Jarrett Stidham saw something amiss during a walkthrough early in Saturday’s practice and stopped the proceedings.
He had a pointer for the offensive line and wanted to make sure everybody was on the same page before moving forward.
“That’s super healthy,” he told reporters after practice. “For those guys up front, but also for receivers, running backs, tight ends and the quarterbacks ourselves.”
It’s not the type of thing that wins a guy a starting quarterback job in the NFL. But in an environment where everything counts, it also can’t hurt.
This is part of Stidham’s value to the Broncos. Part of his case to head coach Sean Payton and the offensive braintrust.
He likes leading. He likes his teammates. They seem to like him. He is comfortable directing traffic, taking charge or cracking a joke. He’s comfortable, to put it simply, in his own skin. That much hasn’t changed this summer, even in the midst of his first real crack at vying for a starting job in the NFL.
“The NFL is about competition,” he said. “If you don’t have competition in each room, what are you doing? That’s a really healthy thing. Every year, the job upstairs (in the front office) is to bring in people they think can help the football team. The guys that are on the team, your job is to keep your job. It’s a fine line, but I’ve always hung my hat on being a really good teammate and then whenever I’m asked to come out here on the field and run plays, then it’s to execute and score points.
“It’s very black and white in my opinion. That’s just how I see it.”
Being a good teammate and well-liked, of course, doesn’t automatically equate to winning football games. Each of the trio of quarterbacks probably had his best day on Saturday, but nobody has consistently jumped off the page through the first week.
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“There’s things to clean up. That’s part of training camp,” Stidham said. “Little hiccups here and there, but overall I think it’s been good. The offense has been, operationally, really really sharp for the most part. Now it’s just kind of fine-tuning details and making sure we’re on the same page and moving the ball.
His challenge is to do that tuning and also to continue making his value to the rest of the team clear. Whether that’s ultimately to earn him the Week 1 nod, a backup spot or notice from elsewhere in the league is to be determined, but he’s convincing when he says he’s enjoying the process.
“I tell people this when they ask ‘How do you like Denver?’ One of my favorite things to say is that I’ve never been around a team where this many guys are this close,” he said. “It’s not just, like, offensive guys. … Even the defensive guys, special teams, we all hang out all the time. Whether it’s with the wives, girlfriends, dinners, outside the facility. It’s a great group of guys to be around and obviously I feel like that translates to the field.
“Whenever you’re able to talk about certain things where it’s not condescending, it’s coming from a place of genuine love and respect for one another, I think that goes a long way.”
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