Why Drew Lock's tough game on Sunday is irrelevant... For now

Throw that one away. Douse it in gasoline. Toss a match in the can. Burn it all.

For now.

Box score scouts will look at Sunday’s game against the Chiefs and tell you that Drew Lock came back to earth. Heck, even naysaying film analysts will pick apart his each and every throw, dissecting ball placement and mechanics.

Ignore it all. For now.

No matter what anyone wants to say, a rookie quarterback, in a hostile environment, in a snowstorm, playing from behind, with a struggling offensive line is just not something worth evaluating. For now.

Additionally, to give credit where it’s due, this is a Chiefs defense that has made life comparably miserable for Tom Brady, Derek Carr and Philip Rivers respectively over the last four weeks, and none of those games were in the snow.

There is precisely one thing about Sunday’s game that matters in the Drew Lock evaluation—adversity.

For the first time in his NFL career, things didn’t go Lock’s way. He didn’t get any help from his receivers or his defense. His attempt to play the hero ended up in the hands of a Chief. After being well protected in his first two starts, he spent the entirety of Sunday’s game on his back.

This matters because now we get to see how he responds to it. Next Sunday, Lock is going to go up against the 3-10-1 Detroit Lions, a team that allowed Jameis Winston to go 28-for-42 for 458 yards, and four touchdowns on Sunday afternoon. The forecast calls for 55 and sunny.

How he performs in that one, as a response to the adversity he faced on Sunday, that will make all the difference as to whether or not Lock’s struggles against the Chiefs matter or not.

Back on Nov. 20, when Vic Fangio was getting bombarded with questions about the plan for Lock, he was asked if he had any worries about overwhelming the rookie and thus derailing his development if he played “too early.”

“You know, I don’t worry too much about him getting overwhelmed,” he responded. “Some people are like, ‘Well, he can get overwhelmed and then his career is scarred.’ If a guy gets scarred from some bad performances, whether they’re all his fault or if it’s the team’s fault, then he probably wasn’t the guy you wanted anyway.”

Precisely.

Next Sunday against the Lions, Drew Lock will have the opportunity to show that no loss or rough outing can scar him, that a fluky game where everything went against him was just that. He’ll have a chance to prove that the “small sample size” of five games won’t be an issue in his evaluation.

Play well in that one, and this Sunday’s stinker against the Chiefs is erased.

But, while I don’t expect it, we have to examine the other side of this coin. Should Lock go out on Sunday and have another game of sub-50 percent completions and more interceptions than touchdowns, well, then all of the sudden, you’re concerned about a pattern. You’re concerned that maybe the adversity got to him a little bit and bled over. Most of all, you’re concerned that after that, Lock would only have one game to leave the season with a good taste in everyone’s mouth.

At that point, the sample size would become concerning because, unlike a normal starter, the Broncos rookie wouldn’t have time to break out of the perceived “slump,” he’d have one game.

After his marvelous performance against the Texans, we said the only way he could undo that performance was with three straight clunkers. Even an average game against the Texans would put that possibility to bed, and the conditions to do so are as good as they’ll get in this league.

The NFL is all about punches and counter punches, and while it wasn’t really his fault, Drew Lock caught one on the chin in snowy Arrowhead Stadium. How he responds next Sunday will tell us whether it mattered or not.