2021 marks the first time since 2010 that John Elway isn’t the Broncos’ main man from a personnel perspective — either as the team’s Director of Player Personnel (2011) or Executive VP of Football Operations/General Manager (2012-2020). In handing the baton over to George Paton as the GM, Elway also took with him a long and weird history of betting on quarterbacks with prodigious physical upsides and not always as much in the pure quarterbacking department. Elway’s post-Peyton Manning ride with quarterbacks hinged on two types — the tall, strong-armed project with fluky GPS (Brock Osweiler, Paxton Lynch, Joe Flacco, Drew Lock), and the journeyman backup types with less impressive traits, but hopefully some measure of game management skills to keep the team on the right track (Case Keenum, Trevor Siemian, Jeff Driskel, Brett Rypien).
Ultimately, nothing worked. As much as Elway looked like a genius for betting on Manning’s recovery skills, he’s looked far more flawed in his quarterback evaluations since Manning’s retirement. It’s worth mentioning that, in the year that Manning passed his five-year retirement requirement for his slam-dunk placement into the Pro Football Hall of Fame, the Broncos haven’t made the playoffs since they won Super Bowl 50 at the end of the 2015 season — Manning’s last NFL game.
Now, with just about every other position locked up, the Broncos have shoved Lock, his precocious upside, and his hit-and-miss on-field acumen aside in favor of Teddy Bridgewater, the veteran who the team traded a sixth-round pick to the Panthers for in April. Head coach Vic Fangio had resisted naming a Week starter for the 2021 season until Wednesday, but as it’s official, it’s time to review what Bridgewater brings to the field.
Consistent timing and rhythm
Bridgewater is nobody’s idea of a top-level deep thrower, but you can win in the NFL without one of those guys. What you need far more than that is a quarterback who can get the ball out in time to the open (or opening) receiver in the timing and structure of the passing game. As much talent as Lock has, he still struggles with this when he’s not given the benefit of play-action, because he has an inherent belief in his throwing velocity, and the ability of that velocity to transcend both offensive and defensive scheme. Bridgewater is under no such illusions, and in his transitions from the Vikings to the Saints to the Panthers to the Broncos, he’s learned that he’s best off as a distributing point guard. That, he can do all day, as he showed on this 35-yard pass to Jerry Jeudy in the first quarter of Denver’s 30-3 win over the Seahawks. Seattle was playing their backups through most of the game, but this was a perfectly-thrown in-cut on fourth-and-5 from the Denver 40-yard line. When you put your quarterback in that situation in the preseason, you obviously want to see what he’ll do with it. My Touchdown Wire colleague Mark Schofield posits that this throw was the one that gave Bridgewater the starting gig, and you can certainly see the point. It’s also important to note (as Mark did) Bridgewater’s ability to move in the pocket, reset, and make the big-time throw. https://touchdownwire.usatoday.com/2021/08/25/teddy-bridgewater-drew-lock-denver-broncos/ Pre-snap motion told Bridgewater that he had single-high man coverage, and common sense told him that cornerback Ahkello Witherspoon wasn’t going to match steps with Jeudy on the intermediate crosser. Bridgewater didn’t overcomplicate this. He didn’t try the hero throw to KJ Hamler deep with the converging safety. He knew what was open, and what wasn’t. (Also, great block by running back Royce Freeman on Amadi — a little 28 on 28 violence there).
Working coverage voids under pressure
Hamler got his three plays later, when Bridgewater hit him with a two-yard touchdown pass. Again, there’s no hero stuff here, but there doesn’t have to be. Bridgewater saw slot defender Ugo Amadi with the late blitz, he probably had a pretty good idea that Amadi wasn’t going to be replaced (one reason the Seahawks got torched in coverage when Jamal Adams blitzed last season), and thus, Hamler was going to be wide open. Just as much as you would love a quarterback who can create something out of nothing with his pure physical gifts, you also need a quarterback who can reduce what isn’t there out of the equation, and focus on what is.
Hitting tight windows on time
We’ve talked before about how much Lock benefits from play-action, but he’s not the only quarterback on Denver’s roster to do so this preseason. Bridgewater has completed four of five passes for 59 yards with play-action, and he clearly likes the open windows it provides. On this 21-yard pass to tight end Eric Saubert, Bridgewater used play-action to suck linebacker Cody Barton in, and then he used his pocket movement to stay alive as Saubert ran his route past linebacker Jordyn Brooks.
Bridgewater also had Hamler on the deep post with the converging safety in single-high, but this allowed the Broncos to move the sticks, and set up Javonte Williams’ one-yard touchdown run two plays later. Bridgewater isn’t known for his cannon arm, but this ball gets where it needs to go just fine.
Low-risk doesn’t always mean low-reward.
Because the Broncos have been misjudging quarterback talent for a long time, and because Bridgewater has never knocked the NFL’s socks off, it’s easy to discount this decision as a safe, low-ceiling call for a team that is otherwise poised to make a postseason run for the first time since Justin Beiber had the top two songs on the Billboard Top 100. Okay, maybe that’s not a great example. In any case, Bridgewater is more than a mere game manager, and the fact that he doesn’t have supersonic tools is irrelevant as long as he can handle the Broncos’ passing game, and he’s clearly proven that he can. An above league-average season should do the trick with everything else in place, and Bridgewater can make that happen. It’s not a flashy decision. But it’s the right one for this team at this time.
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