A decade later, Paxton Lynch has held onto No. 12. It hasn’t been easy. The journey brought him, after eight professional organizations, to a 60-yard turf field with no end zones that is readily available for birthday-party rentals. The “12” sat on the back of a black Colorado Spartans penny this spring, at the Apex Field House in Arvada. It once sat on the back of an orange Broncos jersey at Empower Field, where a quarterback town expected his 6-foot-7 shoulders to carry the mantle from Peyton Manning.
Call it a fall from grace. Call it a climb back toward himself, as a quarterback.
Early on a Thursday morning in late March, inside Apex, before many of his teammates took off their helmets and headed off to their primary jobs, Lynch yanked a throw too far for a receiver at Spartans practice. He pivoted, disgusted. He redid his motion in thin air. He slapped himself on the helmet several times in rapid succession.
“Hey, you getting hyped for this (expletive), man,” a teammate grinned at Lynch later, off to the side.
“I’m gonna play ’till I’m 45,” the 32-year-old Lynch beamed back. “Like I’m Tom Brady.”
For two and a half games in the National Arena League this spring, the Spartans let Lynch — the Broncos’ 2016 first-round pick that fizzled out after two years in Denver — dream again. No organization at any level called for a year and a half, until Spartans owner Tony Thompson wandered up at Lynch’s son’s Park Hill Pirates youth-ball practice in 2025. They could pay all of $600 a game. Lynch, a religious man, turned up his nose at first. But this was God’s way, he said, of telling him he should play again.
Two and a half games later, playing in Salina, Kansas, Lynch planted his right leg as a defender crunched him from the left side. His right knee buckled. Tests revealed Lynch tore his LCL, ending his comeback attempt before he could even play in the Spartans’ home debut on April 11.
“I was pissed off,” Lynch told The Denver Post. “And it sucks. I didn’t want it to be like this.”
But he did not ask himself why, or why him, or why he couldn’t catch a break, or any of the possible whys that come when hope is killed. He couldn’t go there, Lynch said. Not anymore. He did not join the Spartans for a whiff of former glory. This was an exercise, really, in football therapy.
At some point, bouncing around cities and leagues, Paxton Lynch the man and Paxton Lynch the football player diverged. The man knew himself. The football player, though, lost all confidence. Lynch joined the Spartans to reconcile the two and find part of himself in Denver again. The experiment lasted just a few weeks.
Still, if you ask him, it was successful.
“I was like, ‘OK, if I play this year in arena football,’” Lynch said, “‘I’m going to play as Paxton Lynch. I’m going to have full confidence in myself. I don’t really care.’ And that’s what I did.
“It felt good to do that again.”
Paxton Lynch of the Denver Broncos is sacked by Denico Autry of the Oakland Raiders during their NFL game at Oakland-Alameda County Coliseum on November 26, 2017 in Oakland, California. (Photo by Robert Reiners/Getty Images)
Paxton Lynch of the Denver Broncos is sacked by Denico Autry of the Oakland Raiders during their NFL game at Oakland-Alameda County Coliseum on November 26, 2017 in Oakland, California. (Photo by Robert Reiners/Getty Images)
The road back
Looking back, the breaking point was 2017.
Lynch was the Broncos’ first draft pick after Super Bowl 50. The first pick after Manning’s retirement. The first pick of the last year of the Kubiak Era. Lynch rolled into Denver, used to being “the guy,” as he put it, from three years starting in Memphis; he started two games in his rookie year in 2016 behind Trevor Siemian, and lost the job again in his second year.
In 2018, the Broncos signed veteran Case Keenum as their starter, and Lynch lost direction.
“I just remember that whole entire preseason, it was like — I wasn’t Paxton Lynch,” Lynch said. “I was just, like, Paxton Lynch without the confidence.”
The Broncos cut him that September, after two years and just four total starts. Lynch told himself he had to fight to change his mindset. He mostly lost. He lasted less than a year in Seattle. He lasted a year in Pittsburgh. He went to the CFL, the USFL, and the XFL and searched for nearly a decade to recapture the feeling he’d first brought to Denver as a young 22-year-old man before the doubt crept in.
