Drew Lock: 3 things the young Broncos QB must stop doing

2. Drew Lock must stop missing his check-downs

On a number of occasions this season, especially against the Kansas City Chiefs, Drew Lock’s intended air yards per pass attempt have shown up in a negative way.

Everyone knows that Lock has the arm talent to make tough downfield throws. Everyone knows he can sling the rock.

But Lock needs to learn to take his own advice he talked about in 2019 — you can’t go broke taking a profit.

On at least three occasions against the Kansas City Chiefs, Lock blatantly disregarded his check-downs in favor of his preferred pre-snap read or simply because he didn’t see them at all.

Three examples that immediately come to mind are a play early in the game when Phillip Lindsay snuck out of the backfield and was wide open in the flat, Nick Vannet running right in front of Lock’s face before he fired the ball downfield toward Troy Fumagalli (interception number one), or Tim Patrick flashing across the middle of the field on the final fourth-down play of the game (interception number two).

Part of missing check-downs has to do with something I’m going to talk about in a bit, but there is undoubtedly a connection between Lock’s low completion percentage, high interception count, and lack of short throws. Part of that could be attributed to play calls, but part of that is just who Lock is as a player. He has to scan the whole field and find the check down when his reads deeper downfield are not available.