There was no easing into the fight last week for Broncos quarterback Jeff Driskel. A screen pass or consecutive hand-offs to let his body and mind get settled into the task of replacing Drew Lock? No way.
Out of the shotgun on his second snap, Driskel looked left before shifting his eyes to the middle of the field, where he found receiver Jerry Jeudy on a crossing route for 20 yards. Right after releasing the football, Driskel was driven into the turf by Pittsburgh’s Cam Heyward.
“That was impressive,” Broncos quarterback coach Mike Shula said.
Driskel bounced right back up … kind of how he did when leading a new high school program in a suburb of Orlando, Fla.
He kept on absorbing punishment so he could keep slinging it … kind of like he did during college stops at Florida and Louisiana Tech.
And he earned the respect of his coaches and teammates with his effort in a 26-21 loss to the Steelers … kind of like he did the previous two years with Cincinnati and Detroit.
“What I liked the most was that he was tough, he stood in there and he generally executed what we wanted to get done,” offensive coordinator Pat Shurmur said.
Minus top receiver Courtland Sutton and co-No. 1 running back Phillip Lindsay, Driskel’s guile and guts will be required when he makes his first start with the Broncos against Tampa Bay on Sunday.
Driskel, 27, will be the Broncos’ eighth different starting quarterback since the start of 2016.
Just like Brandon Allen last year, Driskel is the short-term starter until Lock gets healthy. He will get the Buccaneers game and Thursday’s quick turnaround at the New York Jets to equal parts establish himself as a more-than-serviceable backup and save the Broncos’ season. Win one of the two games and Driskel is likely to keep the spot until Lock is healthy. Lose both and coach Vic Fangio may want to see what newly signed Blake Bortles can do.
The last two seasons, Driskel started games for the Bengals and Lions in November, and both teams were spiraling down the figurative toilet. This time around, the Broncos are 0-2, and so much is at stake.
“It’s a situation I’ve been in before and my goal this week is to go out and win a game,” Driskel said in a phone interview with The Denver Post. “That’s the total focus right now.”
Top prep recruit
When Driskel enters the huddle, he will see three rookies (Jeudy, center Lloyd Cushenberry and receiver KJ Hamler) and two second-year players (left guard Dalton Risner and tight end Noah Fant). But Driskel has experience working with young teams.
Hagerty High School in Oviedo, Fla., opened in 2005, when Driskel was 15 years old.
In 2007, Hagerty fielded its first football team and Driskel was the starting varsity quarterback as a ninth-grader. How young was the team?
“We didn’t even have seniors my freshman year,” he said with a laugh and added, “you’re taking me way back.”
Driskel started 28 of the first 30 games in program history and as he developed, so did Hagerty, from 1-9 to 3-7 to 2-8 to finally 7-4 his senior year.
“It was difficult as a freshman playing varsity in the state of Florida and in the biggest classification (Class 8A),” he said. “But it was good to get the program going and the more years that passed, the more games we started winning and we started a tradition.”
Driskel was the nation’s top-rated pro-style quarterback as a senior by Rivals and Scout and committed to Florida coach Urban Meyer.
Driskel, though, never played for Meyer, who resigned after the 2010 season and was replaced by Will Muschamp.
Following a learn-the-ropes freshman year (two of his 34 passes were intercepted), Driskel saw Muschamp hire Brent Pease from Boise State as offensive coordinator.
In 2012 fall camp, Driskel beat out Jacoby Brissett for the starting job.
The Gators started 7-0 and climbed to third nationally. They won at Texas A&M, No. 23 Tennessee and No. 10 Florida State. And they won home games against No. 4 LSU and No. 9 South Carolina.
“I think a lot of (Driskel winning the job) was his ability to create more in the run game with the zone-read stuff as well as his ability to stay alive in the pocket and scramble around,” Pease said in a phone interview Wednesday.
The Gators finished 11-2 and Driskel had 12 touchdowns, five interceptions and a 63.7 completion rate.
“It was a quarterback-friendly system,” Driskel said. “Coach Pease did a really good job with the teaching and communicating what he expected. He was tough on the quarterbacks and the offense as a whole. I was still a young player at that point and learned a lot from him.”
