

As for his performance on Sunday, Polumbus seemed pleased.

“I went out there and I had a lot of fun, It was good to be out there and I had energy, I had some enthusiasm,” he said. “There were one or two plays that I’d like to be better ones, as everybody has in every game, but for me I just went out there and was focused on having fun and trying to help this team and I think I did that.”

We’ll take his word on having fun and we know he certainly helped the team. Polumbus also said later, “Consistency is the name of the game,” well, while it’s been a small sample size, we can also say with certainty that Polumbus has been the more consistent option.

“Mike [Schofield] and I have a great relationship,” concluded Polumbus. “I try to help him as much as I can. I talked to him after the game and just told him to keep his head up because he’s going to have a great career.”

That he might, that he might, but the clock for Michael Schofield to improve this season has struck midnight. It’s winning time and because of that, there’s only one option for the Denver Broncos at right tackle next Sunday.