Mark Kiszla: Have Broncos lost appetite for going all-in on quarterback in NFL draft?

As a football genius, Broncos coach Sean Payton should be smart enough to know: He can’t afford to be wrong about the team’s next quarterback.

While Payton acts as if he invented winning, in football, it’s always about the quarterback, knucklehead.

With the weakest QB room in the league, Denver has no acceptable choice except to find a new one in the NFL draft. Broncos Country will be ablaze with angst and anger if the clock strikes midnight at the conclusion of Thursday and the team hasn’t acquired a better option than Zach Wilson or Jarrett Stidham, who both have zero shot of returning the team to Super Bowl glory.

“Do we have to draft a quarterback? You'd say, 'Man, it sure looks like we have to draft a quarterback,'" Payton told us all last week. “And yet, it’s got to be the right fit, the right one.”

After everyone from Paxton Lynch to Russell Wilson, a full baker’s dozen of mistakes at the game’s most crucial position since 2016, the Broncos have to get it right this time.

It doesn’t matter if the answer is J.J. McCarthy, Bo Nix or Michael Penix Jr.

If the Broncos make the wrong call, Payton won’t look appreciably smarter on the Denver sideline than Vance Joseph, Vic Fangio or Nathaniel Hackett did, and the same pink slip will await him in due time.

So you can color me shocked if Denver trades what’s left of the farm to move into the top five of the first round. Hate to break it to you, but I can’t see it happening.

Yes, I was listening when Broncos general manager George Paton insisted if you believe there’s a quarterback that can change the landscape of the organization, you do whatever it takes to get him.

I’m calling balderdash.

Why? Let’s start with the most practical reason. The Broncos almost certainly lack the resources to trade up unless they are willing to part with star cornerback Pat Surtain II.

And that ain’t happening, if Paton does more these days than fetch coffee at team headquarters. Taking Surtain with the ninth overall pick in the 2021 draft is the only truly meaningful move Paton has done right. If there’s one untouchable player on this roster, it’s Surtain.

More importantly, my guess is the low-risk trade with the Jets for Wilson, in which the Broncos took on the reclamation project in an attempt to fix the mess New York made of a BYU quarterback selected second overall three years ago, did provide a window into the thinking of Payton and his minions at Broncos headquarters.

Payton is arrogant enough to think he made Drew Brees in New Orleans, rather than the obvious truth: Without Brees, Payton would never have won the Super Bowl.

While no draftnik would be surprised if the names of Nix and Penix are both on the board when the Broncos go on the clock with the 12th overall pick, taking a quarterback regarded as a second-day talent so early in the first round would not only be criticized as a reach, but greatly increase the public pressure to play a rookie early in his career, ready or not.

And I’m not certain if that would sit well with Payton, who wants us to know that nobody, from Broncomaniacs in the South Stands to franchise owner Greg Penner, tells him what to do.

So if the Broncos can trade back, gain additional draft capital, and still add Penix or Nix, it fits with Payton’s desire to look like the smartest man in the room, if not the entire league.

But know what might align even better with Payton’s ego? Waiting to draft a quarterback, allowing the Broncos to declare everybody else in the NFL undervalued the talent of somebody like Spencer Rattler of South Carolina. Then Payton could add a rookie to a QB room that already includes Wilson and Stidham, giving the coach a chance to show us all what a quarterback-whisperer he really is.

Way back in the 1990s, when quarterback Brett Favre, coach Mike Holmgren and the Green Bay Packers were at their championship powers, I asked Holmgren a simple question: Who’s more important to the success of an NFL franchise? The coach or the quarterback?

Holmgren chuckled. “You really expect me to answer that question?” he replied. “I will have to plead the Fifth.”

Without Tom Brady as his quarterback, Bill Belichick’s record as coach is 82-98. During sixteen seasons that Mike Shanahan wasn’t blessed with John Elway running his innovative offense schemes, he won one playoff game.

Payton knows football, as he will readily tell anyone within earshot. But he’s no Belichick or Shanahan.

Unless the Broncos find the right quarterback, Payton will be the wrong man to turn around the team’s fortunes.