"Takes That Aged Like Milk" for $200, Alex.
By Adam Uribes
· Opinion
·
· 1 min read
When you write as much as I do, you get it wrong on occasion. But I am happy to be wrong as well.
Don’t get me wrong, quarterbacks get put under a lot of scrutiny. But Denver is especially hard to succeed in. Denver was a middling franchise before some guy named Elway. Peyton Manning added to that mystique during the second phase of his career after leaving the Colts. When most of the team's success can be attributed to two players who both played quarterback, it sets a lofty expectation.
Trust me, I would like to see this town treat its quarterbacks fairer. Brian Griese had too much to drink, allegedly, at a team party and never lived it down. Jake Plummer, who still holds the winning percentage record in team history, got tarred and feathered for the unforgivable sin of losing in the AFC title game the previous year. Manning, playing on a bum foot, was booed out of Mile High the same day he set the career passing record for Christ's sake! What New York is to…whatever, Denver is to quarterbacks. If you can make it here, you can make it anywhere.
I usually have a “judge slowly” attitude to most things football. So even I was taken aback when some guy named Drew Lock had that one great game that one day a long time ago. As a quick history lesson, with the emphasis on QUICK, Lock had a nice four-game stretch to end the previous season before failing to live up to expectations and losing his starting job to journeyman Teddy Bridgewater. But oh man, that one game in Houston. That one game was enough to get its hooks into me. Deep.
You see, after that game, I became the number one Drew Lock fan; defending him like your teenage daughter dying on any Taylor Swift-related hills. All those ugly interceptions? “Brett Favre threw a lot of picks too,” I would answer, snark implied. The immaturity questions and concerns? I would come back with something to the extent that Fangio was too stuck in his ways, ignoring the obvious in front of me. Whatever you could lob at my boy Drew Lock, I had a pickleball-type move to swat that back at you.
When we’re in too deep, we get tunnel vision. I had gotten too wrapped up in hoping I was right to see that the marriage between Denver and Lock was doomed to fail. We’ve all had that one friend in a crappy relationship. You hope they see the light and find their way out of it. Well, I was the person saying “BUT, YOU DON’T KNOW HIM LIKE I DO” while getting looks of disapproval from my Broncos friends. When Denver swapped out Lock for another disappointment in Russell Wilson (no weird infatuation with him, I promise) it allowed all of us to move on, including me.
Fast forward to today and the new flavor of the week is Bo Nix from Oregon. After a couple of rough starts, Nix is starting to look competent, dare I say, even good the more time he spends in Sean Payton’s offense. But that has also had the effect of making me into a hater.
Scratch that.
It has made me MORE of a hater now. The dart he ripped to Cortland Sutton last week? It was fine, but anyone can do that when they have time. The pass to a receiver that is off by just a bit? He needs to work on his accuracy (Nix completed passes at almost 70% a clip in school). When the rush gets him, he should have stepped up or gotten rid of the ball sooner. I had staked so much of my reputation (stop laughing) on Drew Lock working out, that it’s made me an even crabbier old man now. Bad relationships and mediocre quarterbacks both have a way of scarring us, I suppose.
Drew and I have moved on. He’s in New York now, as a backup to *check notes* Daniel Jones of all people, and Nix has the resurgent Broncos talking about December football, so it all worked out the way it was supposed to. In the end, we’re all human and get caught up in our perceptions for one reason or another. But since this is a blog dedicated to sports and growth, I can say that while I am not there yet, I am moving in the right direction. One day, Bo Nix will be my quarterback, good or bad, but not just yet.
Tags: Broncos, Broncos Country, NFL, Denver, Football, NFL, Blogs, opinion