For all the hand-wringing and numbers-crunching that went into wondering whether the Broncos would keep two quarterbacks or three on their initial 53-man roster on Sunday, the eventual answer boiled down to simplicity.
Denver loves Sam Ehlinger. Head coach Sean Payton and general manager George Paton value the quarterback room as it was constructed in training camp. And they didn’t think it was a sure bet he’d be back if they released him.
That led to a fairly easy call for the Broncos: Keep Ehlinger on the 53-man roster and roll into the regular season with both him and Jarrett Stidham behind starter Bo Nix.
“We love the quarterback room. We’ve stated that a lot,” Paton said Sunday. “Sam, ‘Stiddy,’ we thought they both had really good offseasons, really good training camps and (played well) in the games.
Denver Broncos roster cuts tracker: See the initial 53-man roster
“Sam is a big part of this quarterback room. We didn’t want to lose him, and we felt we were going to lose him. He’s too important to our team and just didn’t want to risk doing that.”
Denver had been leaning toward keeping three before Friday nightap finale, Paton indicated, but Ehlinger put an exclamation mark on his preseason by throwing for 233 yards and three touchdowns in aboquarters' quarters worth of work.
That shut the door on any notion of trying to sneak somebody else onto the roster instead.
“Obviously, the game he played the other night was outstanding,” Paton said. “We love the room. We’re going to keep the room together.”
Offensive coordinator Davis Webb has been an Ehlinger fan since Ehlinger played at Austin Westlake High in Texas. He followed Ehlinger’s career from there and said last year that when he watched Ehlinger in Indianapolis early in his career, he saw a player with real upside if he got the right coaching and development plan.
Now he’ll get a second season with the Broncos.
Now comes the next interesting quarterback-related question: Who’s the actual back-up between Stidham and Ehlinger?
