Denver Broncos: How long should the leash on Drew Lock be?
Drew Lock had a rough go of it on Sunday.
The Denver Broncos were embarrassed by the Las Vegas Raiders on Sunday, losing 37-12. On top of dropping to 3-6 on the season, the team seems to once again be facing major issues at the quarterback position.
Blessed with two of the best quarterbacks in NFL history in John Elway and Peyton Manning, fans of the Broncos have grown impatient waiting for the team to have another legend under center. The prevailing hope was that Drew Lock would fix that problem.
But after throwing four interceptions against the Raiders, many of those same fans may be throwing the towel in on Lock.
On the season, Lock has now thrown 10 interceptions to just seven touchdown passes while compiling a passer rating of just 66.5. That isn’t going to get it done and quite frankly, any of the quarterbacks on the team’s roster could come out and put up those numbers.
Lock is supposed to be a clearly better option than guys like Brett Rypien and Jeff Driskel, but outside of being more athletic than those guys, he hasn’t been any better on the field and he really put his team in bad spots on Sunday.
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There will be some Lock apologists out there who point to things like all the injuries the team has had, the fact that there was no preseason or Pat Shurmur’s poor playcalling. All of those things could be factors in Lock’s poor play, but some of the throws he is making are just terrible.
And it’s not just the throws where he tosses the ball off his back foot or tries to fit the ball into an impossible window. There are also some really poor decisions being made out there in terms of going through his progressions properly as well as not having the ability to understand the situation of the game, such as he did right before halftime on Sunday where he threw a costly pick in the end zone when the team had at least a field goal in the bag.
The Broncos were dominated in all phases by the Raiders in this game, so to put the loss all on the shoulders of Lock would be wrong. But he was certainly a huge factor in the defeat and if he doesn’t greatly improve by season’s end, the Broncos could very well be back at the draft in April wondering which quarterback they should draft in the first round.