ENGLEWOOD, Colo. — Drew Lock has shown he can pass, run, move to rap music, take a hit, maintain poise, accept coaching, pretend to shoot a laser from his forearm play sheet, play with confidence, ring up 300 yards and 3 touchdowns in a single game and receive the nod from John Elway as the Broncos’ quarterback in 2020.
But as the quarterback of a Broncos team that resides inside the AFC West, Drew Lock hasn’t done anything until he can do this:
Outscore, Patrick Mahomes and the Chiefs.
For all the positive momentum and exciting hope the Broncos are carrying into the offseason, let us remember their offense is nowhere near competing with the Kansas City Chiefs.
As the Chiefs are in the same AFC West Division as the Broncos and the two teams play each other twice a season, somehow, some way Denver better figure out how to consistently start scoring 30 points a game.
“No doubt,’’ said Elway, the Broncos’ general manager, in his sit-down interview Monday with 9NEWS. “I think offensively we’ve been stuck in a little rut the last couple years. There’s no doubt we’ve got to do a better job on the offensive side. We’ve got to score points. And for us to be able to compete with the Chiefs, we’re going to have to outscore ‘em.’’
Elway added during his end-of-season press conference with the Denver media Monday that the Broncos play in losing 30-6 and 23-3 in their two games against the Chiefs was one of his biggest disappointments of the season.
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Counting playoffs, the Chiefs have gone 25-9 the past two seasons. In those nine losses, the opponent has scored 35, 31, 31, 19, 37, 38, 29, 43 and 54 points – an average of 35.2 points. You don’t beat Mahomes, Tyreek Hill, Travis Kelce and play-caller Andy Reid with a touchdown and three field goals.
“It’s obviously our biggest need as a team,’’ head coach Vic Fangio said in his interview with 9NEWS. “We need to score more. I believe we had 9 games this year where we scored 16 or less points. Forget about Patrick Mahomes, you’re not going to beat a lot of the other teams doing that. Obviously to beat Kansas City you’re going to have to score more than that.
“That’s going to be priority No. 1 for us, figuring out a way to be more explosive, score more points and that process is going to start rather soon.’’
The Broncos do believe Lock, a rookie who went 4-1 in five starts, is the potential answer to Mahomes. They also have a true No. 1 receiver in Courtland Sutton, a big-play tight end in first-round draft pick Noah Fant, and a 1,000-yard running back in Phillip Lindsay.
Still, the Broncos ranked 28th in scoring this year with a meager 17.6 points a game so they need more.
“We’re going to try to improve everywhere,’’ Elway said. “Phillip has had two nice years but he needs help in the backfield. We’ve got Royce (Freeman) there but we still need more. We need more in the offensive line and then we need a lot of depth at wide receiver. Obviously, Courtland had a tremendous year and he’s only going to continue to get better.
“But in order to score points we’ve got to get weapons. We’re going to be looking. Wide receiver is a spot we need.’’
A year ago following the season-ending press conferences, the Broncos hadn’t hired Fangio yet. I asked Elway how he was going to hire a quality head coach with Mahomes in the division on another team. A coach would look at the situation and say the Broncos would have to play for the wild card most years.
Ever the fierce competitor Elway didn’t like that, saying it was a typical media point of view. He then went out and hired a proven defensive guru in Fangio, who in his first season as head coach got the Broncos to play hard and tough from beginning to end.
On Monday, I asked Fangio: As you were considering the Broncos’ head coaching job, did you think about how difficult it was going to be to beat Mahomes for the AFC West?
“He will be,’’ Fangio said. “Just as Aaron Rodgers was for years in Green Bay. Just as (Joe) Montana was in San Francisco when I first started in the NFL. I got kind of baptized that way. Montana was the quarterback of the Niners in his heyday when I first started in the NFL. And then they took a step back and went to Steve Young for a few years (smiles).
“So what I’m saying is no matter where you go, there’s good players in this league. Mahomes is obviously at the top of that list. And they’re going to be a tough team to overtake in this division because of his youth and the players they have around him. But it’s a challenge we’re going to embrace and try to get over.”
And it does start with having a quality, young quarterback of your own and Elway believes he has one in Lock.
“Again we’re not ready to anoint him as the next Hall of Famer. But we’re excited about him. For him to be able to climb that mountain. As I keep saying we’re going to build him up and people love him and he’s a great kid and they’re going to build him up – but he’s got to be ready to get knocked down. And he hasn’t done that. And that’s going to happen. And it’s going to happen more than once and how he handles that and how he bounces back from that will determine how long and how great his career is going to be.”
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