Noah Fant Goes to Bat for Drew Lock, Fires Back at Hater on Twitter
It's been a rough couple of weeks for Noah Fant and the Denver Broncos. After receiving nine targets in the Broncos' wild Week 8 comeback win over the Los Angeles Chargers, just 10 total passes have gone Fant's way in the past two games.
Unsurprisingly, the Broncos have lost each of those games, with Fant totaling just six receptions for 63 yards. No touchdowns.
Is Fant's lack of production the fault of embattled quarterback Drew Lock? Or does the onus fall on offensive coordinator Pat Shurmur? To quote head coach Vic Fangio following the Broncos' ugly 37-12 loss to the Las Vegas Raiders, "everybody's fingerprints" are on this erratic and impotent offense.
Many fans, and a large swath of local and national media, want to pin the Broncos' offensive struggles solely on Lock — and for good reason. He was terrible in Week 9, throwing four interceptions while failing to complete even 50% of his passes.
But it was an ill-advised holding foul on Fant in the end zone that wiped a Lock rushing touchdown off the board at the end of the second quarter in Vegas, which would have given the Broncos the lead heading into halftime and likely completely altered the complexion of how Week 9 ultimately played out. As fans and media hit the panic button on Lock, Fant appears to be doubling down.
After posting a mysterious tweet on Tuesday that read, "Control what you can control .... That’s all, that’s my tweet for today," a troll attacked Lock, which saw Fant come back strongly in defense of his quarterback.
"No. No. No. No. That’s my QB," Fant replied on Twitter.
As a player one year removed from hearing his name called in the first round of the NFL draft, Fant, like Lock and the Broncos as a team, entered 2020 with all the promise and potential in the world. Although his first couple of games this season seemed to hint that Fant was poised to truly establish himself as one of the most prolific young tight ends in the NFL, that hasn't come to fruition.
He has been banged up and missed Week 6 with an ankle sprain but Fant's relative lack of production is, in truth, due to a calamity of errors. Partly health, partly quarterback instability, and partly poor offensive game-planning and design, it's all combined to result in a very talented and promising tight end being squandered and underperforming.
Perhaps that explains the "control what you can control" ethos Fant tweeted on Tuesday but based on his vehement response to that Twitter troll, the tight end's missive was not meant as a passive-aggressive indictment on Lock.
More than anything, my interpretation of Fant's initial tweet was a kind of existential cry of frustration. Consider it a digital throwing up of the hands; upturned fists cursing the Football Gods for their unfair treatment of the Broncos and a kind of tight end Serenity Prayer.
Almost nothing has gone right for this team in 2020. The impetus for Denver's failure to launch is the injury bug, which has claimed so many of this team's star players.
In such a crisis, veteran coaching is supposed to be the glue that keeps a young, beleaguered team together and on-point, massaging the inexperienced players through the pitfalls and helping the squad to maintain its poise. That hasn't happened, obviously.
That's a failing of Fangio's. And Shurmur's — a two-time former NFL head coach and AP Assitant Coach of the Year.
Drilling deeper, Mike Munchak has presided over the regression of players like Dalton Risner and Graham Glasgow, and has ostensibly failed to help rookie center Lloyd Cushenberry keep his head above water as a starter in a year that was devoid of an Offseason Training Program and preseason.
QBs Coach Mike Shula shares complicity in Lock's apparent regression, too — right alongside Shurmur. Even Curtis Modkins, who's done a great job over the past two years of helping running backs like Phillip Lindsay over-achieve, hasn't been able to glean production out of the Broncos' two-headed Pro Bowl duo in the backfield.
It's been bad. Lock's poor play is more of a symptom of this team's sickness than it is the cause. That doesn't absolve him of his alarming decline. But it does explain it in large measure.
Maybe Fant is channeling his inner Terrell Owens. But even as the Broncos appear to be flirting with the possibility of sitting the battered and bruised Lock in Week 11 and giving the starting reins to Brett Rypien, Fant is standing behind his quarterback in the court of public opinion.
The front office, coaches, and yes, even many of the fans, would be wise to follow suit.
Follow Chad on Twitter @ChadNJensen and @MileHighHuddle.
