Denver Broncos lose 4 quarterbacks overnight

The fears of some NFL teams have come to fruition in Denver. Due to covid contracting risks, Drew Lock, Jeff Driskel, Brett Rypien, and Blake Bortles all were ruled out for Sunday's game. Due to the Broncos being one of the teams that did not plan ahead by using one practice squad qb as their quarantine quarterback, they will resort to deciding between two players who haven't thrown passes for years, neither of which have tossed a football in the NFL, because neither of them play quarterback, yes that's right every quarterback on the Broncos roster was ruled ineligible. 

So who are the players the Broncos will turn to and when did they last throw a pass? At first word was that Royce Freeman the current 3rd string running back would get the first crack at being their defacto quarterback on Sunday. However why this was decided isn't exactly clear to me. Royce Freeman never played quarterback at a high school, college or NFL level. He threw 5 passes in high school completing 3 for 75 yards, while in college he threw 1 pass that was completed to Marcus Mariota who took it 26 yards for a touchdown. However Freeman from what I can tell never truly lined up at quarterback even in practice unless it was in pop Warner football as a child. Now obviously every NFL player knows how to throw a football, but to do it against NFL defenses, let alone a team like the Saints for the first time? That's a recipe for disaster no matter who you are, which is why the second name makes a lot more sense ultimately. 

The Broncos didn't have the foresight to carry a quarantine quarterback but they did carry a converted college quarterback on their practice squad as a wide receiver. Kendall Hinton played college for Wake Forest where he began his career as a quarterback. He played 3 seasons as a quarterback but ultimately was moved to receiver with the belief that he had a better chance of making it as a receiver than he did at qb. Despite his best efforts Hinton split time taking snaps with Melvin Gordon, Phillip Lindsay, and Royce Freeman totalling 9 passing attempts with 1 completion for 13 yards, 2 ints, adding 2 carries for 7 yards. Not a pretty stat line but I'm positive expected this to be ugly. Hinton had one day to prepare and knock off over 2 years of rust off in the biggest game of his life. A part of me hoped he would somehow make miracles happen, but it simply wasn't meant to be and now his days as an emergency qb are numbered. Blake Bortles will assume that role and stay away from the facility in an effort to prevent this situation from repeating itself.