The Denver Broncos are in hot water.
All four of their quarterbacks were deemed ineligible to play in Sunday’s game against the New Orleans Saints due to the NFL’s COVID-19 health and safety policies.
Three of those signal-callers — Drew Lock, Brett Rypien and Blake Bortles — were sent home from practice Saturday after being deemed high-risk close contacts of Jeff Driskel, who tested positive for the coronavirus Thursday.
But did they deliberately mislead the NFL to avoid contact-tracing efforts?
The trio was “not forthcoming during contact-tracing interviews” regarding exposure to Driskel and “spent extensive time together without masks,” a source told The Athletic’s Lindsey Jones on Saturday. They reportedly did not wear their league-issued tracking devices “consistently” either.
It’s unclear if the quarterbacks intentionally mislead the league, but their current quarterback situation certainly leaves room for speculation.
With all four quarterbacks out of commission, Denver is expected to lean on practice squad wide receiver Kendall Hinton to play behind center Sunday afternoon. Hinton was a quarterback for Wake Forest from 2015 to 2018 before switching over to receiver in 2019.
This still isn’t enough to prove any sort of malice on the Broncos QBs’ part. But it doesn’t exactly paint them in a positive light, either.
Saints-Broncos kicks off Sunday at 4:05 p.m. ET.
