The Broncos will start training camp with a quarterback rotation.
Head coach Sean Payton, however, says he doesn’t know how long it will last.
When Denver hits the field Wednesday, the club will start again giving all three of its quarterbacks — Jarrett Stidham, Zach Wilson and first-round pick Bo Nix — chances with the top offense.
“We’ll mix it up again,” Payton said. “Obviously, it won’t stay that way for the long term.”
When might the shift in reps begin? Payton wasn’t saying.
“We’ll keep you posted,” he said. “I’m not going to sit here and lay out ‘here’s how it goes.’ I think the mistake made is deciding how it goes.”
He said he thinks the process will happen “organically.”
“We’ll start with a rotation and we’ll move on from there,” Payton said.
One clear theme from Payton on Tuesday as veteran players reported for camp six days behind the rookie class: Summer’s over. Relaxed, offseason banter? The time for that is in the rearview mirror. All souls aboard the aircraft carrier — Payton’s regular metaphor for the togetherness and hunker-down mentality of the regular season — from now until, well, at least early January.
The time for work has arrived. The fact that this team has modest expectations league-wide, Payton said, is of no consequence.
“I don’t have time to spend time on that nor do I wish to spend time on it,” Payton said. “I understand they have a job to do and where we’re selected and none of that means anything. It’s stuff to talk about when the media cycle is quiet. We’ll get ready to play and we expect to compete and we expect to win.”
A key factor in that is how the trio of quarterbacks fares in the coming weeks and if one QB separates from the group. Will it be the rookie Nix? The veteran journeyman Stidham? Or the 2021 No. 2 overall pick in Wilson?
The Broncos are on the field for practice 15 of the next 17 days before they go to Indianapolis for the first of three preseason games Aug. 11. Four weeks after that they head to Seattle for a Sept. 8 season opener.
“I don’t think you balance finding the guy to beat Seattle,” Payton said. “I don’t think that makes sense, that sentence. We’re looking to find the guy to beat Seattle. We’re going to find that player. How do I balance the day? How do I balance the schedule? How do I balance the reps? That’s all part of what we do relative to teaching and the teaching progression.
“The same thing exists (across the roster). Look, the No. 1 goal here is to find the right 53 players here for our team. Certainly, there’s a lot of focus on the quarterback position because there’s open competition there.
“But I don’t look at it as finding the balance. I look at it as finding the player.”
Right guard Quinn Meinerz, who landed a four-year contract extension worth up to $80 million last week, said he was looking forward to the three-man quarterback battle.
“It’s one of those things that I look at personally —and I think our unit does as well — of controlling what we can control,” he said. “At the end of the day, I have things just like the rest of us, that I need to work on, whether it’s the run game or the pass game. Whoever the quarterback is, we still have the same job to do.
“I’m excited to see how this competition goes and excited to see what happens.”
Payton again reiterated that Nix is “a quick study,” but also that he and the rest of the rookies are still trying to make up time physically and mentally as camp kicks off.
“The progress in the playbook will be just like it will be for Zach, right?” Payton said. “They’ve been here the same amount of time. All of these young players are studying pretty hard.”
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Originally Published: July 23, 2024 at 12:33 p.m.
