It's still too early in Bo Nix's NFL career to know just what level of quality quarterback he will settle into for the majority of his career. The Denver Broncos quarterback had a very good rookie season with flashes of promising play, but Nix was insulated with the help of one of the best offensive lines in football, a top five defense, and an offensive play-caller who built in safeguards into the offensive design and play sequencing to keep him out of disadvantageous situations as often as possible.
That isn’t a knock against Nix, more so than it is a compliment to Denver building an ecosystem that protected a young quarterback and allowed him to grow without it all resting on the shoulders of a rookie.
What we do know about Nix is that he undoubtedly belongs among the group of NFL starting-caliber quarterbacks, and he's in an ideal partnership with head coach Sean Payton.
How were Payton and the Broncos able to navigate the draft noise last offseason to identify Nix as their guy? In a recent interview on the Up & Adams Show with Kay Adams, ESPN’s Seth Wickersham discussed Payton’s quarterback process that led to Denver holding steady at pick 12 and taking Nix despite the consensus opinion that he was unworthy of an early first-round selection.
"What I get into with the Bo Nix, I have a lot of interesting 'insidery' detail about the scouting process that led Sean Payton to want him. It touches on a lot of things. I don’t want to give away too much in the moment (he's on tour promoting his new book: American Kings: A Biography of the Quarterback), but it touches on a lot of things," Wickersham told Adams. "From analytics and moneyball in the NFL to personality type. And I think that losing out on Patrick Mahomes is something that has haunted Sean Payton’s career. He had his eye on Mahomes and the Chiefs traded up right before he was due to pick him and got him. I think the scars from that led to him creating a system to evaluate quarterbacks that led to Bo Nix."
After a tumultuous start to his NFL career replete with struggles through the first eight weeks of the season, Nix and the Broncos offense started to find their groove over the second portion of the schedule. From Weeks 9 to the end of the regular season, Nix would finish as a top 10 quarterback in EPA/Play (minimum 175 dropbacks; only including plays with win probability 10-90% to filter out garbage time).
While it's likely overstated how inadequate the Broncos’ offensive weapons were last season without pointing toward the incredible benefit of the offensive line and defense, this is still an incredible indicator of growth from Nix and his passing output in this offense.
While Oregon’s offense was very RPO and spread-oriented, playing with a rather large talent advantage compared to their PAC-12 competition, the Broncos did their best to isolate Nix from the infrastructure the Ducks provided to best evaluate him as a prospect. From a moneyball approach, there is no singularly better cheat code in the NFL than fielding a starting-caliber quarterback on a cost-controlled rookie contract.
Even if that quarterback is not a bonafide superstar, the savings are oftentimes worth it from a team-building perspective. The real issue tends to crop up when non-superstar quarterbacks get big a second contract, as the team falls apart around them due to the burden of the new quarterback deal.
The only area that doesn’t truly pass the sniff test in the interview is comparing having to take a quarterback Payton wanted in Nix with Payton missing out on Mahomes in the 2017 NFL draft. With Kansas City sniping the Saints by trading up to 10 with New Orleans sitting at 11, wouldn’t sitting idle in comparison to going up and getting 'your guy' be a lesson learned?
Obviously, in hindsight, if the Saints loved Mahomes so much and knew what he would become, they should have traded up to secure him. Losing out on Mahomes by failing to trade up for him didn’t change the Broncos’ and Payton’s course so drastically that they were willing to part with draft capital to move up and get Nix. Instead, they were patient and risked another team drafting him before pick 12 (or trading up before Denver).
Regardless, in the end, it worked out for Payton, as the Broncos identified and landed one of the quarterbacks they valued in the draft, and despite initial pushback, it appears to be a great pick for Denver given the value of a rookie contract paired with a quarterback of Nix’s caliber.
Only time will tell if Nix can continue to grow to the caliber of quarterbacks littered throughout the AFC, and what that could mean a few years down the line when it comes time to pay Nix. Either way, the Broncos are set up in an ideal three to five-year window going forward while Nix is under cost-control and under the ever-watchful and meticulous eye of Payton.
Recommended Articles
Given the turnover that occurs across rosters over multiple seasons, having a strong foundation and relationship between quarterback and head coach is one of the few things that can lead to stability. Denver has just that with the Nix and Payton partnership, perhaps ushering in a new era of winning football for the Broncos.
-1742267804-q80.webp "Super Bowl Bound? Pat Surtain II Confident Broncos' Window is Opening")
