Enter­ing the penul­ti­mate week of the Bron­cos’ sea­son, who will play quar­ter­back on Sun­day against the Charg­ers remains unclear.

Ted­dy Bridge­wa­ter is still in con­cus­sion pro­to­col after get­ting hurt in Week 15 against Cincin­nati, so, as of Mon­day, Drew Lock’s in line for his sec­ond start of the season.

“We real­ly don’t have an update as far as whether (Bridge­wa­ter) will be avail­able or not this week,” coach Vic Fan­gio said. “Maybe as the week moves on we will, but until he’s cleared by the inde­pen­dent doc­tors and says he’s ready to go, then we have to assume that he won’t be avail­able to play. We’ll do the best thing for him mov­ing forward.”

Bridge­wa­ter, who also sus­tained a con­cus­sion in the Week 4 loss to the Ravens, was injured in the third quar­ter of the Ben­gals game and had to be cart­ed off the field. He spent the night at a local hos­pi­tal before being dis­charged the next day.

Grad­ing Drew Lock. The third-year quar­ter­back was 15-of-22 for 153 yards pass­ing and no touch­downs or inter­cep­tions in Sunday’s 17–13 loss in Las Vegas that all but snuffed out the Bron­cos’ play­off chances.

Fan­gio, who said last week Bridge­wa­ter would remain the start­ing QB if he’s healthy no mat­ter how well Lock plays, gave the lat­ter a mixed review for Sunday.

The Bron­cos couldn’t get any­thing going on the ground (18 total rush­ing yards) or through the air as dri­ves con­tin­u­ous­ly sput­tered and the offense only mus­tered one touch­down, off a turnover that set them up at the Raiders’ one-yard line.

“Any­time you lose your run­ning game — espe­cial­ly for us because that’s what we’ve done best this year — it makes it hard­er on the quar­ter­back,” Fan­gio said. “There’s no doubt about that. I think it’s hard to give a great assess­ment of Drew’s play yes­ter­day because as a whole offen­sive­ly we just didn’t play good enough, and it makes it hard to assess the quar­ter­back posi­tion. I thought he made some good throws. We had a chance on some of them but we didn’t quite make them.

“I wasn’t ter­ri­bly dis­ap­point­ed in his per­for­mance either. Obvi­ous­ly, it could be better.”

Fan­gio on dropped pass­es. As Fan­gio allud­ed to, the Bron­cos had pass pro­tec­tion issues Sun­day (Lock was sacked twice and pres­sured on 52% of drop­backs, an NFL-worst for the week) while Lock also didn’t get much help from his wideouts.

Jer­ry Jeudy dropped a would-be first down catch on third down near the end of the first half that forced the Bron­cos to set­tle for a field goal. Then, on the Bron­cos’ final dri­ve, Tim Patrick and Albert Okwueg­bunam had drops on con­sec­u­tive plays. Okwuegbunam’s drop came on a ver­ti­cal route that would’ve set Den­ver up in the red zone.

Fan­gio said the Bron­cos have “got to be able to find a way to make those plays.”

“Yeah, they could have (changed the game),” Fan­gio said. “All three of them weren’t rou­tine catch­es by any means. There were (defend­ers) there or the ball wasn’t just right on their body and total­ly unhin­dered. But those are the kind of plays you have to make to win a close game.”

Injury/COVID updates. Fan­gio said defen­sive line­man DeShawn Williams will miss the final two games with an elbow injury. Mean­while, nose tack­le Mike Pur­cell, defen­sive line­man Jonathan Har­ris and out­side line­backer Andre Mintze went on the COVID list and will need neg­a­tive tests on con­sec­u­tive days in order to return to the team.

Cen­ter Lloyd Cushen­ber­ry, inside line­backer Bar­ring­ton Wade and prac­tice squad line­man Drew Him­mel­man remain on the COVID list.