Why Sunday may have been Drew Lock's most important win yet

DENVER — On Sunday, Drew Lock was a magician.

No, not because of any throw he made or an escape act in the pocket. It’s because he made something disappear. On a perfect, 60-degree December day at Mile High, Drew Lock made his tough game against the Kansas City Chiefs vanish into thin air.

While we knew it was a bit of a fluky situation from the start, Lock needed to rebound on Sunday to truly quell any lingering concerns, and that’s exactly what he did. It wasn’t flashy, it won’t pop off the stat sheet at you, but Lock’s performance of 25-of-33 for 192 yards, one touchdown and zero interceptions was more than enough to make the KC game a massive outlier.

When you take away that three-point output, the Broncos offense is now averaging precisely 27 points per game in Lock’s three starts in normal conditions, the exact output that Lock and the offense delivered on Sunday. This time, though, he showed us that he won’t be shaken or derailed by a tough outing.

Remember when the Broncos went 20 straight games without even scoring 25 points? Of course you do, because that only ended three weeks ago.

But Drew Lock did something else on Sunday. He ensured that he will finish his five-game “audition” with a winning record, and he ensured that he will finish that audition with more good games than anything else. And with all that, it feels pretty safe to say that he ensured that he will be the Denver Broncos starting quarterback come Week 1 in 2021.

“He’s special,” a Broncos coaching source told DNVR following the game. “He’s even better than we expected, and we had high expectations… He does everything the right way.”

Since entering the lineup, Lock has helped improved team’s points per game, first downs per game and yards per play, among many more. He’s been so good that it’s hard not to wonder what this team could have done if he took over the reins sooner.

“We all think about that,” Chris Harris Jr. told DNVR in the locker room following the latest win. “We know there are some games that we lost by field goals that we definitely could have won.”

“Playoffs” Chimed in another player a few lockers down. “Play. Offs.”

And that right there might be one of the most valuable things Drew Lock is going to bring to this team. For the first time since Peyton Manning retired, the Broncos are going to know who their starting quarterback is for the next season when they pack up their lockers on the Monday after the season ends, and they believe in him.

For the last two years, the team was force-fed an average quarterback in the offseason that they had no choice but to believe in. This year, they’ll have something tangible to hang onto. A player that has already earned their respect, a player that they truly like.

The belief, whether consciously or subconsciously, will lead to players doing a little extra in the offseason, paying a little bit closer attention in meetings during training camp, getting extra work in with Lock himself. Heck, it may even help in the sales pitch to a free agent, and you know Elway is going to put the full-court press on now that he has his guy at QB and tons of cap space to work with.

Next Sunday, Lock will have a chance to lead the Broncos to their best five-game stretch since they were still riding the Super-Bowl high at the beginning of 2016.

In a vacuum, Sunday was just one win over a lowly Lions team, but Drew Lock is starting to put together a body of work, and that body of work is looking mighty fine.