An apologetic Drew Lock returns as Broncos quarterback following COVID-19 breach
Scorched and scorned by his own coach and fans these last few days, well, at least Denver quarterback Drew Lock knows he still can count on his mother, Laura — who took to Twitter on Monday to vigorously defend her son amid a chaotic scenario at the crux of this NFL season on a pandemic brink.
In this case, the former Lee’s Summit High and Missouri star was pulled from practice Saturday (with the Broncos’ two remaining backup quarterbacks) after they were determined to have had high-risk contact with COVID-19-positive backup Jeff Driskel.
With the NFL unwilling or unable to accommodate postponement of their upcoming game, as it has with other compromised teams, Denver was relegated to jiffy-installing practice squad receiver Kendall Hinton at quarterback against the Saints on Sunday.
So, the Broncos were dismantled 31-3 and narrowly averted becoming the first NFL team to not complete a pass in a game since 1974 (Buffalo in a game against the New York Jets).
Bearing the guilt of an acknowledged slip-up, Lock watched the one-completion game on television feeling like “it hurt my heart, hurt my soul.” And that was before coach Vic Fangio questioned the leadership of the quarterback group for putting the team in this position.
A day later, Laura Lock tweeted “shame on the many for thinking that they can speak of others in damning ways” and noted her son’s leadership “seems to be in question by some.” She called it all “unfortunate — not damning.”
No wonder when Drew Lock returned to work Wednesday that was a ripe topic. As ever, he met it head-on … albeit with a sheepish smile.
“Moms will be moms, that’s just a fact,” he said in a media video call as Denver prepared to visit Arrowhead Stadium on Sunday. “They’re going to back up their kid. They’re going to stand up for their kid, regardless of the situation. And my mom is (fiery); there was never a game when I played bad and wasn’t more scared of her than my dad.”
Added Lock, who knows he has just as much support from his father, Andy, who played for Chiefs coach Andy Reid at Mizzou: “So, she’s just always been that way. It’s gotten me to this point. She’s taught me a lot of lessons to help get me to the league. She’s just always been fiery. So we’ll leave it at that.”
(All of which makes me think of this: When I had a head-to-head collision in an eighth-grade football game and lay on the field, my mother ran out to make sure I was OK. At the time, that might have been tougher than the injury. All these years later, I treasure the memory. So, thanks, Mama … and appreciate you, Laura).
But Lock didn’t leave it at that when it came to the broader matter. Elaborating on an apologetic tweet of his, he said he wanted to “own up to this mistake” that happened when the quarterbacks gathered on their own at the team facility on the scheduled Tuesday off-day for extra work.
Without being entirely specific, Lock reiterated that masks weren’t worn at all times in what he previously called a socially distanced setting.
“We got too lackadaisical with it. It ended up hurting us, and it hurt this program,” he said. “And I apologize for letting that happen. We could have been better, that’s the point of the matter here. We needed to be perfect, and we weren’t perfect. “
As for whether he is upset by what Fangio said? Lock said it’s not in his “jurisdiction to really get upset with him. He’s my boss. He’s the leader of this team and whatever he says goes.”
Still, he did allow himself a fleeting counterpoint:
“I feel like we were taking a little bit of leadership by coming in and getting ready by ourselves and doing that by ourselves on a day where everyone else is at home. ... But, again, we didn’t do the right thing. We didn’t have (masks) on the whole time we were in there. That’s just the point of the matter, is they felt like it was off for the amount of time to be able to keep us out of the game.”
Given conflicting reports, it’s uncertain how long that was or how far apart they were.
Reflecting the complexity of the times, it’s also unclear how much of this was about enormous risks taken vs. the now-oft-heard phrase “abundance of caution.” But this figures to have a lasting impact with the NFL sending a message it hadn’t quite sent this emphatically before.
“Per source, (Broncos president and general manager) John Elway expressed disappointment to league officials that game vs Saints wasn’t moved to Tuesday,” Mike Klis of 9News in Denver wrote on Twitter on Saturday. “NFL had previously moved games for Baltimore (to Tuesday), Titans (to Tuesday) and New England (a full week). Those teams made contact tracing mistakes too.”
Assuming they continued to test negative, which they have, the quarterbacks would have been eligible to return Tuesday if the game had been moved.
Then all of this would have been more about the cautionary tale then the consequences, which perhaps was part of what the NFL intended.
In the aftermath, Fangio said on Wednesday that all three had been fined (an unspecified amount) and that reserve Blake Bortles would not participate in practice in order to “limit his exposure.” Presumably, that’s to minimize risk for at least one quarterback entering this game against a franchise that has beaten the Broncos 10 times in a row after drilling them 43-16 last month.
(When it comes to the Chiefs, by the way, Reid said Wednesday that he is confident in their protocols and that their quarterbacks, led by Patrick Mahomes, are “flawless about wearing masks.”)
All-in-all, at least the episode conjured a fine summary of the bizarre variables to this season: “I’m definitely very excited to have quarterbacks on our active roster this week and be able to play with them,” said tight end Noah Fant, recipient of Hinton’s lone completion.
And it all sure has provided a reminder of who is always looking out for Lock.