Is Drew Lock losing some confidence?

During Monday’s OTAs when reporters got a chance to watch practice, Drew Lock probably had one of his worst days as a Bronco quarterback.

On his first pass play, Lock did a double pump fake, somehow managed to let the ball fling back over his shoulder just as Malik Reed was screaming around the edge and caught it behind Lock for an interception.

“I caught the quarterbacks on a bad day, and it wasn’t pretty,” said The Gazette’s Paul Klee on Broncos Country Tonight, adding that Teddy Bridgewater seemed a step ahead of Drew Lock, but that wasn’t saying much. “So good on Malik; it was a hell of a play.”

But that doesn’t help Klee’s confidence in the most important position on the team.

“This looks like a good roster,” Klee noted, adding that the 2021 roster is as good as any the Broncos have had since winning the Super Bowl in 2015. “But boy, those quarterbacks give me great pause.”

Benjamin Allbright chimed in that it would be “the kind of roster Aaron Rodgers could win a championship with” and also confirmed that Lock’s day was “abysmally bad,” calling the pump-fake-over-the-shoulder-INT “Tebow-esque.”

Lest you think this is a “hate on Drew Lock post,” it’s not. Instead Klee and Allbright brought up a great discussion about what seems to be happening with Lock.

Klee compared it to his own college days “playing bad golf” when he got the “mental yips” and became obsessed with three-putting on every hole...to the point he couldn’t play well because he was too concerned about screwing up.

Allbright compared it to Shane Falco, Keanu Reeves’ QB character in “The Replacements,” who described it as being in quicksand - the more you struggle, the harder it becomes to get out.

But both believe Lock has lost some of his edge and is playing a little scared, not wanting to screw up.

“It seems to me that Drew is only trying to please the coaching staff and that’s no way to go through life,” Klee said.

It’s also no way to win a quarterback competition or be a successful starting QB in the NFL either.

In fact, in a question to Vic Fangio Monday that wasn’t necessarily about Lock, the head coach articulated an important distinction in the type of player who succeeds in the NFL.

“Two players you don’t want as coaches—one that doesn’t do anything the coaches tell him to do, and one who only does what the coaches tell him to do,” Fangio said.

To Klee, Lock is erring on the side of trying too hard do only what the coaches are telling him and not using his swagger to play without abandon.

“Drew’s got a lot of confidence,” Klee said. “He’s got to get back to that. It looks to me like he’s second-guessing a lot.”