When it comes to Sunday’s AFC Championship game between the Denver Broncos and the New England Patriots, Broncos backup quarterback Jarrett Stidham is the NFL’s mystery man. He only played in one game this year, and Stidham literally has no stats for the season.
No one knows what he’ll be able to do on Sunday, but there are some people who were involved in Stidham’s journey to this game who are making some intriguing educated guesses. Nick Kosmider of The Athletic talked with several of them, and their thoughts are well worth exploring.
Start with Stidham’s old high school coach in Texas, Jeff Hulme. He immediately thought back a decade to 2016 when Stidham was at Baylor and coach Art Briles got fired due to a sexual assault scandal. Stidham elected to sit out a year and transfer, but according to Hulme, he couldn’t handle the solitude, so he asked to come out and throw against Hulme’s high schoolers.
The results were impressive. “[He was] “zipping the ball in a way you definitely don’t see in high school,” said Hulme.
That level of anonymity is characteristic of Stidham, according to Kosmider. A year later, Stidham was quarterback of the Auburn Tigers, and he had to go up against Georgia when the Bulldogs were undefeated and ranked second in the country. Stidham completed 73 percent of his passes against Georgia and Alabama, and it was performances like that that led to the quarterback being drafted by the Patriots.
Once again, Stidham labored in anonymity, and then-Las Vegas Raiders coach Josh McDaniel traded a seventh-round pick to get the quarterback, based on his performance behind the scenes when McDaniel was the offensive coordinator in New England.
Stidham still thinks of himself as a starter, and Broncos coach Sean Payton doesn’t care how Stidham and backup Sam Ehlinger have been in the quarterback room.
“They’re really good players. That’s most important,” Payton said. “You can be the greatest guy in the room, but if you can’t play, then you just got to be the greatest guy in someone else’s room.”
It’s been a long time since Stidham’s seen any action in an actual game, but he says he won’t change his preparation routine beyond the fact that he’ll get more reps with the starters. Payton says he expects his “new” quarterback to rip it, just like he did when he was playing against high schoolers a decade ago.
Stidham as gone from the greatest guy in the room to the guy who’ll be under center in the AFC Championship. His anonymity has ended, and now it’s about stepping up into the spotlight and performing. If he can, he'll step up and become a celebrity, adn his anonymity will be gone in a flash.