Through two games this season, Denver Broncos rookie quarterback Bo Nix has completed 59.7% of his passes for 384 yards with no touchdown passes and four interceptions. He has also been sacked four times.
The Broncos are 0-2 and things aren’t about to get any easier with back-to-back road games on deck against the 2-0 Tampa Bay Buccaneers and 1-1 New York Jets. Is there a worry that the young quarterback’s confidence could be broken if the offensive struggles continue?
“I think it depends on their personality,” Denver coach Sean Payton said Sunday when asked about a rookie QB’s coincidence being shaken. “I think he has the right makeup and personality. He is running around and he is competing.
“There is a missed protection late in the game. Those are frustrating things. I said this a week ago, we need to be better around him. Listen, this guy has been through it. It would be different if he had not.”
The alternative to letting Nix play through his struggles is benching him, and that could also be damaging to his confidence. Peyton Manning has advocated for letting rookie quarterbacks play through growing paints.
“It’s a marathon, not a sprint,” Manning said in May. “I went 3-13 my rookie year and didn’t play very well. We went 13-3 the next year. There’s no way that would have happened had I not played and kind of gone through those struggles and thrown those interceptions and figured out ‘Hey, OK, I can’t do that anymore. Hey, these guys are faster.’ You just sort of file it all away. Eli [Manning] played, I think, six games his rookie year, and he said what he learned in the six that he played was night and day to the 10 that he sat.”
As for Nix, he does not believe his confidence has taken a hit, in part because of his big-picture perspective.
“I have good confidence,” Nix said. “I feel like I’ll continue to get better and look in the mirror and see what I can do and evaluate myself. I think it’s important to look at it from a bigger perspective. Football’s just a game that we come out here and have fun playing. We make it a very, very big deal because sometimes it is. There’s a lot of people out there anticipating the game, and the atmosphere and wins and losses. I think it’s important to keep [a] good perspective and not make football your whole entire life because if you play it long enough, it will fail you over, and over and over. It will knock you down. It will beat you up.
“The value of playing the sport is it’s just like life. Sometimes you just have to keep taking hits and keep taking hits and then eventually you’ll figure it out and get back on your feet and move forward. So my confidence is bigger than football. It’s bigger than wins and losses. Now don’t make a mistake about it — I’m going out there and competing my tail off trying to win every single game for this team behind me because they deserve it. I feel like the confidence level is going to continue to build the more and more you play.”
Broncos receiver Courtland Sutton said Sunday that Nix is going through a learning curve but has not waivered.
“He’s still out there giving everything that he has,” Sutton said. “As an offense and as a team, as a fellow captain with him, that’s all that you want to see out of your quarterback. Somebody that’s going to go out there and not quit.”
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Denver’s coaches and players have backed Nix and believe he can bounce back. All signs point to the Broncos letting Nix continue to play through his struggles, and that’s likely the best course of action. Now it’s up to Nix to learn from his mistakes and begin eliminating them.
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