Denver Broncos: Drew Lock era inching closer

The Denver Broncos are now 0-3 after a loss to the Green Bay Packers. Are we inching ever closer to the Drew Lock era in Denver?

The Denver Broncos are 0-3 to start the 2019 season and hope feels lost.

The Broncos simply can’t string together any consistently good play through their first three games, though they have had some spurts of really good-looking football giving us all false hope throughout the course of a 60-minute game.

With an 0-3 record staring up at the 3-0 Kansas City Chiefs, the Broncos have to start thinking about the future if they can’t win some games coming up here.

When scoring even just 20 points is an impossible task for this team, it’s fair to wonder how different the Broncos team that trotted out to open this season will look in the second half.

Will John Elway make some trades? Is Vic Fangio going to have to lead the charge on a rebuild in his first year as an NFL head coach? With three losses in three games, it’s very possible.

One move that seems to be getting closer and closer is the move to quarterback Drew Lock.

Joe Flacco has not been bad in the Broncos’ first three games although he’s probably coming off of his worst start of the year in Green Bay. Even though Flacco has done some nice things, the Broncos have not scored more than 16 points in any of their three games so far.

The offense has looked good at times, but as was typically the case for Flacco the past few years in Baltimore, there’s way too much holding the ball, checking down to the back, and not taking quick, decisive shots downfield.

The Broncos are not progressing forward with Flacco, so why would you not put your young quarterback out there and get as much of an evaluation as you possibly can?

Again, this is dependent on what the Broncos do over the next five weeks in terms of winning or losing games. They have a ‘winnable’ game next week at home against the Jacksonville Jaguars, who have a rookie quarterback in Gardner Minshew who has yet to ‘look’ like a rookie out there.

The difference between this year and other years is, the Broncos wouldn’t be experimenting with Lock as a possible solution to their problems like they would have been with other quarterback options in the years after Peyton Manning.

This would be different because the Broncos have learned from experience that you have to get an honest evaluation of your quarterback position before you’re faced with an opportunity to draft another possible star at the position.

The Broncos may have liked Justin Herbert enough last year to just say they know they like him better than Lock, who was a second-round pick in 2019. If that’s the case, there’s really no rush in Lock’s development, but it would be wise for the Broncos to find a way to get him on the field when he is eligible after week eight.