Not everything Gary Kubiak says is true.
The job description of an NFL coach is part football mind, part psychologist and part smoke-screener. Why tell the opponent more than you must?
Still, Kubiak's announcement that Trevor Siemian will start at quarterback for the Broncos in the second preseason game, Saturday against San Francisco, is the latest example of Kubiak's rare transparency as a coach.
Kubiak has said all along the quarterback race will be an open competition.
Sure, the masses said, but let's be real: Mark Sanchez is going to be the guy.
But by handing Sanchez the starting nod against the Bears, and Siemian the starting job against the 49ers, Kubiak has stayed true to his word.
Maybe Sanchez wins the job in the end, but Kubiak was being real when he called it an "open" competition. His decision to start Siemian proves that.
And like he did during the Peyton Manning-Brock Osweiler quarterback shuffle, Kubiak has made certain his team is "never in the dark," as he put it then. Sanchez draws a bigger paycheck and has substantially more experience as an NFL quarterback than Siemian. But Siemian mostly has outplayed Sanchez during the course of training camp, at least by my untrained eyes, and Kubiak rewarded the Northwestern underdog with a starting spot.
That must send a message up and down the roster that theirs is a meritocracy. I still think Siemian has to be clearly better than Sanchez to supplant the veteran, but he's being afforded every opportunity to do so _ this time with the starting unit at his side.
On Saturday, Siemian and Sanchez will play 1.5 quarters apiece, and Paxton Lynch will show what he can do the remainder of the game. Will Kubiak choose a starting quarterback after Saturday's game?
"Would I like to? Yes," he said. "Will I? We'll see."
The Broncos don't know which guy will win the job. But each is getting a relatively fair shot.
It's part of a coach's job to pull the wool over our eyes. No sense in showing your cards, right? But I think Ol' Kubes has built up an element of trust with the Broncos roster, which can point to the high-profile quarterback competition and say: May the best man win.
