Denver Broncos: Vic Fangio is responsible for ruining Drew Lock

When the Denver Broncos conclude their 2021 season on Saturday, it’s likely that head coach Vic Fangio and quarterback Drew Lock are going to go their separate ways.

Whether one of them stays in Denver remains to be seen, it’s quite unlikely that they both will. And that will be a good thing – for Drew Lock.

Lock will be completing his third season in Denver but he will be making just his 21st start at quarterback with the team. He should have had way more than that and if he did, there would be much more reason to either love him or hate him.

But as it stands, Lock has only been used when Vic Fangio has had no other choice but to turn to the quarterback that John Elway used a second-round pick on.

Fangio is clearly one of those old-school-style coaches that prefer to have a veteran leading his team. But no matter how you slice it, both Joe Flacco and Teddy Bridgewater were not better options than Lock.

But the stubbornness of Fangio has not only been highly frustrating from a fan’s perspective, but it has also completely stunted the growth of the 25-year old Lock.

Most of Lock’s detractors are going to point to the 2020 season where Lock was declared the starter and was able to play in all of the games where he wasn’t hurt. He threw more interceptions than touchdowns that season.

They will likely not mention the fact that the pandemic made the offseason extremely difficult from a training perspective, he lost Courtland Sutton, his number one wide receiver, for basically the entire season and he was still young and learning the offense himself.

At the end of the 2019 season, after Fangio finally put Lock in, the team looked great. Lock went 4-1 in those games, including completely destroying a solid Houston Texans team.

Vic Fangio replacing Rich Scangarello with Pat Shurmur doomed Drew Lock

The Broncos were onto something and then in the offseason, Fangio thought it best to fire offensive coordinator Rich Scangarello. Lock and Scangarello had some tough bridges to cross together, but there was a chance that they could have done it. Fangio’s insistence on replacing Scangarello with Pat Shurmur instantly derailed Lock’s Broncos career.

Shurmur has done Lock absolutely no favors and it was clear that he and Fangio preferred Bridgewater as the starter this summer. Through it all, Lock has been a true professional and even his biggest haters would have to admit that.

Is Lock erratic? Yes. Is he prone to errors? Sure. But he is also much more capable (and more importantly, much more willing) to try and make a play for his team than Bridgewater is. Give me that guy over the “safe” guy every single time.

Had Fangio stuck with Lock all along, and perhaps Scangarello as well, who knows where the Broncos would be. At the very least, he would have given the player Elway used a high draft choice on every chance to play his way into a long-term starting role.

Instead, Fangio has done the things that are in his best interests, rather than the team’s, in order to try and save his job. That, for me, should lead to termination and it would be an incredibly easy decision.

As for Lock, he will likely be playing elsewhere soon and that team will probably see him as a backup, mostly because of what they have seen him do in Denver. But he could go to a team that believes in his abilities and come off the bench and make a difference at some point down the road.

In today’s league, with injuries and the world of COVID, he could easily get a chance. And that could lead to him getting another big opportunity to contribute to a winning team in the future.