Drew Lock started his career with a good first step as he led the Denver Broncos to a 23-20 win over the visiting Los Angeles Chargers. It wasn’t always pretty, but when Lock needed to make the plays he put the team in position to get the win.
On the Something Something Broncos podcast here, Laurie, Jess, and I talked all about Lock and his first game. I feel like I’ve seen enough to be more than excited about the future with this kid, but Jess is not so sure. He and Laurie are the more reasonable than I am, but as quarterback starved as us Broncos fans are, I might be a little too ready to jump on the bandwagon here.
Head Coach Vic Fangio sees a lot of room for improvement.
“I think it was a good start for him,” Fangio said of Lock. “Did we light up the scoreboard? No. Did we get a ton of first downs? No. I think we only had 11 first downs or something like that. We got some short fields which helped us get some points, but I think there’s promise there. I really do. I’m just not ready to put him in Canton yet. I think it was a great start for him, something that he can build upon because obviously we didn’t light up the scoreboard or have a ton of yards and first downs, but I think in many ways it’s probably a good way for him to start in lieu of the fact that we got the win, but there’s still a lot of room for improvement.”
He is 100% correct, but in the context of a rookie quarterback getting his first start, I couldn’t be more pleased with how well Lock played. There was a very solid Twitter thread from Matt Waldman breaking down Lock’s debut in the NFL. I saw plenty of room for improvement in his mechanics. Lock needs to set his feet more when throwing, but unlike other raw quarterbacks in Denver, he is able to throw an accurate football even when his mechanics are sloppy.
If he improves in that area, those poorly thrown balls will become a thing of the past and Lock has the potential to be a pretty good NFL quarterback with that arm he has. Here’s to hoping he keeps working at it and keeps improving over these next four games.