Here is the Broncos’ plan for facing Chiefs rookie Patrick Mahomes

Quarterback Paxton Lynch will be making his fourth career start for the Broncos on Sunday against the Chiefs, and it will be his fifth career appearance.

That means the Chiefs will have at least some game film to watch of Lynch in preparation. Denver, however, has seen very little of Chiefs quarterback Patrick Mahomes, who will be making his first career start in Sunday’s game.

Denver coach Vance Joseph was asked Wednesday about how the Broncos will prepare for Mahomes.

“We made a cut up of all of his plays from preseason, so we’re going to watch those,” Joseph said. “But as far as the system, that won’t change much. You know, we’ve watched the system, we’ve game-planned for that. So that won’t change much. But we have made some cut-ups of him alone as a quarterback.”

Joseph admitted that he didn’t know much about Mahomes, other than one feature that Chiefs fans love.

“I haven’t seen much of him, obviously, outside of preseason and the draft footage, but big arm,” Joseph said. “Big arm, a fairly athletic guy. I would say, big arm. That’s his best attribute, I would say.”

Broncos linebacker Von Miller told the Associated Press that he’d rather be facing Alex Smith, but it has nothing to do with talent level. At 5-10, Denver has been out of the playoff race for a while and the Chiefs have won the AFC West and are locked into the No. 4 seed in the playoffs.

“I’m not eager to play the second guy,” Miller said of Mahomes. “He is the guy of the future, though. So, it’s good to go and play against him for the future. But you just would like the circumstances to be totally different.

“You would like this game to mean more than what it means, and you would like for all of the starters to play. I would like a lot of different stuff to happen in 2017 and it didn’t happen.”

This story was originally published December 29, 2017 at 10:23 AM.