Ron Chenoy-USA TODAY Sports
Drew Lock is 'Frustrated' but Not for the Reason You Might Think
Drew Lock showed marked growth as a young quarterback from preseason Game 1 through Game 3, before spraining the thumb on his throwing hand vs. San Francisco. He had started off as the Denver Broncos' No. 3 QB in OTAs but had clearly leap-frogged Kevin Hogan as the No. 2 behind Joe Flacco by the time the injury bug struck.
The injury sapped all the positivity and momentum Lock had built up since OTAs and rendered him almost as an outsider looking in at a Broncos team getting ready for the regular season. Denver made the questionable decision to place Lock on injured reserve when the season opened, which guaranteed that he would have to miss the first eight games.
Do you know who else hasn't appeared in any of the Broncos' first eight games? Cornerback Bryce Callahan, and yet, the team still hasn't placed him on IR. Lock's injured thumb has been fully healed for a while now.
“It’s good. It’s healed up," Lock said on Wednesday. "It’s ready. Ready whenever.”
As an IR player, by league rule Lock could have returned to the practice field in Week 7, with an eye towards being activated this week for the Broncos' home tilt vs. the Cleveland Browns, but the team brass has pumped the brakes and delayed even that from happening. So, with Flacco out for 4-6 weeks with a neck injury, Denver will start Brandon Allen this week, a QB with zero NFL snaps under his belt who literally joined the Broncos a week before the season-opener.
It'd be hard for any highly-drafted young quarterback to not feel at least a little frustration and envy. For all intents and purposes, especially with Flacco going down, the next man up should be Lock.
“I don’t think there’s frustration in that I’m not the guy this week," Lock said on Wednesday from the Broncos' locker room. "I think there’s frustration in the fact that it’s been this long and I’ve been doing virtual reality reps. It’s going to be much anticipated from my half to be able to get back on the field. So I’m not frustrated with anything that’s going on right now. Just, as a competitor, as a guy, you want to be out there on the field, but like I said, I trust what’s going on here and I’m ready whenever they’re ready.”
In other words, Lock is frustrated that the Football Fates served him up such a hurry-up-and-wait scenario to open his NFL career. Even if he has doubts about the team's 'plan' for him, he's not going to say so publicly.
For Lock, it's been one setback after another since the NFL Scouting Combine. Projected to go in the first round of the 2019 NFL Draft and even told by Elway himself (purportedly) that he'd be a top-10 selection, Lock slipped entirely out of day one and into the Broncos' hands with the 10th pick in round two, No. 42 overall.
It was an Aaron Rodgers-esque type of draft-day plummet but Lock picked himself up by the bootstraps and attacked his new football environs in the Mile High City. The strides he made with his footwork and under-center technique from day one of OTAs to when he suffered his injury in preseason Game 3 was evident. To lose that momentum for what will end up being more than half a season had to be emotionally taxing.
“Yeah, it’s definitely been trying when you’re almost throwing to yourself," Lock said. "I don’t know, it was just completely different... I hadn’t missed a game in my four years at Mizzou. I’ve had many injuries that I’ve been able to fight through and this was just a freak one that I wasn’t able to fight through without maybe injuring myself further, so I kind of had to figure things out. There was definitely a little anxiety, a little antsiness to come back but just being able to talk to Coach Scangs [Rich Scangarello], [QBs Coach] T.C. [McCartney], John [Elway], just kind of being able to calm me down, put a plan together for this whole time. It kind of helped me ease my mind a little bit.”
So what type of quarterback will the Broncos eventually get back when Lock returns to the field, hopefully in Week 11? A confident young signal-caller champing at the bit who has really strived to make the most of his rehab and time away from the grid-iron and maybe even a guy with a lot to prove.
“I’ll always be a confident guy," Lock said. "I’m ready whenever. Whenever they’re ready, I’ll be ready."
Although he's frustrated that he got hurt, again, Lock remains publicly supportive and fully faithful of the team's plan for him. As a rookie in the league, he's going to trust the process and the chain of command.
"I don’t know — I’ve been in this league for what is it? It’s been eight weeks, nine weeks, whatever — to where they know a lot more about this league than I do and they know a lot more about timing and this whole process to where I trust them, like I said. But they’ll get a confident guy whenever they call the number up,” Lock said.
Lock received a glowing review from OC Rich Scangarello on Thursday. There's no doubt the kid has been putting in the work to ensure he doesn't fall behind.
Lock has attended all the meetings, taking meticulous notes on each week's opponent, the game-plan, the playbook, technique and more. He shows up at the facility at 6am and doesn't leave until 6-7pm. He goes through each of the Broncos' practices twice through the virtual reality program Striver. Everything he's done, Lock has tried to signal to the team, as if waiving his arms and jumping up and down, that he's ready to go.
“I go through each practice probably two times," Lock said. "So, we’ll come in Wednesday, we’ll practice. I’ll go in before our Thursday practice, watch it, come back after Thursday, watch it again. Go in the next day, watch the Thursday practice, watch it again at night and just take little notes on ‘this run play’s footwork is different this week than the last one’. Being able to just stay fresh to where if I come back and one of our outside zone’s footwork was this way and we changed it in Week 4 and I wasn’t paying attention to it, then there’s just little things I know the coaches don’t want to teach. I don’t want to be a burden on that so that when I come back I can be as sharp as I can be.”
I honestly don't know what else Drew Lock can do to prove to the Broncos brass that he's ready to play. He's 100% healthy. He's remained diligent in the playbook. He's prepared mentally for each game right alongside his team.
All that's left is for GM John Elway to rip off the band-aid and greenlight his return to the field of play. The absolute soonest that will be, it sounds like, is Week 11 as the Broncos prepare for the Minnesota Vikings.
Follow Chad on Twitter @ChadNJensen and @MileHighHuddle.
