The Denver Broncos can dance around the topic all they want. I refuse to.
Chad Kelly has earned second-string quarterback snaps. Now. Period.
He hasn't had the most head-turning training camp, no. He's not fully polished or perhaps merely halfway refined. He's a former seventh-round draft pick coming off multiple surgeries and yet to take a single meaningful snap in the NFL.
But Kelly is also something that his competitor, Paxton Lynch, isn't.
“He’s a playmaker. He’s always been a playmaker," Broncos head coach Vance Joseph said. "You watch his college tape two years ago, he just makes plays. It doesn’t always look pretty, but he just makes plays.”
This reputation was on display Sunday during the first scrimmage of camp. With Case Keenum and the starting offense floundering, and Lynch wholly unimpressive if not calamitous, Kelly entered with the threes and immediately brought a spark, completing a pair of beautifully-thrown touchdown passes to Jordan Leslie and Mark Chapman, respectively. He even sacrificed himself on a downfield block for running back De'Angelo Henderson during an ensuing "series."
I'm fully aware it's practice, and deducing anything based on 12 plays between third-stringers is a fool's errand. But I also know that Kelly's effort was undeniable. What he put on tape was unmistakably thought-provoking, forcing an admission from those seemingly stacking the deck against him.
“Chad looked good," said Joseph. "I think he threw two touchdowns within five plays. Yeah, he looked good.”
Joseph, entering a do-or-die second season, has preached competition -- over and over and over. The Broncos say the best man, either Lynch or Kelly, will back up Keenum when real football rolls around. But if it appears like they want Lynch, their 2016 first-round choice, to win the job ... well, that's because they do.
Consider: Kelly still, through eight practices, hasn't taken a No. 2 rep. Not a single one. The prevailing notion was he finally did enough in the scrimmage to attain such an opportunity.
Nope.