No, Broncos, your assistant coaches can’t suit up as quarterbacks

When the Broncos ran out of quarterbacks this weekend, their first move wasn’t to look outside the organization for a veteran free agent who could come in at a moment’s notice to help the team win.

No, that’s too simple.

Instead, Denver was so desperate they asked the NFL if they could promote two offensive quality control coaches to QB.

“Umm, no,” the NFL said.

The two coaches considered for the job were Justin Rascati and Rob Calabrese.

Rascati was a college QB who led James Madison University to a FCS championship back in 2004. Calabrese played a little QB when he was a wide receiver/quarterback at the University of Central Florida from 2008 to 2012.

Denver eventually decided to take a wide receiver/quarterback who played more recently than Calabrese. The rookie Kendall Hinton will get the start for the Broncos today. He played quarterback at Wake Forest before becoming a wide receiver for the Demon Deacons. The undrafted, practice squad WR will play in his NFL first game today.

What could go wrong?

The only other time something like this happened was in 2009 when the Eagles were short on QBs at training camp. That year, Philadelphia put a coaching intern, Matt Nagy, under center for a practice. When the NFL found out that the Eagles were using an intern as a QB, they also said, “No, you can’t do that.” Nagy only practiced for one day.

With Rascati and Calabrese on the sidelines and Hinton in the game, there’s only one thing I can be thankful for on this Thanksgiving weekend. At least I’m not writing about a Tim Tebow return.