In wild AFC West, biggest question is Denver and its quarterback play

The toughest division in the NFL to get a handle on right now has to be the AFC West – Kansas City has lost five of its past six, San Diego has won five of seven and the Raiders have a chance to put together a run.

The Chiefs are 6-5 – the fewest wins of any division leader.

The Chargers and Raiders are 5-6.

Then there is 3-8 Denver, and the most difficult thing to figure out in that division might be how the Broncos got where they are at the quarterback position with Trevor Siemian and Paxton Lynch just struggling. They’re 30th in the league in quarterback rating, tied for 30th in interceptions and 25th in completion percentage.

When you look at it on the surface you say, “John Elway is running this thing, he brought Peyton Manning in. ... It’s the Broncos.” Elway played quarterback there and everyone they’ve had for the past 20 years has been a good football player and now that’s their weakness.

It does make you scratch your head and wonder how did they get in this position with Elway as the guy pulling the trigger?

But I think a lot of it goes back to former coach Gary Kubiak’s health issues and sudden retirement back in January.

The team drafted Lynch and if you think back to the guys who have run that zone run scheme, bootleg action, he’s a perfect fit. He’s a tall kid, big arm and moves really well.

I think Kubiak and Elway saw that at Memphis and fell in love with it – and I did, too. When Lynch was coming out of college, I remember talking about it a lot as far as perfect draft fits and where a guy should go. You can never really pick one out that far in advance and say, “This is the guy for this system.” But a lot of guys, not just myself, were saying Lynch would be perfect for Kubiak’s scheme.

The Broncos really thought they had their guy: a young, raw version of Elway.

But it’s more than that when you get into different schemes.

The NFL is all about scheme fit and what team drafts you – and if the coach who drafted you leaves and the team changes schemes and does something different, then you’re trying to fit a square peg into a round hole.

So Kubiak retires and now you’ve gone through a couple of different coordinators with Mike McCoy and Bill Musgrave, and none of them really run that type of scheme. Not too many do any more. Kyle Shanahan does it a little bit in San Francisco. Really, that’s it. Matt Ryan in Atlanta still has elements of it. But not many guys are under center, zone run, play-action pass, move-the-pocket type of guys. It’s a different game. So now, Lynch is kind of floating out there.

It’s tough because you have guys on that defense who really believe they should be contending for a Super Bowl – and they should because they’re that talented on that side of the ball. They haven’t been playing as well because I think the offense has struggled a little too much and put them in some tough situations.

Denver has a few options to fix it. The Broncos can bring in a coordinator who knows the system they want to run and they can run that, or they can try to find a quarterback who they know can play and can come in there and give them a chance.

I think they’re going to bring in a quarterback this offseason and it will be a very similar situation to 2012 when Peyton Manning made the move over there.

There are some guys out there. We saw what happened to Eli Manning. Andrew Luck is going through some interesting stuff in Indianapolis where no one really knows if he’s going to be there. Kirk Cousins, is he going to be in Washington? Alex Smith, is he even going to finish the year as the starting quarterback in Kansas City?

I would think Elway is going to make a move to bring a guy in before that defense deteriorates, starts splitting apart and going in different directions. I really think that’s what he’s going to do. It’s not going to be this year. But he’s already started looking.

What has happened this year, with what they have at the quarterback position, that’s not what he envisioned. There’s going to be some change on that side of the football for sure.

Denver is not really in a position where its’ going to be drafting high, but you never know what can fall into the Broncos’ lap.

Question of the week

From Bryan Lester: Are you upset at the fact that you and Derek didn’t get a chance to compete against each other in the NFL ?

I think it would have been fun in theory, but I think it would have caused too much stress for my mom and dad and everybody else involved. But I don’t know – I competed against him in everything else non-stop. When I was in Houston, we used to have pick-up football games in the offseason. I would bring Andre Johnson out there and we’d play against Derek and his high school buddies. That was fun. We talked a lot of trash to each other. I wonder if it would be the same thing or if it’d be more of a, “We’re too professional and too cool for this.” I don’t know. But I’ll say it’d be super fun to watch. We kind of missed that opportunity in the NFL, but, man, we competed at literally everything. It’s not like we’re at a loss for who’s the best at literally everything.

Maybe we’ll have to have a 2001 Fresno State game against ... no, wait, I’m too old for that! Let’s not do that. I’m still watching Davante Adams play and when I talk to my guys – I saw Rodney Wright this summer at a 7-on-7 deal in Fresno, and I think he feels like he can still do it, but I don’t know. Maybe some kind of video game or a simulation, that would be better and a lot healthier. That’d be cool.

This story was originally published November 29, 2017 at 10:21 AM with the headline "In wild AFC West, biggest question is Denver and its quarterback play."