It’s an age old adage in the NFL that the quarterback is the most important position on the field. Which is why when a team is bereft of one, they can become consumed with finding the answer at the position. Teams with strong rosters but without a franchise QB are commonly coined to being stuck in “Quarterback Purgatory,” a stage for an NFL team where they are good enough to compete, but don’t have a chance to contend for a Super Bowl without that all important piece behind center. The 2016-2017 season features a rare case, a Super Bowl team that is now without a starting quarterback. The team fields the NFL's top defense, a good rushing attacks, and a strong head coach in Gary Kubiak. But they are in danger of heading into the 2016 NFL draft without a starting caliber quarterback, as they lost Peyton Manning to retirement and Brock Osweiler to free agency. This article intends to examine this team’s possible replacements, while also exploring the difficulty of finding a franchise QB.
Coming off a season ending in a Super Bowl victory, the Broncos were stuck answering questions that a team with the Lombardi trophy usually don’t have to answer. Peyton Manning led the team to the big dance, but while doing it had, by far, the absolute worst season in his career, including a six-game benching. With his advanced age and his second Super Bowl ring, Manning took the opportunity to ride off into the sunset. His backup, the man he was benched for a time for, led the team to a 4-2 record and was seen as the team’s future at the position. Brock Osweiler was relegated to the bench in the face of the playoffs, as Denver chose experience overall talent for their Super Bowl run. With Manning’s retirement, everyone assumed Osweiler would resign, but instead, possibly spurred by the end of season benching, he opted to take more money and took his talents to Houston, Texas, leaving the Broncos without a clear-cut starter.
Since then, Denver has acquired the less-than-inspiring Mark Sanchez in a trade with the Philadelphia Eagles. With only something name Trevor Seiman sitting behind Sanchez, he is the presumptive starter heading into the new season. The hope is that Sanchez will be able to efficiently run the offense, allowing the running game and defense to win games. But there has been no recent evidence that Sanchez has the ability to do that, as he has committed 46 turnovers in his last 28 games. This stat effectively disbars the much maligned quarterback from the ranks of the efficient.
For GM John Elway, Sanchez is nothing but insurance if he is unable to uncover anything better. And it looks like this might be the case, as the options are limited at best. The free agent market’s only viable starter, Ryan Fitzpatrick, would come with his own baggage. A journeyman starter who has played for four different teams, he has proven, much like Sanchez, to have a penchant for turnovers. Even though he is coming off a career year for the New York Jets, throwing 31 touchdowns to 15 interceptions, their hesitancy to resign him for his asking price gives credence to the up and down nature of the quarterback’s career. Even the statistical numbers seem to lie about Fitzpatrick, as Pro Football Focus’ (PFF) rating metrics labeled him the 30th best starting quarterback in the NFL.
With the less than desirable options in free agency this year, the trade market seemingly presents some intriguing option for the Broncos. Four quarterbacks are reportedly on the trade block, San Francisco’s Colin Kaepernick, Cleveland’s Josh McCown, Houston’s Brian Hoyer, and Tampa Bay’s Mike Glennon. McCown and Hoyer represent little more than veteran stopgaps much like Sanchez or Fitzpatrick, considering that they respectively rank 29th and 31st according to PFF, one spot above and below Fitzpatrick. The other two options, Kaepernick and Glennon are much more intriguing. Glennon is a 26-year-old backup for the Buccaneers who has started 19 career games, owning a 28:15 TD-Int ratio. But there is a reason he is a backup, he failed in 2014 to capture the starting job, with most of his stats coming from 2013. The Buccaneers chose to use the No. 1 overall pick of the 2015 draft on Jameis Winston, showing you how the team valued Glennon. The last of the four, Kaepernick, is the one most linked to the Broncos as a trade target. Kaepernick was once one of the premiere dual-threat quarterbacks in the league, leading Jim Harbaugh’s 49ers to the 2012 Super Bowl. Since then, the QB’s career has been in a spiral, digressing to the point that he was benched six games into last season for his play. The reason why this trade has not happened yet is because San Francisco wants a second-round pick in exchange, a hefty price for a quarterback who looks as if he has broken mechanics.
The last option for John Elway and the Broncos is the draft itself. Coming off a Super Bowl win, the Broncos own the 31st overall pick, well out of range of nabbing the draft’s two most sought after quarterbacks, Carson Wentz and Jared Goff. This leaves the Bronco’s two options, to trade up higher into the draft, or to take someone less pro ready. If they choose to trade up to a position to take one of these guys, they would have to go as high as possibly the top two picks. Both the Tennessee Titans, who own the first overall pick, and the Browns, who own the second, have come out and said that they are willing to trade down if the price is right. But the price the Bronco’s would have to pay to move up thirty spots is quite high, most likely requiring multiple first round picks in future drafts. It would be a steep price to pay for a quarterback, Wentz, who only played division II football in college or someone, Goff, who has durability concerns. They would effectively be mortgaging their draft future to select someone who isn’t a sure thing.
If they choose option two and select one of the less polished passers in the draft, they would have to sift through the difficulty level of developing one of these passers into a quality NFL quarterback. Paxton Lynch has all the measurables but ran a very unconventional offense at Memphis, making for a steep learning curve in the NFL. Penn State’s Christian Hackenberg has prototypical size and a cannon for an arm, but his maturity issues and lack of production make him a question mark. Cardale Jones is one of the most intriguing prospects coming out of Ohio State, but he only played in a handful of games for the Buckeyes, instead toiling for much of his career as the number three quarterback on their depth chart. There's questions for all these prospects, and most certainly all of them would require to sit on the bench and learn the game for a time before they’d be ready to see the field.
The Broncos represent the difficulty of a “win now” team that is without a quarterback. With a top flight defense and all-pro receivers, they have an environment in which the right person could thrive. But every single option that John Elway has before him has a question mark attached, with the added pressure of making the wrong choice could not only cost him his job, but could set the team back years in the process. This is exactly why the 2016-2017 Denver Broncos are stuck in Quarterback Purgatory.
