Shurmur Has One Bone to Pick With Drew Lock's Powerhouse Performance in Carolina

Drew Lock had himself a day in Carolina but there was at least one play his offensive coordinator wanted back.

Drew Lock is coming off his most dynamic and productive performance as an NFL quarterback. In Week 14, Lock led the Denver Broncos to a 32-27 victory over the Carolina Panthers, completing nearly 78% of his passes for 280 yards and four touchdowns. 

Lock finished with a QB rating of 149.5, which was the third-best in Broncos history behind only Peyton Manning and John Elway, respectively. The display earned Lock FedEx Air Player of the Week honors and gave the Broncos their fifth win of the season. 

As great as Lock's performance was, it wasn't perfect. The highest a QB rating can be is 158.3, so just based on that metric alone, we can deduce that Lock's performance wasn't flawless. 

The film showcased a much more confident and honed-in Lock, who, for the most part, showed much better command of the offense and discipline to his throwing mechanics. Conspicuously absent from his Week 14 body of work? Interceptions. 

Lock broke a seven-game streak with at least one pick, which added all the more luster to his final stat-line. However, offensive coordinator Pat Shurmur's review of Lock's performance in Carolina settled on one critical aspect. 

The fumble Lock lost after being strip-sacked. 

"The one thing I would say is—let’s just talk about the one bad play in the game, the sack-fumble," Shurmur said on Thursday. "You can't drop the ball, even if you get hit by 10 guys, because to me that's points. Conservatively, we're going to get three and then they got seven. There's a 10-point swing in a game that we want."

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It might sound a little harsh coming from Shurmur but remember, in order to be great, the expectations have to meet the objective. Great quarterbacks don't turn the ball over every week. 

In Lock's defense, it wasn't all his fault that the turnover happened, as the impetus was the protection breakdown off the right side of the offensive line. Still, when the ball is in his hands, his coaches expect him to control and protect it.  

However, Lock should be commended for not throwing an interception but that one turnover, as Shurmur detailed, hurt the Broncos, not only in terms of the loss of possession but also in the point swing it allowed to the Panthers. Still, anyone who didn't see Lock's performance in Carolina as a massive step forward, including as a protector of the football, is missing the forest for the trees. 

"All those turnovers that we've had this year, those are the contributing factors that we have to avoid, and we're doing a better job of that, so the results are better," Shurmur said. "I think that's some of what these young guys have to learn.”

What exactly did Lock do right in the estimation of his coordinator? Shurmur laid it out. 

"I think he did a lot of really good things in that game and you guys are talking about it for the right reasons," Shurmur said. "We were more efficient. He took some check downs. All along this year, we've been trying to call nakeds [bootlegs] and quick throws and things to kind of keep him in rhythm. We were able to hit on our deep balls, which got us some points, and we ran the ball effectively. All those things go hand in hand, and then we protected well. We try to do what we can to help the offensive line, who have done an excellent job in protection. It kind of all came together for us."

The last thing Shurmur stressed is the inconvenient reality that it takes time for an offense to come together in the NFL, especially with so much youth across the entire unit. And under center .

When you look at it, nobody likes to hear this, but it takes a little time," Shurmur said. "It takes a little time for a system to kick in, it takes a little time for a quarterback to learn those things that he needs to learn so that he can be efficient, explosive and effective, and stay away from those mistakes that have hurt us."

Based on the smoke signals emanating from Broncos HQ this week, it's looking like Shurmur, and his QBs Coach Mike Shula, will get more time to perfect the offense in 2021. Only time will tell, but if Shurmur had to nit-pick in order to constructively criticize Lock's performance in Carolina, it shows you how good the second-year QB really was. 

It'll be interesting to see if Lock can build on this momentum and parlay it into another dynamic display against a quarterback he's often been compared to. Josh Allen and the Buffalo Bills will be in town for Saturday's throw down, which will be the first head-to-head between these young signal-callers. 

Follow Chad on Twitter @ChadNJensen and @MileHighHuddle.