DENVER -- When quarterback Drew Lock closed out his rookie season in 2019 with four wins over the Denver Broncos' final five games, his future, the team's future and its potential playoff outlook looked robust.
Fast forward through a pandemic, a turnover-plagued season as a starter in 2020 and four months of this regular season as Teddy Bridgewater's backup, and things look far different for Lock, who was one of the team's second-round draft picks in 2019. And they look far different for the Broncos, poised to miss the postseason for the sixth consecutive season barring some good fortune. At 7-7 with three games to play -- ranking 12th in the AFC -- ESPN's Football Power Index gives the Broncos just an 8% chance to make the playoffs.
Lock may be forced to finish the season at quarterback after Bridgewater was taken to the hospital for a head injury during a 15-10 loss to the Cincinnati Bengals on Sunday -- a game also marked by a fumble from Lock inside the red zone.
"I thought [Lock] did good early; obviously the fumble is no good," coach Vic Fangio said. "We had the ball inside the 10 and all of a sudden they have the ball. Turnovers are huge ... he decided to keep it and didn't get it tucked away and the guy took it from him."
That play started at the Bengals' 9-yard line with 10 minutes, 39 seconds left in the game and the score 15-10. On a designed run-pass option (RPO), Lock chose not to hand the ball to running back Javonte Williams, instead keeping the ball and running into Bengals defensive end Khalid Kareem, who took the ball from Lock. The Bengals, after Kareem was ruled down by contact on the return, took over at the 15-yard line.
A rather deflated Broncos team didn't cross its own 40-yard line again and finds itself squarely on the outermost ring of the playoff race instead of still in the thick of it.
"Just got to play a little better, got to hold on to the ball," Lock said. "[Broncos quarterbacks coach Mike] Shula says a couple times in the meeting rooms, when in doubt, give it to the professionals. I'm a professional thrower, not necessarily a professional runner ... looking back on it, I probably should have handed it to Javonte."
The play was emblematic of both Lock's and the team's struggles over the past two seasons. Lock was tied for the league lead in interceptions last season and was last in the league in completion percentage.
Turnovers and inconsistent play during the 2020 season, especially in the red zone, led the Broncos to trade for Bridgewater in April, and was largely the reason Bridgewater won the starting job in training camp. Bridgewater has had just seven interceptions in 14 starts this season, and despite scoring at largely a similar pace as last season, the Broncos remained in the postseason chase until Sunday's loss.
Lock has played just over four quarters of football this season, including just over a quarter Sunday. In that time he has thrown two interceptions and lost one fumble.
He threw one of his interceptions on a play that started at the opponents' 5-yard line (against the Ravens) to go with Sunday's fumble on a play that started from the Bengals' 9. That's prime real estate, football beach-front property and his zeal to make a play is often interfering with his ability to simply get his team to the end zone.
Bridgewater has said Hall of Fame coach Bill Parcells has drilled into him that "whatever you do, however you do it, just get your team into the end zone." It is a lesson Lock says he understands, even as he tries to show it on the field.
"The longer I'm on this the more I realize the really, really good [quarterbacks] can balance both being the ones who have the ball in their hands and take care of business, put the team on their back, but also knowing when to kind of let the team carry him for a second," Lock said. "... It is in my DNA to go out and try to and do a little bit more than I'm probably asked of, maybe, but that's something I've ... just got to figure out how to manage it a little bit."
If Bridgewater, who was set to spend Sunday night in a downtown Denver hospital with what Fangio said he believed to be a concussion, is out for Sunday's game in Las Vegas and beyond, Lock will get another chance to figure things out.
Sunday was another day the Broncos wasted a defensive effort worthy of a win. In the past four games, the defense has intercepted Justin Herbert twice, held Patrick Mahomes to 15 completions and without a touchdown and held Joe Burrow and the Bengals to 249 total yards. They are 2-2 over those four games.
Sunday was also the fifth loss this season when the Broncos have scored 14 or fewer points.
"You're not going to win many games scoring 10 points," Fangio said.
"It's not a lack of effort or want to," said Broncos safety Justin Simmons. "In the NFL when you're in the fourth quarter of one-score games, whatever the case may be, the good teams find ways to win those games. ... We had a chance to win and we just didn't get it done."