So many months, meetings and miles later, the Broncos’ first-round plan proved so simple it translates into two letters.
Bo.
Denver set its course for the future and coach Sean Payton put his quarterback evaluation chops on the line in a major way Thursday night by selecting Oregon quarterback Bo Nix at No. 12.
Nix, a six-year college player who started 61 games and put up prodigious numbers the past two years running the Ducks offense, all along felt like a clean fit from a scheme standpoint. He was not, however, considered a particularly good value in the first half of the first round.
In recent years, however, quarterbacks have been picked earlier and earlier. Never faster and more furiously than this night.
USC’s Caleb Williams, LSU’s Jayden Daniels and North Carolina’s Drake Maye went in succession the first three picks. None of Washington, Chicago and New England, respectively, could be convinced to move off those opportunities.
Atlanta dropped the stunner and picked Washington’s Michael Penix Jr. at No. 8 two months after giving Kirk Cousins $100 million guaranteed. Then Minnesota moved up one spot to No. 10 to ensure it got the fifth quarterback of the night in Michigan’s J.J. McCarthy.
All the while, the Broncos were apparently not concerned. Or, at least they weren’t until the Atlanta curveball.
“Honestly we felt like the Giants (at No. 6) were the joker team in that there were three teams at the front that needed quarterbacks,” Payton said. … “And then we knew there was a second stretch of Minnesota, the Broncos and Las Vegas. We kept wondering about the Giants because that would have impacted the back three. If they didn’t, I think I said to George, ‘We think Minnesota likes Minnesota, we don’t this but we think Vegas likes Penix. Let’s get on a conference call with all of them and say ‘don’t spend any money.'”
They waited out free agency. They waited out weeks of trade talks before acquiring Zach Wilson from the New York Jets on Monday for minimal cost. It figures, then, that the final moments were the most troublesome.
“That was a tough 10 or 20 minutes,” Payton said.
Payton said at the NFL scouting combine that his team would ace the quarterback evaluation process and other teams wouldn’t. Then he stood pat at No. 12 and had no qualms about taking the sixth quarterback of the night.
“It means a lot,” Nix said. “I can’t thank them enough for taking me, and for putting their belief in me. Like I said, there’s a lot in the future that’s going to need to be done — a lot of work to be done, a lot of growing and a lot of getting better. I just appreciate the value that they had in me.”
They waited through so many options over so many weeks. But did they then reach further up the board than they should have?
General manager George Paton said no. Adamantly. The Broncos, he said, graded all six of the top quarterbacks as first-round players.
“We liked all these players,” Payton said. “We went through the process with all these players. All really smart, talented, impressive. We’re really happy we have Bo. I think he’s a really good fit for what we’re doing.”
The Broncos left premium options for teams behind. They could have had Georgia tight end Brock Bowers. They could have had their pick of defensive players. The first didn’t come off the board until Indianapolis took UCLA pass-rusher Laiatu Latu at No. 15, the longest stretch of all offense to start a draft in NFL history.
Instead, they did what so much of the top half of the draft order did: took a swing at the game’s most important position.
The Broncos did extensive work on Nix throughout the process, just as they did with the other quarterbacks in the class. They didn’t have a loud presence at his pro day in March, but Sean Payton and company were in Eugene and held a lengthy private workout and meeting with him the next day.
“We talked a lot of football and we talked a lot about (Payton’s) scheme and what he’s done for so many years and how he’s been so successful,” Nix said. “It was a blast talking football, to be honest with you. It was a blast being in there with him and the other coaches. They brought a lot of guys out there to the private (meeting) and I was just very honored to have them around.”
Payton and the Broncos set a 9 p.m. meeting and sent Nix three days worth of installation material at 5 p.m. the night before.
“He’s sitting there in the office and you could just tell he’d probably been in the hotel room, ‘Do Not Disturb,’ with a pot of coffee and just grinding on it,” Payton said.
The coach rattled off stats that Nix excelled in. He said Nix was bigger than he anticipated at 6-foot-2 and nearly 220 pounds. He had Denver’s analytics department take out all of Nix’s horizontal and backfield throws and said the Alabama native still led or was near the top of the country in many categories.
“When you watch him, it’s very calming,” Payton said. “You see a ton of NFL throws in their offense.”
The way the board fell provides a clean and compelling way to measure Denver’s process. Because Nix was the last of the six off the board, the Broncos will have either outfoxed and out-scouted a dozen other teams or it will look like they forced the issue and took a quarterback because they felt they had to take one.
The ramifications of that are equally clear and every bit as compelling: If Nix solves the eight-year quarterback conundrum this franchise has suffered through, this will be a defining night. The pick took no additional draft capital and leaves Payton and Paton with seven selections moving forward into the next two days to attack other areas of need. There are many.
If not, the wisdom of selecting a player most didn’t have among the draft’s premier talents will be questioned up and down for years. Could the Broncos have landed Nix later? Is he that much better than Spencer Rattler? How many touchdowns did Bowers catch for Las Vegas against Denver this year?
That’s the nature of making this bet. Payton put his first-rounder where his mouth was.
First-rounders have to produce regardless of position, but especially when it’s a quarterback and especially when a team hasn’t made one since 2021.
If Nix learns to operate Payton’s offensive system the way he did Oregon’s, the Broncos will benefit for years to come. If he ends up performing like a typical sixth quarterback taken in a draft, Denver will likely continue to lag far behind in a division that features two of the game’s best quarterbacks in Patrick Mahomes and Justin Herbert.
No pressure.
QB Bo Nix, Oregon
Round/pick: 1st/No. 12
Age: 24
Height/weight: 6-foot-2/217 pounds
College: Oregon
Hometown: Pinson, Ala.
Notable: Nix is one of the most experienced quarterbacks in this year’s draft class, playing in 61 career games and recording 15,352 passing yards, 113 touchdowns and 26 interceptions. A four-star recruit out of high school and ranked the best dual-threat quarterback in the 2019 class by 247sports, Nix spent three seasons at Auburn before transferring to Oregon and becoming a college football superstar. He totaled 8,101 passing yards, 74 touchdowns and 10 picks in two seasons with the Ducks, posting a 22-5 record.
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