Elway: Broncos didn't cut Lynch because of Kelly's inexperience

The inexperience of Chad Kelly led the Denver Broncos to keep former first-round pick Paxton Lynch on their roster instead of releasing him during the final round of roster cuts on Saturday.

Lynch, who's shown little meaningful improvement since entering the NFL in 2016, was believed to be hanging onto his job by a thread as the deadline approached.

"That decision was made because looking at it and looking at the situation with Chad not having a lot of experience and not having played in a regular season game before, we thought that we had to go with three quarterbacks and Paxton was our third," general manager John Elway told the Denver Post's Kyle Fredrickson.

Lynch entered training camp as the No. 2 quarterback behind Case Keenum, but struggled mightily for most of the preseason and lost the role to Kelly. He's seen action in five regular-season games throughout his career.

Kelly spent his entire rookie campaign on injured reserve after being selected with the last pick in the 2017 draft.

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