Bo Nix, you’ve got next.
The Broncos’ eight-year quarterback nightmare added its latest contestant, a precision passer who nearly won the Heisman after transferring from Auburn to Oregon.
Quack is not whack.
Nix brings experience. At 24, he is not your normal rookie. He is mature and married. Most kids who spend this long in college leave as PhDs, not as QBs. His tree rings are a good thing.
Nix is smart and dedicated, and his 61 college starts, most in FBS history, will microwave his NFL transition. My phone blew up Thursday with predictions that the Broncos would take J.J. McCarthy or Michael Penix Jr., who widened eyes by going to the Atlanta Falcons. I wrote that the Broncos could not leave this draft without taking a quarterback in the first round.
In the end, Nix was the Fix.
The Broncos did it. A franchise that has turned the league’s most important position into a national punchline, pulled the lever on the slot machine. No whammies. No whammies.
Can you believe it? This pick represents two themes: hope and trust.
For a team that has tried everything over the last eight years — late first-rounder, aging retreads, high-priced savior — the Broncos had never done this, using a top-12 selection on a quarterback, their highest since Jay Cutler at No. 11 in 2006.
It is a scary proposition given the 40% hit rate on first-rounders over the past 20 years. What would have been more frightening? Not taking one.
NFL teams cannot win without a good player under center — or in this case, in the shotgun. For a month, mocks connected Nix to the Broncos. If it looks like a duck, quacks like a duck, it had to be Nix. It made so much sense that it felt like smoke, a diversion. Instead, it was right under our beaks the whole time.
Depending on which scouts and analysts you ask, Nix comps are Rich Gannon, Drew Brees Lite or Derek Carr. If he becomes any of the three it would represent an upgrade.
Nix said he’s ready to play early, but acknowledged that “everybody has to compete.”
For Sean Payton to take him, he had to love him. He considered trading back but ditched the idea when Penix came off the board earlier than expected, heightening the risk of not standing pat.
Multiple sources told me that the Broncos had Nix ranked third on their board behind only Caleb Williams and Jayden Daniels. Faith is believing in something you can’t see. Payton clearly has a vision based on watching the cut-ups and his private workout in Eugene that so impressed the coach, he uttered the phrase “Are you kidding me?”
Payton is staking his potential Hall of Fame bid on this selection. So, he is highly motivated to make this work.
This is where trust comes into play, and why Broncos fans should rejoice even if Payton is as easy to embrace as a cactus.
Payton dispatched Russell Wilson and absorbed an $85 million cap hit because he believed a college quarterback was better. Thursday we found out who.
Nix is it. Is he better than Jarrett Stidham? Yes. Is he an improvement over Zach Wilson? He better be or why bother?
Payton was hired to tame RussellMania and make the former Super Bowl champion part of the solution. He viewed him as the problem, especially in goal-to-goal situations and with the endless number of sacks. By cutting Russ, Payton turned over the hourglass on his tenure in Denver. Patience has an expiration date. He has a five-year deal, but honestly, he needs to make the Broncos a contender in Year 4.
There was no avenue for success without a point guard, and in Payton’s belief, without Nix. If Payton is right, Nix will be the Broncos’ best quarterback since Peyton Manning. The bar is set low (ants have Fosbury flopped over it since 2016).
Payton believes in his evaluation skills, his ability to determine if a quarterback is a quick learner, able to process at the line of scrimmage. In Nix, he saw a quarterback who knows his protection, avoids sacks and has the arm to use the entire route tree, especially, I presume, those 14-yard dig routes made routine by Brees in New Orleans.
If Nix’s resume only included Oregon — 74 touchdowns and 10 interceptions — he would have been a top-10 target. Period. End of discussion. But it is hard to unsee his three years at Auburn, where he was benched multiple times, his highlight his first game, executing a miraculous comeback win over Oregon.
Honestly, Nix was not the 12th-best player in this draft. But no one will care if he is better than the previous 13 Broncos’ quarterbacks.
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