Was John Elway right? Well if by “right” you mean “saved from himself by Brock Osweiler being offended by Elway’s offer to overpay him,” then yes vastly. Instead, the Broncos kicked the tires on Mark Sanchez before settling on Trevor Siemian to take the reins as Paxton Lynch matures into the starting quarterback. Through three games this season, Siemian is still a mixed bag. Week one he was outright bad and hidden as the Broncos asked him to do enough not to lose. Week two, the Denver defense did most of the work, so he spent his time handing the ball off to drain the clock. Last week Gary Kubiak inexplicably let him loose against one of the league’s best defenses, and he did incredibly well. “Incredibly well” is an understatement, because if it weren’t for Marvin Jones’ 200-yard day, he would have been the top scoring non-DST in fantasy football last week as he shredded the Bengals for 312 yards and four touchdowns.
This may seem like scoreboard chasing since Siemian did well last week, we should play him this week. I assure you, it is not scoreboard chasing. He is facing an incredibly inept opponent. If I may quote myself with regards to his opponents, the Tampa Bay Buccaneers:
The one team [Carson Palmer] shredded this year, the Buccaneers, has given up a per-game average that comes out to a season-long pace of over 4400 yards, 37 touchdowns, and five interceptions. This makes the average quarterback who faces the Buccaneers this year so far the rough equivalent of Aaron Rodgers’ 2014 (4381 yards, 38 touchdowns, and five interceptions). They’re bad.
What’s even worse when you consider that outside of the Buccaneers matchup, these same players are on about a 4168 yard, 18 touchdowns, 18 interception pace. That’s 1996 Mark Brunell territory. The matchup is ripe for the picking, and the unexpected connection with Emmanuel Sanders will have this offense humming along this weekend in Tampa Bay.
With Aaron Rodgers, a quarterback you don’t need to roster a backup for, on a bye, Siemian represents the perfect Bye week fill-in. He is widely unowned (8% owned on Yahoo!), and has a juicy matchup to exploit. You can safely drop him back to the waiver wire, or trade him to a desperate owner week five, and continue to ride the Aaron Rodgers train for the rest of the season. Or if you are a Tom Brady owner, you can ride Siemian this week and again next week against a Falcons defense that has allowed the most touchdowns and the fourth-most yards to quarterbacks this season while only forcing two interceptions. Then you can move on from him and ride an angry Tom Brady for the rest of the season. Either way, Trevor Siemian has come into his own at just the right time.