Aside from those aforementioned wins, Driskel and Pease both list the Vanderbilt game as a highlight. Driskel rushed 11 times for 177 yards, including touchdowns of 37, 13 and 70 yards.
“We went crazy with the zone-read stuff,” Driskel said. “That’s the one game that hits my brain. I’ve got some pictures from that game hanging up in my house.”
Pease and Driskel were aligned in their vision for the Gators’ offense entering 2013.
Injury, then transfer
Entering 2013, Florida was ranked 10th in the preseason poll. A second year with Pease made Driskel confident. Pease had started giving Driskel more ownership with the offense, specifically in devising a third-down plan.
“I really felt (his football IQ) started to show up a lot and really his ability to throw deep and make more explosive-type throws,” Pease said.
It ended in the season’s third game when Driskel sustained a broken right leg against Tennessee.
In separate conversations this week, Driskel and Pease were both asked, “What if?” What if Driskel hadn’t gotten hurt — his NFL stock would have only risen. What if Driskel had taken the next step — Pease’s stock would have also elevated.
Driskel: “Any time you get hurt, you obviously reflect a little bit. But then it was about coming back and fighting back. You play this game long enough, it’s going to happen. It was unfortunate, but it happens.”
Pease: “Definitely for myself, in a selfish way, I would have loved to have him because he was making such great strides and it maybe wouldn’t have put us in a situation where we didn’t win enough games.”
Minus Driskel, the Gators’ season fell apart — a 4-8 record that resulted in Muschamp and most of his staff, including Pease, being fired.
Pease moved on to Washington, followed by UTEP and currently Montana. Under new coach Jim McElwain, Driskel started six games in 2014 but was benched for Treon Harris.
Because he had graduated, Driskel could use a fifth year of eligibility. He transferred to Louisiana Tech.
“I decided it was best to go somewhere else,” he said. “It was one of those deals where I had to find a place that needed a quarterback and a place that was going to use my strengths and display my talent because at the end of the day, it was about getting to the next level.”
Driskel took six hours of online courses, allowing him to spend extra time at the football facility.The Bulldogs went 9-4 and he had seven 300-yard games and threw 27 touchdowns.
“He was great in our offense because we like to throw the football and he could make people miss and run when he had to,” said Tony Petersen, who was Louisiana Tech’s offensive coordinator in 2015 and is now in the same role at Appalachian State. “I just think it was a fresh start for him. It got him out of a situation that had gotten old and got him into a different offense. He could just play football and have fun.”
Good grasp of offense
Driskel’s NFL odyssey began in San Francisco as a sixth-round draft pick. Cut after camp, he was claimed by Cincinnati, where he spent the next three years (2016-18). He went 1-4 in place of Andy Dalton in 2018.
Released by the Bengals last September, Driskel signed with Detroit five days later and went 0-3 in place of an injured Matthew Stafford.
The Broncos signed Driskel in March to be Lock’s backup and he had to learn Shurmur’s playbook virtually.
“It’s like being in school,” Shula said before practice Thursday. “You tell them, ‘Hey, I’m going to ask fast questions, I want fast answers.’ That’s one way to test them and how much hesitation there is after you ask the question. You can also tell by the way guys ask questions on how well they’re getting to know the stuff.”
Because Shurmur and Shula wanted to maximize Lock’s practice snaps, Driskel was a spectator leading into the Tennessee and Pittsburgh games.
Besides his toughness, what stood out was Driskel’s downfield accuracy, including passes of 45 yards to Sutton and 20 and 22 yards to tight end Noah Fant.
“Even though there were a few bad plays, he really made some good throws,” Shurmur said. “I think he has a pretty good feel of what we want to do and now that he’s getting all of the reps, I expect he’ll be sharper early on.”
The Broncos will need him to be sharp early, and the hope of the coaches is the knowledge acquired and lessons learned at his previous stops will benefit Driskel.
“Jeff is a like a lot of quarterbacks who have had to work their butt off and have been through a couple of different programs,” Shula said. “His mindset is, ‘I have to be ready to help this football team,’ and you could sense that when we first signed him. He’s had a lot of knowledge through experience. Sometimes, even if it’s bad experience, you can use that eventually and that’s what we all believe in this profession.”
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