Still a win to remember for Lock
Granted, the stat line was about as pretty as the roadkill along I- 70. And yes, we know the first interception of the fourth quarter had you reaching for the Pepto. And the second one had you grasping for something stronger.
Broncos fans, we don’t blame you for spending the last six minutes of Sunday’s Broncos- Patriots game crawling up the dang wall, convinced Drew Lock had thrown this puppy away.
“( I was) very anxious,” Lock said after leading Denver to a COVID- delayed, season- shifting 18- 12 win at New England on Sunday afternoon. “You know, that’s just our offense, though. We’re going to take the shots when they’re there.”
The numbers say Buzz Lightyear misfired. A lot. The former Mizzou standout completed just 10- of- 24 throws for 189 yards, zero scores and two picks, both in the fourth quarter. He was intercepted on back- to- back plays to help the hosts turn a defensive slugfest into a nail- biter.
But if the glass was half — well, half- something, here’s the halffull version of Week 6:
• At least five of those incompletions were drops, balls that doinked off a forearm, a finger, or both.
• Three of those drops came in the end zone on catchable balls. One came off the mitts of Jerry Jeudy and another two were by dropped by Lock’s old college teammate, tight end Albert Okwuegbunam.
• You won anyway.
• You won in New England. You beat a Bill Belichick team at Gillette Stadium. Lock is in his second full year with the Broncos. But in terms of game experience, he’s still more or less an NFL rookie. Belichick has never lost to a rookie quarterback at home as the coach of the Pats. Belichick hasn’t lost to a first- year signalcaller anywhere on the planet since 2013.
• Because of the Pats’ coronavirus circus, Belichick and his staff had two weeks to prep for the contest, even if they were preparing without a full complement of players, and rarely practiced. ( And it showed.)
• Bill Belichick is 0- 1 against Drew Lock.
Pretty? No. Satisfying? Given everything?
Yeah. Oh, heck, yeah.
“I thought Drew played well,” Broncos coach Vic Fangio said of Lock, who’s now 5- 3 since last December as an NFL starter, 1- 2 this fall.
“I thought he looked good out there. And when I say that, I just thought he looked comfortable. He didn’t look like a guy coming back from an injury. He wasn’t tentative. He was out there playing football the way we want him to play.
“Obviously, the interceptions, we don’t want to have. One was, I believe one was a miscommunication. I’ll look at the other one on tape. But I think it’s a great learning experience for him and the entire team. And hopefully we’ll be better prepared to close out the next time we get a lead like that.”
More from the half- full side: Lock didn’t report any discomfort following the game — “I felt good,” he said — when asked about some of the shots he took, especially to the right shoulder. Granted, he also danced around one of the questions asked about his health later during his postgame Zoom call with Denver media, so you might want to keep those rosary beads handy, just in case.
“There’s no doubt in my mind that I was ready to come out and play and try to lead us to a win,” said Lock, who made his first appearance since suffering an injury to his right rotator cuff during a Week 2 loss at Pittsburgh. “I think maybe a week earlier ( when the game was originally scheduled), and I’m not 100% sure about that ( readiness).”
When Lock was good, he was very, very good. The young Broncos signal- caller found wideout Tim Patrick for huge gains on his first drive of the day and again in the third quarter — the second one a rainbow dropped between two Pats defenders.
But he also missed Patrick on a back- shoulder fade at midfield, a toss that sailed short and was picked off by New England’s J. C. Jackson with 5: 15 left. And while the timing with fellow Tigers buddy Okwuegbunam ( six targets, two catches, 45 receiving yards) made it look, at times, as if Noah Fant had never left, the drops were painful.
“I know Albert is going to be upset about some of those plays in the red zone,” Lock said. “And of course, I’m holding him to a higher standard than he’s probably hoping for. So we’ll probably hit a couple of those after practices this week. But I was excited for him.”
Perfect? No.
Cathartic? No question.
“We saw opportunities to pass the ball down there,” Lock said. “And the opportunities were there, you’ve just got to come up with it. That’s the struggle of it. It’s just football. We’ve got to put those plays together.”