Broncos starters should play at least a half against Redskins

The Denver Broncos first-team offense and defense has progressively played more in each game. The offense played just six snaps in the first game due to two consecutive three and outs, but ended up playing a solid quarter and a half in the second game.

Head Coach Vance Joseph isn’t going to base the first-team’s playing time off of snaps against the Washington Redskins. He’ll be looking at overall progress before he starts shifting in the backups.

“We’re not going to count snaps, we’re going to count progress again,” Joseph said on Wednesday. “We’ll see. Last week we played about a quarter and a half, hopefully we can play more.”

That likely means an entire first half, but Joseph isn’t ruling out some second half action for the first-team.

“We’ll see,” Joseph said of the starters playing in the second half. “I’m not going to count snaps this week, I’m going to count progress and see where we are. We played a quarter and a half last week, so we’re going to play more this week.”

Joseph stressed the idea of counting progress, which he alluded further as meaning seeing positive football plays. Making progress for the Broncos is moving the football on offense and generating some stops on defense. The first-team did a lot of that on both sides of the ball last week against the Chicago Bears.

As for the quarterbacks, it should end up being the Case Keenum and Chad Kelly show in this preseason game. It is unlikely we’ll see much of Paxton Lynch - if at all.

“Case [Keenum] goes up first and Chad [Kelly] is going to be second, and we’ll see what’s left for Paxton [Lynch],” Joseph said. “Every man dressed has a chance to play. That’s how we’re going to proceed right now with the quarterbacks.”