Broncos former first-round pick Paxton Lynch continues to make strides in his recovery from a shoulder injury and could start as soon as Week 10, according to team and league sources, with Brock Osweiler's time under center perhaps as short as one week.

Osweiler will start Sunday after Trevor Siemian's struggles forced a quarterback change, but the front office very much wants to evaluate Lynch this season and he is increasing his practice workload each week. Lynch began throwing late last month after missing several months due to injury, and the Broncos want to make sure he is 100 percent before turning the offense over to him. Lynch missed considerable practice reps during his time away and was still struggling to pick up the intricacies of the NFL game this summer, making the leap from a rudimentary college scheme at Memphis which takes time.

His mental growth will be a considerable factor in how he performs after being forced into a few starts last season as a rookie, but John Elway remains intrigued by the quarterback's athleticism and arm strength and raw ability and the Broncos plan on tapping into that this season. Osweiler, who won games with Denver two years ago but has struggled mightily in Houston and Cleveland since (the Browns paid him $16M to leave the team), is a stopgap measure at this point, the sources said, buying time until Lynch is fully ready to go.

If Denver's offense continues to look anything close to what it has in recent weeks--– the Broncos face the surging Eagles in Philadelphia on Sunday -- then the move to Lynch could very well happen in Week 10. The hope is that Lynch could excel on bootlegs and with a moving pocket -- tenets of the game that Elway espouses -- and that his mobility would help out a slumping offensive line. The Broncos are trying to keep their defense -- which has the capacity to dominate on any given week -- from growing frustrated with the other side of the ball, with Denver's offense in decline for several years now since Peyton Manning's physical decline.