Why Paxton Lynch is the Broncos' best option to start at quarterback
The Broncos always planned on Paxton Lynch being their starting quarterback, but “at some point in the future” has turned to “right now."
The Broncos have two preseason games left — one where regular-season players will participate — and it’s clear that Lynch, the 2016 first-round pick out of Memphis, is the team’s best quarterback heading into those contests.
While this status is a testament to Lynch’s talent, the rookie isn’t in first place because he’s playing stellar ball — it’s because the Broncos other options, Trevor Siemian and Mark Sanchez, appear unplayable at this point.
Siemian, the former seventh-round pick out of Northwestern who started only 14 games for the Big Ten school but ended his career with 24 interceptions thrown, started Saturday’s preseason game against the 49ers, having clearly been given the chance to win the starting job with a solid performance.
He was humming along to start the contest, making hay with short passes in the flat and to the sideline, but his obvious inability to read the 49ers’ 3-4 defensive coverages — something he showed early and throughout the contest — burned him in the second quarter, when he threw an egregious interception against a cover-four zone defense.
Had Siemian recognized the coverage correctly — the 49ers weren’t masking it much, if at all, Saturday — he would have known that the safety, Eric Reid, would be lurking right in the area the ball went. It shouldn’t come as a surprise Siemian was pulled from the contest soon thereafter. The interception was the first pass beyond 10 yards he threw in the contest, and the result was truly bordering on the worst-case scenario.
Siemian doesn’t have professional-level arm strength — if he were a major league pitcher, he’d be throwing his fastball at 80 miles per hour, compared to the 90 or 100 mph of others — and through two preseason games, he hasn’t shown the ability to carve up an offense with his smarts. Siemian, a nobody on the roster, had a chance to be the starting quarterback for the defending Super Bowl champions on Saturday but proved that it would be a tremendous disservice to the other members of the Broncos to start him in Week One.
Which leaves the presumptive starter as Mark Sanchez. The former Jets and Eagles quarterback, like Siemian, merely needed to provide the Denver coaching staff with a steady, error-free performance to take the lead for the starting job Saturday. He too could not provide that.
Sanchez’ inability to hold onto the ball manifested itself twice Saturday. Both turnovers were almost laughably poetic — coming inside the 20-yard line thanks to Sanchez’ notorious butterfingers.
Even if Sanchez had a better game than Siemian throwing the ball — he clearly had more control over the offense out on the field — it was his inability to control the ball that makes him unplayable at this moment.
So then Lynch merely had to have a mediocre game to take the lead for the starting job, and that’s exactly what he gave the Broncos. Get excited!
The rookie’s arm talent is off-the-charts — he’s throwing the 100 mph fastball — and it was on full display against the 49ers.
In any other circumstance, Lynch wouldn’t be the favorite to start — he started slow and then made some risky throws into, through, and around coverage — throws that you can’t make consistently at the NFL level, no matter who you are — but he wasn't burned until the final play of the game Saturday, and he looked far superior to both the Broncos competition in the 49ers and the in-house competition at quarterback.
The only reason Lynch didn’t flat-out win the job Sunday — he was doing it all against the backups’ backups.
The Broncos play their third (and effectively final) preseason game Saturday against the Rams, and Lynch has to enter the week as QB 1, with the onus on him to lose the job.
The Broncos, lest we forget, are the defending Super Bowl champions, and that all-world defense from last year is poised to repeat its performance. The offense only needs to be average to give the Broncos a chance to make the playoffs in 2016, and through two preseason games, Lynch appears as the only quarterback capable of making this Denver offense average.
