The Broncos’ Sunday-morning claim of Kevin Hogan will lead to a higher-profile quarterback’s exit. Paxton Lynch survived Denver’s initial cutdown day, but the Broncos are planning to cut him, Tom Pelissero of NFL.com tweets.
Lynch will go to waivers, and the Broncos’ quarterback depth chart now goes Case Keenum, Chad Kelly and Hogan. The latter is a 2016 fifth-round pick. Lynch went off that year’s board at No. 26 overall but failed to make much of an impression in Denver.
While the Broncos only gave him four starts in two seasons, the former Memphis standout consistently looked shaky in preseason games and could not beat out Trevor Siemian in the 2017 offseason. Injuries largely limited Lynch last year, leading to the Broncos’ Brock Osweiler signing, but he had a road map to becoming Keenum’s backup this offseason only to see Kelly — Mr. Irrelevant in 2017 — beat him out.
It might benefit Lynch to receive a fresh start, and a team potentially claiming him would get two more years of club control. And, while unlikely at this point, Lynch has a fifth-year option that covers the 2020 season as well. The 24-year-old quarterback has only thrown 128 career passes, completing 79 of them, in five games across his two-year career. He’s averaged just 6.2 yards per attempt.
It will cost the Broncos more than $4MM in dead money to waive Lynch. They are already eating more than $5MM in dead-money charges upon parting with Menelik Watson last month. It’s telling that Hogan (60 of 101 passing in eight career games with the Browns) will take Lynch’s spot, perhaps indicating the Broncos could not get any team to take their first-round bust off their hands.
Have waited for this since draft day 2016 lol.
Terrible decision to even draft this guy. Every team makes mistakes and it’s nice to see them finally admit drafting him was a mistake.
I remeber some saying the 2016 draft QBs were not worth trading up to the top 2 spots to get. Claiming Denver did the best by basically staying put and taking Lynch as opposed to moving way up for Goff/Wentz. Boy they were wrong.
The broncos could had made the right move and drafted Prescott they looked at him and passed on him
A lot of teams did, including the Cowboys who had Lynch as their guy but missed out on him.
Draft is a crap shoot. Only Dak was worth anything for the QBs drafted after him and there are only a few pro bowl caliber players that came after they selected Lynch. Cant blame them for taking a shot. Kid was just hype,it happens. .
1 gone 1 still to go. Booker has been terrible and needs to join Lynch. Keeping him cost the Broncos D’Angelo Henderson.