Kendall Hinton joked that the QBs on the roster are here for a reason and he’ll be passing on throwing his hat into any type of quarterback competition.
The stand-in quarterback for the Broncos on Sunday sat down with Ryan Edwards and Benjamin Allbright last night on Broncos Country Tonight to recap the wild past 48 hours that culminated in him playing an NFL at quarterback, with zero practice time and hardly any time to prepare.
The guys asked Hinton if they were able to design any specific plays or anything for him, and he said: “we didn’t even have time to create a system or a gameplan for me.” The Broncos coaching staff had to essentially work off of the existing gameplan and cut out anything Hinton didn’t feel comfortable with and pepper in wildcat formations that the running backs felt comfortable with.
As painful as Sunday’s game was, it is cool to hear Hinton talk about the experience and have such a good outlook on everything. He really was put in an impossible situation, and he was the ultimate team player about it.
Hinton talked about even the timing of handoffs being something that you don’t think about, that is difficult if you haven’t practiced it. “There’s a reason those guys (quarterbacks) get paid the big bucks and get all the notoriety, because it’s a really hard job.” Hinton expressed that he had so much admiration for the quarterbacks in the NFL after having to play a little bit in their shoes on Sunday.
“You can never imagine or make up a story like this.” Hinton said. “All our quarterbacks get out and this undrafted receiver who was home a month ago having to step in a play quarterback. It’s a heck of a story for sure.”
Hopefully it is also a reminder to us all that this is probably one of the hardest jobs in pro sports, and that even the quarterbacks that struggle are really really good players who are doing something that only a handful of people in the world can do.
Check out the full interview above, or here. It really is a great listen, and a great inside look into what happened this weekend.