Go ahead.
Remind me he’s going to slide through waivers.
Tell me one more time he’s just been playing third, fourth, even fifth-stringers - so his success in the preseason “obviously doesn’t mean anything.”
Act like the former high school quarterback-turned college wide receiver-turned college quarterback for just one season has no business thinking of himself as anything more than a camp arm.
Keep the excuses coming.
While playing with 3rd and 4th stringers too. You ask him to play with what he's got...and that's what he's doing.
— L.Lattimore-Volkmann (@docllv) September 1, 2017
And I’ll remind you of this:
Ladies and gentlemen... KYLE SLOTER! #AZvsDEN pic.twitter.com/GstuHwc54K
— NFL (@NFL) September 1, 2017
And this:
.@Broncos QB Kyle Sloter drops a dime for the TD!#GBvsDEN pic.twitter.com/zW2ZRoBJyr
— NFL (@NFL) August 27, 2017
And this:
Sloter's preseason numbers: 31-of-43 for 413 yards, 3 TDs, 0 INTs, 125.4 rating.
— Andrew Mason (@MaseDenver) September 1, 2017
Even this:
Kyle Sloter with the loudest ovation leaving the field. Accompanied by "pump up man" Aqib Talib pic.twitter.com/iyII2RipBn
— Zac Stevens (@ZacStevensBSN) September 1, 2017
Go ahead and bring me your highlight of Kyle Sloter getting sacked in the end zone Thursday for a safety and tell me how it was different from Trevor Siemian and Paxton Lynch getting sacked despite better OL protection.
Go ahead and find one of his just 12 incomplete passes in preseason and explain why those somehow are much worse than Siemian’s 13 or Lynch’s 8 - but both with lower overall QB ratings than Sloter - just because they were playing against higher-level defenses (but also with better O-lines and running backs and receivers).
Go ahead and explain why Siemian’s four-yard passes on 3rd-and-8 show much better development and NFL starter-ready quality than Sloter’s down-the-field, balls-out plays on third-and-long or deep in his own territory.
Go ahead and tell me what a leadership presence another vet would bring and I’ll show you some pretty important veteran Broncos right now rallying around the excitement of Kyle Sloter’s energy and success on the field (see also, Aqib Talib above).
Go ahead and try to explain the economics of waiving Sloter, bringing in a vet backup with a much bigger salary that would be guaranteed after Week 1 and less experience with Mike McCoy’s offense - or at least not enough to adequately fill in in an emergency situation while waiting two to four weeks on Lynch.
Finally, find me a viable backup that would be that much better than Sloter.
Kyle Sloter had a great preseason. Here's how he compares to some of the best preseasons at QB in the past six season (minimum 20 attempts) pic.twitter.com/4nfdJVkLQy
— Joseph Mahoney (@ndjomo76) September 1, 2017
Give me all your reasons, and I will say STFU (in the nicest way possible, of course).
Because none of those makes good sense when stacked against the risk of losing the one quarterback on the team so far who has consistently gotten better, learned from mistakes, shown poise and good decision-making, and thrown more accurate passes all over the field.
I’ll explain to you that those are silly arguments for not keeping this guy on the roster as the backup while Lynch gets better. I’d even go so far as to keep him as QB2 after Lynch recovers, but I’ll fight that battle another day.
Sloter goes through progressions, he looks off the safety, he audibles occasionally...he’s actually playing more like a big-time quarterback than Lynch did in his outings - whether with the 1s or the 2s.
And I daresay he’s going to be a better starter eventually than Siemian, so it would be a bigger risk to waive Sloter now and possibly give him up to another team than to let him be the backup.
If you want to insist he should be waived once the first-round draft pick is healthy enough to play backup, then I’ll let you do that for now because at least it would be a lot less likely another team takes him off waivers at that time.
In the meantime, however, I’m going to have to insist he stays.
KEEP HIM ON THE 53!!! https://t.co/Q87xvedHlj
— L.Lattimore-Volkmann (@docllv) September 1, 2017