Denver Broncos brick, mortar, and scrap: Quarterbacks

Joe Flacco

The answer to Flacco’s fate with the Broncos in 2020 is about as easy to predict as Lock’s. With the latter’s emergence at the end of the season, it’s clear that the team has no reason to keep Flacco and his bloated contract.

The former SB MVP was brought in last offseason to be that effective bridge starter to a young QB and while he did serve the role as that bridge QB, he was anything but effective in his eight-game tenure as the Broncos top passer.

With a paltry 2-6 record and 6 TDs/5 INTs, Flacco was sent to IR with a herniated disk in his neck and an eight-game memory that will be hard for Broncos Country to forget.

Before I go any further with this analysis, let me be clear about one thing. This isn’t anything personal with Flacco or a way to take shot at him as a player. He’s had a successful career and achieved things that very few QB’s in this league will ever do.

With that said, Flacco should have never been brought to Denver in the first place. Despite the proclamation by Elway that he was “entering his prime” and was a good fit in the Rich Scangarello-led offense, Flacco showed nothing but bad timing with his receivers, statuesque mobility and frustration with the play calling that may not have been justified.

Quite frankly, Flacco was the proverbial square peg in the round hole that was the Broncos offense.

I understood the reasoning for having a guy like Flacco as the starter to begin the 2019 season but that guy shouldn’t have been him. Honestly, the team would have been far better off keeping Keenum in that role.

There’s one thing that has become clear after watching a Scangarello led offense for one season. Whoever is playing QB needs to have good mobility and be able to throw well on the run.  At this juncture in his career, Flacco wasn’t able to do either.

For that and a myriad of other reasons, it just doesn’t make sense to keep Flacco in 2020.  Much has been made about his 13.6 million dead cap number and how it’ll be “so hard for the Broncos to get out of”. That narrative is short-sighted and weak if that’s your argument for keeping Flacco.

While the Broncos’ restructure of his contract did create that dead cap number, they would have been stuck with that salary, regardless of how they spread it out.  The thing that many people aren’t talking about is the $10+ million that the Broncos would gain in cap space by releasing him.

Is it ideal to cut a guy with such a high cap number? No, but many teams have had similar cap casualties in recent years and his contract shouldn’t be seen as a hindrance to the Broncos cap space. If anything, his release should be seen as an opportunity to open up space for another starter and/or impact player that can be brought in via Free Agency.

So if it were down to me, Flacco would be gone.  Will the Broncos agree? Only time will tell.

2020 Status: Scrap