Growing up the son of a teacher, I was exposed to books at a very early age. One of them was Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day. It was a favorite of my mother’s.
It also came to mind watching Drew Lock against the Las Vegas Raiders on Sunday.
The second-year passer completed 23 of 47 passes for 257 yards and a touchdown in a 37-12 loss to the Raiders. If those were his final numbers, there might still be questions about his performance given the sub-50% completion mark.
But those were not his final numbers. He also threw four interceptions in the loss.
Those turnovers, when viewed alongside his recent play the past few weeks, are raising concerns about his future as the face of the franchise. Looking at the interceptions he threw Sunday against the Raiders illustrates that there are no easy fixes when it comes to his performance. The mistakes resulted from a combination of poor placement, poor decision-making, poor protection around him, and panic under pressure in the pocket. We’ll work through those four interceptions in these two video breakdowns in chronological order from Sunday’s loss:
Rough outing for Drew Lock, with four interceptions. Here are the first two:
*Right read, wrong throw
*Bad bets happen in Vegas pic.twitter.com/eQhmvUOu0R— Mark Schofield (@MarkSchofield) November 16, 2020
As you can see from these first two turnovers, there is a combination of both poor placement, and poor decision-making that resulted in the interceptions. But in this next video we’ll see the Raiders start to pin their ears back and bring pressure, and how Lock responds:
And now the second two, which are a case study in how quarterbacks do and don't handle pressure: pic.twitter.com/iFDH9ZCmYA
— Mark Schofield (@MarkSchofield) November 16, 2020
As argued earlier this week, the time to give up on Lock is not here. Yet. But if he does not improve his play, that time will be here sooner than Broncos fans would like.
