John Elway‘s overhaul of Denver’s offense has the Broncos primed to be a playoff contender and potentially one of the league’s more exciting offenses, in large part due to Drew Lock’s emergence at quarterback.

However, Pro Football Focus thinks Broncos Country should pump the brakes on their expectations for the 2020 season.

In an article released earlier this week, Kevin Cole and Timo Riske used Bayesian projections to rank how they expect each projected starting quarterback to perform this season.

Lock finds himself slotted in at 29th, notably behind Ryan Fitzpatrick, Tyrod Taylor, Nick Foles and every other projected starter from his draft class, not named Jarett Stidham.

According to Cole and Riske, second-year quarterbacks often take a big step forward and consistently out-perform their projections.

“When using a linear model to predict season performance with the career posterior mean from the Bayesian Updating technique, adding another factor, one that takes into account whether or not the QB is in Year 2, adds to the predictive power of the model in a statistically significant way,” wrote Cole and Riske.

However, the trends in the data suggest that this leap is lessened for quarterbacks taken later in the draft, explaining Lock’s low ranking.

“The effect size is up to 0.025 EPA per play (the difference between the seventh- and 13th-best passing offense in 2019) and is stronger for highly drafted quarterbacks compared to quarterbacks with lower draft stocks, i.e., we expect Kyler Murray to have a stronger second-year leap than Drew Lock or Gardner Minshew,” added Cole and Riske.

PFF’s projections also give Lock a mere 24 percent chance of finishing in the top half of the league’s quarterbacks, and a 31 percent chance of being among the league’s five worst starters.

Let’s hope they’re wrong because if they’re right, the Broncos will be returning to the quarterback well sooner than expected.