After losing and injury, there’s probably nothing a player, coach or fan hates more than a quarterback controversy. That’s certainly true for Laurie Lattimore-Volkmann, who covers the Denver Broncos for the popular website MileHighReport.com. “My least favorite thing in all of sports,” she said on Mile High Sports AM 1340, “is a quarterback controversy.”

Lattimore-Volkmann joined Mike Luper and Sean Walsh on Monday and said she hopes Broncos fans will know sooner rather than later who’s going to be quarterbacking their team in the playoffs. The move back to Peyton Manning in the third quarter of Sunday’s season finale thriller over the San Diego Chargers signaled a change for the team, one she thinks head coach Gary Kubiak won’t go back on now.

“I don’t envy Kubiak,” she said, “I don’t envy anyone around that decision … but once you’ve pulled Brock [Osweiler] and put Peyton in, there’s that momentum.” And while she thinks Kubiak has enough control of the locker room to go in either direction, she thinks a return to Osweiler at this point would seem like “waffling.”

The tricky thing, Luper and Walsh say, is that Osweiler really didn’t do anything to deserve to get pulled on Sunday. His 232 yards and a touchdown had the Broncos moving the ball, and only one or two of the team’s five turnovers could be even partially attributed to Osweiler. Kubiak said postgame that the team needed a spark, which Manning certainly provided, but it wasn’t so clear cut a move as when Manning had thrown four interceptions against Kansas City.

Lattimore-Volkmann agrees that Osweiler has certainly earned the right to start, and that the mistakes have caused both Manning and Osweiler to struggle at times are equal parts their own doing and the result of bad circumstances around them.

“Fans have been unfair to the point where when Peyton was throwing interceptions they were Peyton’s fault,” she said. “When Brock throws interceptions it’s been more likely to blame it on the offensive line or the receiver dropping the ball. I think the truth of all that is both have had both.”

That doesn’t make the decision for Gary Kubiak any easier. But Lattimore-Volkmann says there’s one big difference that she thinks gives Manning the edge moving forward.

“What Peyton is able to do that we as fans generally don’t see so much is make a at the line of scrimmage, to change up the plays, to read the defense, to get the ball away quicker so that it looks like the offensive line is playing better, it looks like the running game suddenly is better, but it probably was Peyton’s big brain doing some work.”

No doubt Gary Kubiak wants to avoid the “brain damage” that will go along with any notion of a “quarterback controversy,” and his two quarterbacks are already saying all the right things to dispel any sense of internal discord.

At least until a starter is named, the only real controversy will be whether the media is creating one with all the speculation about the Broncos quarterback.

Listen to the full discussion, including some injury updates, in the podcast below…

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