Quarterback Paxton Lynch of the Denver Broncos is tackled by inside linebacker Terrance Smith #48 and defensive tackle Jarvis Jenkins #94 of the Kansas City Chiefs scrambles against the Kansas City Chiefs in the second quarter of a game at Sports Authority Field at Mile High on December 31, 2017 in Denver, Colorado. (Photo by Dustin Bradford/Getty Images)
Quarterback Paxton Lynch of the Denver Broncos is tackled by inside linebacker Terrance Smith #48 and defensive tackle Jarvis Jenkins #94 of the Kansas City Chiefs scrambles against the Kansas City Chiefs in the second quarter of a game at Sports Authority Field at Mile High on December 31, 2017 in Denver, Colorado. (Photo by Dustin Bradford/Getty Images)
“I knew who I was,” Lynch said. “I had a strong relationship with God. I have a strong foundation in my faith. So I always knew who I was off the field. But when it became Paxton Lynch the football player, and all these people had these different opinions about me – that’s when it was hard for me.
“I was like … ‘You believe that you’re good. But you’re not playing good. And then all these people are saying you’re not good,’” he continued. “So it’s like, ‘Are these people seeing something I’m not seeing?’ It was the constant battle in that.”
By 2024, the line had gone cold, and Lynch accepted a new stage of his life. Mostly. He was the play-caller for his son Asa’s team with Park Hill, and had an eye on coaching collegiate football. Then Thompson sold him on arena football at a Los Dos Potrillos. Lynch told himself and family, after all, that he would play the sport as long as he possibly could.
That applied in this case, he figured, even if he was playing indoor games up at the Denver Coliseum rather than a few miles south at a rocking Empower Field.
Lynch hoped, of course, that something — another call, anything — would’ve come out of this Spartans journey. But he felt no pressure to be perfect or prove he was good enough. By that late-March practice, Lynch was slinging with little abandon, and cackling in glee at two teammates arguing about their defensive assignments, and waving his hand over his nether regions in a belt-to-behind celebration after one touchdown pass.
“Two years off of playing football, that’s when I was like, ‘OK, if I get the opportunity, then I’m just going to completely be myself again,’” Lynch said.
Lessons to his kids
Lynch joined the Spartans to rehabilitate his own image as a football player, yes. Also, to better himself as a father, as his 10-year-old son Asa is a burgeoning quarterback in his own right in Denver youth ball.
“I was doing things where I was like – I didn’t even, like, give myself a chance, in a way,” Lynch recalled of his career. “I tell my son that all the time, too. When he goes out there and is afraid to throw an incompletion, or afraid of this, I’m like, ‘You’re messing up, and you’re not even feeling good about messing up. Because you’re not even doing it, like, 100%.’”
Lynch had visions of leading the Spartans to a championship in the Denver Coliseum, with his kids cheering from the stands. Thousands more cheering, too. Thompson’s franchise has heavily marketed Lynch since he signed last fall. When visiting the Spartans’ website, a chatbot pops up with the same message: “We just signed Paxton Lynch to the Colorado Spartans, and season tickets are live now.”
Spartans head coach Fred Shaw called Lynch a “true leader” and said his 6-foot-7 frame was built for the arena game, which features walls around the playing field that players crash into as a live boundary. The Spartans averaged over 40 points a game in the two games Lynch started, Shaw said.
“I’ve been in this Arena League for over 20 years now,” Shaw said. “And his play alone — I felt like he was going to become one of the best quarterbacks that ever played arena football.”
Even with his season over, Lynch plans to attend as many home games as possible. He’ll start with Saturday, April 11, at the Coliseum if he’s able, coming off surgery this week.
“I know there was a lot of people who wanted to come watch me play again,” Lynch said. “So, my goal is to go there and give them the experience, and at least — if they want a picture, they want an autograph, they want to meet me, whatever — my goal is to be there to give them the opportunity, even if I’m not playing.”
His goal, too, was to give his son a firsthand look at the preparation it took to be a professional quarterback, at any level. And to work for his dreams. And to show him how to handle failure. It’s taken Lynch a long time to learn that, himself.
He doesn’t know, yet, if he’ll play again in 2027. If this was the true end of Lynch’s playing career, though, he’ll walk out happy.
“I do feel like that’s what I came out here and did — I was, like, authentically myself,” Lynch said.
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