Let's Get Dangeruss: Ten Most Disappointing Denver Broncos Quarterbacks Ever

This Friday, July 26, the Denver Broncos will hold their first open practice of training camp in advance of the 2024-2025 season. The event will give thousands of fans their initial chance to see if quarterback Bo Nix, the former University of Oregon quarterback selected with the team's top draft pick, lives up to his billing as the latest savior of the beleaguered franchise.

Of course, Broncos Country has been through this drill before. And with only a handful of exceptions — most notably Super Bowl winners and Hall of Famers John Elway and Peyton Manning — the results have been underwhelming in the extreme.

Let us count the ways.

Back in 2010, Westword offered our picks for the ten worst Broncos quarterbacks ever, and we're past due for an update. For one thing, plenty of additional candidates for enshrinement on this roster have emerged since then. According to the blog Predominantly Orange, 57 QBs have started a game for the squad in its history, including an incredible fifteen over the past fourteen years — and few of the latter have showered themselves in glory.

Moreover, our previous rundown included a large number of hurlers from the Broncos' early years, when ineptitude was the order of the day. The team debuted in 1960 but didn't post its first winning season until 1973.

This time around, though, we're taking a different approach. Rather than considering quarterbacks from the ancient past, our new ranking looks at those who came to Denver when championships were a reasonable possibility while riding waves of hype and hope — highly touted prospects who were supposed to lift the Broncos to the pinnacle of NFL greatness, but in the long run absolutely, positively didn't.

Some of our choices will be controversial. But these players are included because they came to town amid tremendous expectations...and didn't come close to meeting them.
10. Tommy Maddox
1992-1993

In 1992, John Elway was still one of the NFL's most impressive field generals. But the three Super Bowls to which he'd guided the Broncos had ended in such brutal losses that coach Dan Reeves opted to use the 25th pick in the draft to select Maddox, a standout at UCLA, as Big John's designated successor. Unsurprisingly, Elway was plenty pissed by this move but continued to start under center until week eleven, when he injured his shoulder against the New York Giants.

Maddox managed not to blow that victory, but during the next four contests, he was sacked early and often en route to notching precisely zero victories. Reeves was subsequently fired, and under his successor, Wade Phillips, Maddox was asked mainly to serve as a holder on extra points and field goal attempts. He was traded to the Los Angeles Rams the next season, after which he bounced around to numerous teams (he even served a stint in the XFL) before having a few brief shining moments with the Pittsburgh Steelers in the early 2000s.

9 (tie). Jay Cutler and Kyle Orton
Cutler, 2006-2008. Orton, 2009-2011

Cutler and Orton are inextricably linked in Broncos lore, and the connection between them is the giant ego of Josh McDaniels, one of the worst coaches to ever wear a Denver logo. Cutler played his college ball at Vanderbilt — not exactly known for turning out amazing pros — but he had a big arm of the Elway variety. Head coach Mike Shanahan traded Denver's first- and third-round picks to the St. Louis Rams in order to grab Cutler with the eleventh pick of the 2006 draft, and then made him a starter in place of incumbent Jake Plummer despite the Broncos having recorded a 7-4 record up to that point. But with Cutler at the helm, Denver lost three of the next five games to miss the playoffs — and he went 7-9 and 8-8 over the next two seasons, sealing Shanahan's fate.

McDaniels, who'd worked miracles with Tom Brady in New England, was expected to cure Cutler's ills, but instead, he dumped him in favor of Orton, who'd worn out his welcome as signal caller for the Chicago Bears. In Denver, Orton managed to tread water in season one, going 8-7 in 2009. But season two was a 3-10 catastrophe that made it clear he wasn't the Broncos' answer and never would be.
8. Drew Lock
2019-2021

In 2019, many Broncos observers feared that John Elway, then a team executive, would use Denver's first-round draft pick to choose Lock, a Missouri quarterback widely thought to be overrated. Instead, Elway waited until the second round, when Lock was still available. The Drewster wound up getting his first start, and first victory, that November, and his 4-1 mark to finish the season suggested even to doubters that he might be the real deal after all. But no: Lock went 4-9 in 2020 and 0-3 in 2021 as a substitute for Teddy Bridgewater, a journeyman who'd topped him in a training camp battle. After that, the Broncos admitted defeat, lumping Lock into a trade with the Seattle Seahawks for another athlete you'll meet below. (Bet you can guess who.)

7. Brian Griese
1998-2002

When Griese was drafted in the third round out of Michigan in 1998, John Elway actually was near the end of the road; he retired after winning his second consecutive Super Bowl the next season. Elway's successor was Bubby Brister, a man of modest skills that Coach Shanahan thought would be sufficient to keep the Denver juggernaut rolling, since the rest of his charges were so talented. Shockingly enough, things didn't work out that way, and Griese was subsequently handed the keys.

He'd had an excellent college career, directing the Wolverines to an undefeated season and a national championship, and he was the son of pro football royalty: his dad, Bob Griese, helmed the Miami Dolphins during their unbeaten 1972 campaign. But he simply wasn't a dynamic enough passer to get the Broncos beyond mere competence — and he performed similarly with three other teams before hanging up his cleats in 2008. He went on to become a fine broadcaster, and is currently quarterbacks coach for the San Francisco 49ers, where he's hoping Brock Purdy will reach the brass ring that remained out of his reach.

