Paxton Lynch gets first team reps in practice with Brock Osweiler limited

After being inactive for the entire season, nursing a shoulder injury, Paxton Lynch has jumped up to the second slot in the quarterback depth chart this week.

This meant that while Brock Osweiler sat out of all the passing reps in yesterday’s practice with an upper torso injury, (and likely a vet’s day off), Lynch ran with the first team.

This all came after a non-committal press conference on Monday in which Joseph said of Lynch’s health:

“I’m not sure. Health-wise, he’s still recovering from the shoulder. I think it’s going to be almost two weeks now coming up to this week of practice. We’ll see where he’s at. But, he’s still recovering from his shoulder injury. He’s still throwing intermediate passes and not really deep passes, yet. We want to make sure he’s totally healthy before he plays again. That timeframe, I’m not sure when it’s going to come or end.”

Lynch tested out his shoulder in practice two days later.

When asked how Lynch looked after practice, Joseph said he “looked fine. He threw the ball fine today. He had command of the huddle. It’s practice. It should look good in practice.”

(*editor’s note: there’s a lot of sidebars I could go down about Joseph’s comments on expecting practice to look good, but I’ll leave it be for now)

Joseph also mentioned that Lynch threw deep in practice and “it looked good.”

After practice, Osweiler met with the media and said he expects to play on Sunday and that his injury should not keep him from starting. Joseph backed this up at the beginning of his press conference by saying “Yes, Brock is still the starter. He will be fine.”

However, the fact that Lynch is all of the sudden throwing deep two days after Vance Joseph said it may be a few weeks before he can do that, as well as the fact that he is getting reps with the first team, indicates to me that Denver is getting him ready for to eventually start as soon as possible.

We’ll continue to be on quarterback watch and update with any new information. For now it looks like Paxton Lynch will be the No. 2 quarterback against the Cincinnati Bengals and will continue to get first-team reps in practice while Brock Osweiler recovers.

Eric Goodman and Les Shapiro also discussed this on The Afternoon Drive yesterday, as well as wondering if this signals the end of Trevor Siemian’s career in Denver.

Take a listen.