Friday Film Room: Brock Osweiler

This should go without saying, but I'll say it anyway: It's too early to make any sort of definitive statement about Brock Osweiler. In his fourth professional season, he's now started two regular-season games. And when you have a dearth of available game film, you can pretty much make the argument you want to make about a player. You can point to plays like this, and proclaim that in terms of accuracy and decision-making, he's not ready:

This is a misread of the Chiefs defense that puts Osweiler's intended receiver, Bennie Fowler, into harm's way unnecessarily. It's man coverage with a single high safety. If he wants to throw to a slot receiver on a vertical route, Osweiler's job is to look off that safety, get him to move to his left, so Fowler will be open in case he beats his defender. Instead, Osweiler leads Fowler directly into Eric Berry, and the collision could've been bad.

And there's this play from Sunday night, also to Fowler:

This is a fine read; it's just an inaccurate throw. Osweiler isn't confused about Fowler's route, and Fowler doesn't make any evident mistakes (the way, for instance, Demaryius Thomas did several times in that game). Instead, Osweiler just throws it behind his man, which should have resulted in an interception. He made throws like this—admittedly in the snow—a couple other times against the Patriots, usually too high, over his receiver's head.

However you can also point to two throws Osweiler made in the fourth quarter Sunday night that had a high "wow" factor. Here's the first:

I don't want to oversell this just to make a point. This is probably a better play by Demaryius Thomas than anyone else. He has to beat Logan Ryan—something he had a difficult time doing all night—and when it counted the most. But this is a pretty tight window for Osweiler, and he lofts it up there about 45 yards in the air and puts it high so that Thomas can take advantage of his height and jumping ability. Most important is when the throw took place: down four points, less than three minutes left in the game, backed up inside his own 20. Then just two plays later, came this pass:

In a difficult moment, Osweiler maybe earns the nickname "Ice-Water." Here, he does look off the safety. Emmanuel Sanders makes this play by winning at the line to get a step on Malcolm Butler. Again Osweiler has a difficult window, but this time the ball is more on a line and travels 50-plus yards in the air. It's a big-boy throw in the biggest of big-boy of situations.

Osweiler's most controlled game came Week 11 against Chicago. If you squint, you might think you were were watching pre-2015 Peyton Manning. By this, I mean Osweiler knew where to go with the ball, went fast, and didn't try to take much more than the defense gave him. The Bears played their safeties back, and Osweiler was impressively accurate on a wide array of slants, outs and hooks:

This isn't a high-degree-of-difficulty throw, but it was third down with a bit of a pass rush, and Osweiler put it right where it had to be for Vernon Davis to make the catch. The Bears game was filled with competent play—punctuated by a conservative game plan that did get Osweiler sacked five times—where the Broncos clearly weren't interested in giving their inexperienced QB more than he could handle.

If you choose to believe that Osweiler is legit, and that he's the future franchise quarterback in Denver, you put faith in the idea that he delivered with the game on the line against an excellent opponent. (I've heard folks say the performance reminded them of Tom Brady circa 2001.) Of course, if you're on the skeptical side of things, you say, "Great, it was two throws." Sure, it's better than Osweiler not leading a game-winning drive, but it's a stretch to say it guarantees a bright future.

From a fantasy perspective, maybe there are some folks interested in streaming Osweiler as the playoffs approach, but I believe most successful fantasy football squads have surer things on their rosters. Both an optimist and a pessimist would agree that Denver has played it about as conservatively as they can offensively with Osweiler under center, and conservative play calling doesn't often lead to huge QB fantasy days.

I think the larger fantasy question is whether Osweiler can support Demaryius Thomas and Emmanuel Sanders as every-week starters, and my feeling is that he can. Until Week 10 against the Chiefs, I didn't think Peyton Manning had been irretrievably bad on film, but that contest was an eye opener. With QB play like that, Thomas and Sanders would have been doomed. Fortunately, Osweiler is capable of keeping the short-passing game on a roll and may even wind up being a Captain Clutch who can nail the longer stuff to his stars when he needs to. Whether or not Osweiler himself has the tools to be a consistent fantasy commodity will be determined later.

Christopher Harris (@HarrisFootball) is a six-time Fantasy Sports Writing Association award winner. He hosts the Harris Football Podcast every weekday. Find it on iTunes, Stitcher, TuneIn and most other podcast apps, as well as at www.HarrisFootball.com.