6. Joe Flacco
2019

In 2013, Flacco, then quarterback for the Baltimore Ravens, dropped a bomb on the Broncos that ejected Denver from the playoffs in so shocking a manner that the pain still lingers. The Ravens went on to win that year's Super Bowl, and Flacco was named the MVP. But his abilities declined in the following years, and with the Ravens seeking fresher blood circa 2019, team executive Elway pounced — and proclaimed during an introductory press conference that Flacco was still in his prime. Too bad that wasn't true.

Flacco looked like the best was behind him during his single season with the Broncos, when he managed to collect two wins versus six losses. Since then, he's played a lot of bad football for a lot of bad teams, but flashed back to relevance last season with the Cleveland Browns, going 4-1 as a starter during the regular season before falling back to Earth in the postseason. Next season, he's expected to warm a bench for the Indianapolis Colts.
5. Tim Tebow
2010-2011

The cult of Tebow is still strong in these parts, with the biggest diehards still pining for his return — an example of Timmy's faith rubbing off on all who beheld his heavenly image. And it's undeniable that the former Florida legend worked some miracles during his time in Denver, most notably by way of an eighty-yard heave to Demaryius Thomas that clinched an overtime victory against the shell-shocked Steelers.

But he simply couldn't throw the damn pigskin well enough to make it in the NFL; in 2011, he completed under 47 percent of his passes for fewer than 1,800 yards. The aforementioned Josh McDaniels used a first-round draft pick on Tebow, so certain was he that his genius could transform The Chosen One into an all-time great. He couldn't have been more wrong — but the misbegotten experiment ended happily. If Tebow hadn't been so terrible, Elway might not have taken a gamble on Peyton Manning.

4. Brock Osweiler
2012-2015, 2017

Osweiler was the insurance policy in case Manning didn't work out. Elway was smitten in part because the Arizona State product seemed a lot like him — on the surface, anyhow. He was huge (six feet, seven inches) and could chuck the ball a mile. But when he got a chance to start during the 2015 season after Manning got hurt, he was erratic at best — and when a semi-healed but clearly diminished Peyton was put back into the starting lineup over him for a Super Bowl win, Osweiler threw what turned out to be a costly pout. He could have become Manning's successor, but instead he leaped to the Houston Texans, who ponied up a four-year, $72 million contract in which $37 million was guaranteed.

This proved to be a costly mistake: Osweiler underperformed with the Texans, who benched him toward the end of his first season. Houston eventually traded him to Cleveland, which released him — and the Broncos picked him off the scrap heap. Osweiler's work was uninspired in a couple of starts, however, and after a brief tenure with Miami, he was out of pro football. He became a college football analyst for ESPN in 2022.

3. Case Keenum
2018

In 2018, with the Broncos still struggling in the wake of Manning's retirement, Elway and company reached out to Keenum, a former University of Houston Cougars wonder who'd just had his greatest success as a pro: After an injury to starter Sam Bradford, he piloted the Minnesota Vikings to a 13-3 record, then further enhanced his reptuation with an astonishing pass to Stefon Diggs to beat the New Orleans Saints in the first round of the playoffs. But with the Broncos, Keenum reverted to the form that had previously made him a career backup, stumbling to a 6-10 record. From Denver, Keenum went to Washington, where a 1-7 mark solidified his second-stringer status. He's now sitting behind C.J. Stroud in Houston.
2. Paxton Lynch
2016-2017

Lynch is the ultimate example of a team overdrafting a player based on potential. At an Osweiler-matching six feet, seven inches, Lynch cut a fine figure, and his measurables at the NFL Combine were frankly more impressive than his college performance at Memphis, where he ran a much simpler offense than the one he'd be expected to learn at the professional level. As such, the Broncos drafted him in the first round, only to discover that he wasn't exactly a quick study.

When Trevor Siemian — whose alma mater, Northwestern, is the opposite of a quarterback factory — was made the starter over him, fans howled. But their tune changed after Siemian was hurt and they got a chance to see Lynch in action. He went 0-2 in each of his two seasons with the Broncos, and upon being cut loose, he failed tryouts with the Seahawks and Steelers before catching on with teams in the USFL and XFL. Yikes.

1. Russell Wilson
2022-2023

Wilson had plenty of highlights with the Seahawks, winning one Super Bowl and coming one terrible play-call away from collecting a second trophy. But he chafed at being seen as simply a game manager who needed a strong running attack to excel, as opposed to the superhero who stood strong in the pocket and heaved rainbow strikes that made the SportsCenter top ten — and the tension between his dreams and what he could actually do well ultimately convinced head coach Pete Carroll and the Seattle brain trust that they could do without him very well.

Enter Broncos general manager George Paton, still hurting from his inability to lure Aaron Rodgers from Green Bay to Denver, who traded scads of expensive draft picks and several players (Drew Lock among them) to secure Wilson's services. Paton then compounded the error by signing Wilson to a long-term pact valued at $245 million before even taking a regular-season snap. More disasters followed: Novice head coach Nathaniel Hackett's decision to enable Wilson's worst qualities produced a 4-11 record, after which he was pink-slipped. Hackett's successor, Sean Payton, imposed more discipline, but the team remained so mediocre that earlier this year, the Broncos essentially ate his massive contract, triggering a financial crisis that could prove crippling for years to come. Wilson is now in Pittsburgh, and if he doesn't return to form, he has an enormous pile of cash to salve his wounds.

And the Broncos? They're betting on Nix — and praying he doesn't end up on a future edition of this list.