ENGLEWOOD, Colo. — On a scorching Texas day in early July, more than a dozen Denver Broncos quarterbacks, wide receivers, tight ends and running backs arrived at a remote outpost near Dallas, split into teams and began lighting each other up with paintballs.
The excursion was part of a week of workouts, dinners and bonding organized by veterans Jarrett Stidham and Courtland Sutton. It was a cherished time of camaraderie ahead of the grueling start of training camp. It offered most of the attendees, among other things, their first extended opportunity to get to know their rookie quarterback, Bo Nix, away from the football field.
One thing they learned quickly: Nix wasn’t good at paintball unless the object of the game was to look like a human canvas for Jackson Pollock.
“Bo was the most covered in paint when we were done playing paintball,” wide receiver Marvin Mims Jr. said with a laugh.
“He was on the team that was getting killed,” tight end Adam Trautman recalled.
It didn’t take long for Bo Nix to become a leader for the Broncos, helping end their nine-year playoff drought in his rookie season. (Isaiah J. Downing / Imagn Images)
But even as Nix continued to be pelted, transforming into a living, breathing neon rainbow, he was undeterred. Mims said Nix was the game’s most aggressive player, spraying paint anywhere he could, unbothered that he was a target of punishment for some of the more experienced or strategic snipers in the group.
“To see someone who wanted to get out there and keep doing it no matter if he’s getting his ass kicked or not, that’s a reflection of what we’ve seen this season,” Trautman said. “Whether we’re losing or not, he keeps coming.”
The other six quarterbacks on the AFC side of the playoff bracket have combined for 24 Pro Bowl honors and four MVP awards. Nix is the only one who hasn’t played in the postseason. Yet on Denver’s list of concerns heading into its matchup against the heavily favored Bills, the question of Nix’s readiness for the moment is near the bottom. The Broncos have already seen too much from their quarterback to have any doubt about how he’ll handle Sunday’s environment.
It’s not a guarantee of a sterling performance, but it’s a critical building block as Denver ventures into its first postseason game in nine years.
“This season — that’s all I’ve got for you,” Sutton said when asked what gives him confidence Nix is ready to meet the moment in his first playoff start in the NFL. “His résumé speaks for itself. All he’s done is get better over the course of the year. It’s been cool to watch his growth. The dude has this drive in him to want to be better. If there’s something he felt like he didn’t do well the prior week, he has a determination to be able to offset that with being better at it so when the opportunity comes again, he doesn’t miss.”
Nix joined a franchise that had produced seven Week 1 starters at quarterback in the previous nine seasons when he was drafted by the Broncos in the first round of April’s NFL Draft. No player in that span had started more than 30 games and none had been to the playoffs. The Broncos weren’t just searching for stability at the position. They were looking for a presence that hadn’t been at the spot since Peyton Manning’s record-altering four-year stint that punctuated his Hall of Fame career.
Nix was aware of that history. His father Patrick’s favorite player was John Elway, who was perhaps most responsible for turning a previously overlooked franchise at the base of the Rocky Mountains into a championship brand. But Nix also knew the franchise’s yearning for “the guy” at quarterback didn’t mean he could walk in and be handed that title. He had to build it organically, one relationship at a time. When running back Audric Estimé was drafted by the Broncos in the fifth round of April’s draft, one of the first text messages that popped up on his phone came from Nix.
“He was congratulating me and just immediately said, ‘Let’s go to work,’” Estimé said. “Just off that, I knew where his mindset was. I bonded with him quickly on that.”
For all the intentional ways Nix worked to form connections with teammates, though, fully gaining their trust could be done only by his play on the field. His offseason began in a three-way competition for the starting job with Stidham and trade acquisition Zach Wilson. The setup could have invited pressure, the idea that his starting chances were hinging on every throw made in practice. Instead, it became an early illustration of how well Nix would handle the inevitable ups and downs a rookie quarterback experiences.
Jarrett Stidham, Zach Wilson and Bo Nix battled for the starting quarterback spot throughout the offseason. (Isaiah J. Downing / Imagn Images)
“Immediately in the offseason, during OTAs, you could see how talented he was,” Trautman said. “For us, it was like, ‘OK, anyone can flash in OTAs, but does it look the same from then on?’ And it did.”
Tracing the moment a quarterback gained the locker room’s trust or became “the dude” in the eyes of his teammates is a difficult task. An organic process such as that doesn’t hinge on a single moment or two, and it’s a different feeling for every player. It’s not built on a singular conversation on the sideline or one big throw. Still, right tackle Mike McGlinchey points to a period when his suspicions about who Nix could be for the Broncos in Year 1 were emphatically confirmed.
“It could have been those two days (of joint practices) against Green Bay where you’re going against relatively live bullets and he goes down in a two-minute drill (and scores) a couple times and you’re going, ‘OK, this kid’s got something special,’” McGlinchey said. “You said, ‘He’s made of the right stuff, and the ability will come as he keeps learning how to do this.’”
