This week was an ugly one of the Broncos, but it would have been hard to imagine it going any other way. They had roughly 18 hours to prepare for a game, with a quarterback that hasn’t played the position in over three years and hasn’t taken any practice reps with the team from that position, against a red-hot Saints team.

With that said, there’s still a lot we can take from this game, such as a great performance from Denver’s defense and horrific decision-making by the league office. For all that and more, let’s take a look at the stock report.

Stock Up

Biggest Riser: Denver’s defense

Yes they might have allowed more than 30 points this week, but the effort the defense turned in today was nothing short of admirable, and had they gotten literally any support from the offensive side of the ball, it might’ve even been remarkable.

Vic Fangio’s defensive gameplan was superb and confused Taysom Hill very similarly to how it confused Tu’a Tagovailoa just last week, which should be promising considering just how depleted Denver’s defense is.

Bryce Callahan left the game early with a foot injury, but before leaving, he turned in another performance in which he looked like one of the five best cornerbacks overall, and the best slot cornerback in the league. Denver has their new Chris Harris Jr. folks.

Also in the secondary, Essang Bassey got the first interception of his career and prevented the shutout in the process.

Malik Reed and Bradley Chubb continued the great run they’ve been on as a tandem. They constantly harassed Hill and were the primary reason the Saints didn’t convert either of their first two third-downs.

Finally, Alexander Johnson and Dre’Mont Jones were all over the field for the Broncos today and combined for 17 tackles.

Stock Down

Biggest Faller: The NFL

How the National Football League went out about playing this game despite the Broncos being entirely without a quarterback, is one of the most blatant double-standards we’ve seen from the league this season in regards to managing COVID-19.

The Broncos were already a victim of those double standards back in Week 5 when the Patriots game was delayed a week, eating Denver’s bye week in the process, despite the team doing nothing wrong.

This time around, the Broncos were forced to play a game against the NFC’s best team without any quarterbacks.

If you’re wondering how that went, it surprisingly didn’t go well. Who would’ve thought?

If the NFL was willing to delay this week’s Broncos game to Tuesday, as they’ve done with other teams and games this season, like Baltimore this week for example, the Broncos would have been able to play Drew Lock, Jeff Driskel and Blake Bortles.

So why were the Broncos forced to play on schedule when other teams have had their games delayed to accommodate them?

Some justify it by saying the Broncos quarterbacks broke the rules by occasionally pulling their masks down to talk, and therefore didn’t deserve to have their game moved. However, according to NFL Network’s Tom Pelissero, Baltimore’s assistant strength and conditioning coach failed to wear a mask or contact tracer consistently and failed to report his symptoms to the team, which led to 19 subsequent COVID-19 cases inside the Ravens organization.

Ok, so if it’s not that the Ravens followed the rules but the Broncos did it, what caused the discrepancy in how these two incidents were treated?

First and most importantly, the Baltimore outbreak was much more severe, which made it unsafe to gather as a team. So in other words, if you’re going to have a COVID outbreak, make sure you get a ton of people sick, otherwise, the NFL will punish you. Seem like a weird thing t incentivize, but cool.

Second, the Broncos don’t have an individual owner that can make Roger Goodell’s life a living hell. The Ravens, Patriots, and most every other NFL team has such an owner. The Broncos have to rely a trust of owners, which has a lot to do with their fall from grace as Pat Bowlen became less in control of the team. Until that ownership situation gets sorted, the Broncos are at a severe disadvantage.

Third, the Broncos don’t have star power at quarterback and aren’t a good enough team to drive ratings. The NFL didn’t mind keeping the game as is, because they weren’t missing out on playing a star, like Cam Newton, or a true contending team, like the Steelers or Ravens.

No matter the reasoning, these double standards have been a downright ugly look for the league.

The rotating quarterback situation

You can’t blame Phillip Lindsay and Kendall Hinton for struggling in their quarterback role today, especially considering they didn’t even have a chance to practice, but they played poorly nonetheless, and we need to talk about it, so it lands here.

Kendall Hinton looked exactly like a quarterback that hasn’t spent any significant time playing the position since 2017, making their first career NFL start against a top-five defense without having a single practice to prepare. He was