Paxton Lynch suffers torn ACL while playing arena football

Seven years after the ship sailed on Paxton Lynch's NFL career, he's still dog paddling after it.

Most recently, Lynch was playing for the Colorado Spartans of the National Arena League. He suffered a torn ACL in his third game.

“I was pissed off,” Lynch told Luca Evans of the Denver Post. “And it sucks. I didn’t want it to be like this.”

The sentiment undoubtedly applies to his entire professional career. A first-round pick of the Broncos in 2016, Lynch washed out of Denver just before the start of his third season. Lynch started four total games in two seasons, with 792 passing yards and a passer rating of 76.7.

He didn't play for anyone in 2018 before getting a shot to make the Seahawks in 2019. He eventually landed in Pittsburgh after Ben Roethlisberger suffered a season-ending elbow injury against Seattle in Week 2.

The Steelers waived Lynch before the start of the 2020 regular season. He then spent a season in the CFL before playing for three teams in two years with multiple spring leagues.

In both 2024 and 2025, Lynch didn't play. The Spartans were his return to football.

“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.”

He lost that authenticity in 2018, when the Broncos signed Case Keenum to be the starter and doubt derailed Lynch's time in Denver.

"I always knew who I was off the field," Lynch told Evans. "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. So it’s like, ‘Are these people seeing something I’m not seeing?’ It was the constant battle in that."

Whether a brief stint of feeling like himself again is the final chapter or just another page in a longer book remains to be seen. Regardless, he had talent. He wasn't a fluke first-round pick. He was widely regarded as the No. 3 prospect in the 2016 draft, behind Jared Goff and Carson Wentz.

And if the Broncos hadn't traded up to get Lynch at the bottom of round one, the Cowboys would have. Which would have likely short-circuited Dak Prescott's time in Dallas before it even began. Prescott was a fourth-round pick that same year.