GO DEEPER
‘A deeper bond’: Broncos’ close-knit QB room playing key role in Bo Nix’s growth
Before Nix could earn the trust of the NFL locker room, he had to audition for a job. He had to not only convince a team he should be a first-round pick — a status plenty of draft experts doubted — but also show he could help a quarterback-needy team immediately. Broncos coach Sean Payton’s desire to draft Nix was inspired in part by a March visit to Eugene, Ore., to watch the quarterback work out with receiver Troy Franklin, running back Bucky Irving and other former Oregon teammates. Payton and company overloaded Nix with a package of play material at 5 p.m. the day before their 9 a.m. meeting.
It was “more information than (the timeline) allows,” Payton said. “We’re just trying to gauge how quickly they process and learn.”
The quarterback’s digestion of nearly that entire plate of material left Payton convinced Nix was the right choice for the Broncos. But certain questions still couldn’t be answered. The veteran coach believes one of the most difficult parts of the job for a rookie is absorbing the vast menu of third-down fronts and pressure packages defenses use to fluster passers. Gauging whether a quarterback is equipped to combat those is an “inexact science,” Payton said, but the pre-draft meeting allayed concerns for the Broncos as to whether Nix could handle that particularly challenging aspect of the job.
The next step was to create an environment that could test their conviction.
“We tried as much as we could during OTAs to show some of the pressures from the year before of the teams we were going to play,” Broncos quarterbacks coach Davis Webb said. “(Defensive coordinator) Vance (Joseph) does that a lot, so that helped in training camp. We were able to talk him through some things. … You’re not going to be right every time, but as long as you have an answer and everyone is on the same page, that’s all pass pro is. Whether that’s using your legs, throwing hot, changing the whole protection, changing the whole play, every play has a different variable. If everyone is on the same page with it, you’re able to be successful.”
GO DEEPER
Bo Nix’s playmaking ability makes him ‘a really dangerous’ QB — but it has limits
The Broncos through the season’s first four weeks ranked 31st in third-down conversion rate at just 24.6 percent, but as Nix began to recognize defensive patterns, build more chemistry with center Luke Wattenberg and become more familiar with Payton’s play-calling rhythm, he helped quickly turn around Denver’s performance in those critical situations. The Broncos finished the final 13 games ranked seventh in third-down rate at 44.5 percent. The Broncos finished the season with the NFL’s lowest third-down sack rate (5.7 percent), another measure of Nix’s ability to avoid the trouble that can often drown rookie quarterbacks.
Webb has been by Nix’s side since he was drafted, even flying to Alabama to scoop up the quarterback and his family and accompany them on their welcome journey to Denver. He knew better than anyone the process behind the progress Nix was making, day by day. He knew where the arrow pointed as Nix waded past the predictably rocky opening month. But it doesn’t hurt to have an aha moment amid the grind, and Webb doesn’t hesitate when he believes it truly clicked for Nix.
“Chargers. Fourth quarter. That was it,” Webb said.
The Broncos in Week 6 trailed the Chargers at home 23-0 entering the final period. Denver had produced only 88 yards of total offense. Nix had completed only 4 of 14 passes for 27 yards and an interception.
“We were down (big) and we were not moving it,” Webb said. “I think I said something to him and it probably wasn’t very nice. Man, he responded and made probably five plays in one quarter alone that I know of two other people who could have done that. I knew it, right then and there.”
Bo Nix’s fourth-quarter performance against the Chargers in Week 6 made people believe. (Dustin Bradford / Getty Images)
Nix in the fourth quarter produced 217 yards of offense (189 passing, 28 rushing). He completed 15 of 19 passes, including all four attempts on third and fourth downs. He led the Broncos on three scoring drives, and though Denver fell 23-16, Nix had erased any doubts among coaches and teammates about who he was.
“That fourth quarter, there are only two other times I’ve seen that,” Webb said, “and those quarterbacks are pretty good.”
Webb didn’t say who those quarterbacks were, but it’s a fair bet to say one of them is Josh Allen, the quarterback Webb used to back up in Buffalo. Few teams feel better going into the playoffs about their quarterback situation than the Bills. Allen is equal parts flamethrower and battering ram who can be a matchup nightmare for defenses.
GO DEEPER
Broncos had the best pass-rushing season in team history. Can they faze Josh Allen?
But there is one trait the Broncos believe Nix shares with any of the standout quarterbacks who are venturing into these playoffs, one he’s demonstrated whether he’s on a sweltering paintball field or trying to lead a fourth-quarter comeback.
“For your quarterback to be the guy that has that energy, that has that juice, that comes to work every day with a smile on his face and a determination to get better, when your quarterback’s that guy, it makes everybody else in the entire building better,” Sutton said. “He’s that guy.”
(Top photo: Michael Owens / Getty Images)
