Denver Broncos: John Elway, Trevor Siemian shutting haters up

The Denver Broncos have started their championship defense in impressive 3-0 fashion. John Elway and Trevor Siemian are shutting the haters up…

As the great Taylor Swift reminds us all — ‘Haters gonna hate…’

The Denver Broncos, John Elway, and Trevor Siemian shut a lot of the haters up on Sunday with Siemian’s four-touchdown performance on the road against the Cincinnati Bengals.

As I wrote after the game, it wasn’t a flawless performance by Siemian. There were a couple of passes he threw that sailed on receivers. There were a couple of passes that probably should have been picked off.

But they weren’t.

Siemian finished the game completing 23-of-35 passes for 312 yards and four touchdowns. There were no passes intercepted, despite what many are going to write in the coming days.

Of course, the people who simply can’t see the positive progression in Siemian’s game have plenty to aid their argument. After all, he’s not a first round pick like Paxton Lynch, he doesn’t have the same type of athleticism, and he doesn’t have as strong an arm.

That said, the argument against Siemian had some holes poked in it on Sunday, the major one being that he can’t attack the football downfield. Siemian made some incredible throws — perfect or not — on big third down plays that propelled the Broncos’ offense to a place it had only been a handful of times over the last year.

That’s right. The Broncos hadn’t scored 29 points in regulation since their win against the Packers last season…

Siemian has also orchestrated two come-from-behind victories in the Broncos’ first three games. There’s plenty of that that can be attributed to the play of the defense, but Siemian and the offense have come up with big plays and long drives when they had to as well.

John Elway waited over 500 days to respond to a Tweet criticizing him for ‘reaching’ on Siemian in the seventh round, and Broncos Twitter went crazy on Sunday when he finally sent out the most simple form of savagery, as only Elway can.

Just…dont ‘@’ John Elway, okay? It won’t work out for you.

The savagery by Elway was completely justified, and while @nfkrauss was the victim of a national trolling by one of the greatest quarterbacks in NFL history, not everyone has the opportunity to laugh at them. This is a Tweet that Elway sent out to much of Broncos Country, which has been overly critical of Siemian through his first two NFL starts and finally ate some crow on Sunday.

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I’m not a Trevor Siemian apologist by any means. There is a Paxton Lynch jersey hanging in my closet. But to discount and discredit everything Siemian had actually done well. Too many people focus only on the negative, and had made determinations about the Broncos’ starting quarterback that were way too concrete for having seen only two games of real NFL action.

At first, there was a group that wanted to discount him simply for being a seventh round pick. Then his play was criticized for just being against third stringers in pre-season. Then it was that he didn’t ‘beat’ out Mark Sanchez, it was that Sanchez lost the job.

Even if all of that were true, how do you like Siemian now?

Like I said, it wasn’t perfect, but to be so impatient as a young quarterback attempts to prove himself in this league is laughable. The logic for seeing Paxton Lynch struggle through his growing pains on the job vs. letting Siemian have these snaps is justified, but what if the Broncos actually have something in Siemian? Why wouldn’t they take the time to find out?

Oh by the way, they’re 3-0.

As Elway said at the time of his drafting, the raw talent has always been there for Siemian. His knowledge and understanding of the offense have grown. He’s learning and making mistakes on the job while doing so, but he’s consistently getting better and more confident.

And the team around him is growing more confident in their quarterback.

The reaction of the entire team when Gary Kubiak handed Trevor Siemian a game ball is priceless. Siemian’s reaction to being given a game ball is even better. This team has such a great chemistry at every level, and with Gary Kubiak calling the shots, Siemian has been put in a great situation to succeed.

Three games into his young NFL career, it’s apparent that there could be a future for this kid in Denver, and at the very least, he’s shown some guts against three teams that most thought could make the playoffs at the beginning of the year.

For at least another week, the haters are going to have to crawl back into their hole, and find some stats to show how misleading Siemian’s success was yet again. The rest of us will join in the victory celebration.