A month into the 2024 NFL season, it didn’t look this way.
To some, the predraft doubts on Bo Nix—his ceiling, his path forward and even his status as a supposedly pro-ready prospect—were being confirmed. The Denver Broncos’ offense looked rickety to start Sean Payton’s second year, and the quarterback so many felt was overdrafted wasn’t solving it. He threw two picks in a Week 1 loss in Seattle, and two more as Denver was kept from the end zone in a Week 2 defeat to the Pittsburgh Steelers.
The Broncos won in Weeks 3 and 4, but that, they said, was on the strength of Vance Joseph’s tough, overachieving defense. And through that first month, Denver sat 27th in the league in total offense and 27th in passing offense. Nix’s 62.5 passer rating was 30th among qualifying passers, topping only the soon-to-be-benched Anthony Richardson, he didn’t throw his first touchdown pass until Week 4, and somehow he was 31st in passing yards while ranking seventh in passing attempts (which put him last in yards per attempt).
In about every way, to the naked eye, the signs were bad.
Yet, as Payton strode to the podium after a sloppy 10–9 win over the New York Jets in a monsoon in Week 4, he was defiant in response to questions about Nix’s confidence, some five months after he stuck his neck out for him on the first night of the draft.
“Heck no—at some point, we’ll stop with the confidence,” Payton said. “The kid is confident. I should send him out to dinner with every one of you and you’ll see. He played well.”
Payton can ask for the check on that one now.
The reality is that Payton’s resolve on Nix was never shaken in large part because Nix’s own belief in himself never wavered. And two months later, he is now coming around the corner and approaching the season’s home stretch, somehow having caught Washington Commanders phenom Jayden Daniels in the race for the NFL’s Offensive Rookie of the Year award.
Stats tell a compelling story. On Oct. 1, the passer rating gap between the two rookies was a cavernous 42.5 points, Daniels at 107.4, ranking fourth in the NFL. Now, it’s down to just 7.7, and the two are in a dead heat in yardage (Daniels’s edge is 2,613 to 2,548).
But this isn’t about pitting two really good rookies—who paid dues in multiple schools, and multiple conferences, over five-year collegiate careers—against one another. To me, it’s about seeing what Nix’s case might tell us about the position going forward. And in a conversation he and I had Sunday night after another Broncos win, I got a lot of those lessons affirmed.
