The Denver Broncos have reverted back to their Simpsons form. They are, once again, the franchise Homer would have to settle for after helping Hank Scorpio take over the eastern seaboard.
There’s been a multitude of reasons why Denver has failed to make the postseason since winning Super Bowl 50 in Peyton Manning’s NFL finale. Foremost among them is a quarterback position that’s been unable to develop homegrown talent or, more recently, turn proven veterans into anything productive.
Manning worked out as well as he could have, even if his lone Super Bowl as a Bronco came in a vastly diminished state. The veterans who followed were an eclectic mix of low and high expectations whose play never crested above “average.” Case Keenum, Teddy Bridgewater, Joe Flacco and most notably Russell Wilson were unable to lead the team to a single winning record the last seven seasons. They were necessities because draft picks Payton Lynch and Drew Lock failed to pan out.
Denver heads into the 2024 season with its highest drafted quarterback since Jay Cutler in 2006. The team will have a six-year veteran showing that rookie the ropes. But depending on either Bo Nix or Jarrett Stidham to do anything more than maybe punch their way above the AFC West basement looks like a fool’s errand.
The 2024 Broncos aren’t supposed to be good
If you need any indication on how NFL teams view next year’s quarterback draft class, consider Denver. The Broncos knew 2024 was going to be a challenge. Russell Wilson was gone, but $85 million of his salary remained on the team’s books — $53 million this fall and $32 million the next. 20 percent of the team’s spending room in 2024 is dedicated to a guy who’ll be playing quarterback in some capacity for the Pittsburgh Steelers.
Even with some great homegrown talent on rookie deals, this was going to be a difficult year. But Jerry Jeudy was traded to the Cleveland Browns. Justin Simmons was cut. Tough decisions were made in service of that scarce cap space, leaving Denver with a few young building blocks (Pat Surtain, Quinn Meinerz … maybe Baron Browning?) but mostly a roster in dire need of improvement.
Despite what could be a top five draft pick for 2025 and the chance to take 2024’s first defensive prospect (or a host of offensive talent) with the 12th overall pick, the Broncos opted to take this spring’s sixth drafted passer rather than cast their lot for next spring.
Nix’s college resume is undeniably impressive. His transfer from Auburn to Oregon pushed him from good to great. He threw 45 touchdown passes in 14 2023 games against just three interceptions en route to a third place finish in Heisman Trophy voting.
However, that says more about the Oregon offense than Nix’s capabilities as a game-changer. The Ducks were closer in spirit to the San Francisco 49ers than the Kansas City Chiefs in terms of their passing game. The Pac-12 runners-up leaned heavily on the yards-after-catch machines in their lineup. Nix may have averaged a superb 9.6 yards per attempt — fifth best in the FBS — but his average pass traveled just 6.9 yards downfield, sixth-lowest in the FBS. 67 percent of his throws came nine yards beyond the line of scrimmage or fewer.
This didn’t mean he couldn’t make those big throws. He had a 26:2 touchdown:interception ratio on the 33 percent of his tosses that went 10 yards or further. But what the Washington Huskies did to Nix in the Pac-12 title game is what opposing defenses will do throughout his rookie campaign.
The Huskies, healthier in the secondary than they were in October when Nix burned them for 337 yards and a pair of touchdowns (in a loss), flooded the short range and trusted their deep safeties to erase Oregon’s big throws. It worked; Nix threw three touchdown passes but his 239 yards and 61.9 percent completion rate were both season lows. Washington won the game and went on to the College Football Playoff.
If head coach Sean Payton isn’t willing to throw him into that fire, he can turn to Stidham — the same guy he used to snuff out the dying embers of the Russ Wilson era in Colorado. The former Tom Brady backup has never been more than a replacement level quarterback, but he’s always been willing to take shots downfield. His 9.0 air yards per pass rank ninth out of 63 quarterbacks to play at least 150 snaps since 2022.
He’s not particularly good at these throws, however. Per SIS, he’s completed only 25 of 52 attempts to travel at least 10 yards downfield. There are some caveats there. He was tossed into games for teams with nothing to lose. Before taking Wilson’s spot he was the guy to usher Derek Carr out of Las Vegas. He also lost three of those four games, creating the backdrop to take risks downfield even against crowded secondaries.
If there’s one guy who can maximize Nix’s short-range strength, it’s Payton
Early signs suggest Nix will get his chance to shine (or get thrown under the bus, either/or). That makes a ton of sense given Payton’s ability to maximize the waning years of Drew Brees’ career but not Wilson’s. Wilson’s throw distance dipped in Denver, especially when Payton replaced Nathaniel Hackett (it dropped from 8.7 to 7.1 yards between 2022 and 2023). But while this helped his efficiency he failed to thrive within the program. He too often backslid in play action situations and forced bad throws on the run.
Nix is a blank canvas who won’t feel corralled by a passing attack where his checkdown options earn highlighted status in his play book. Brees had the league’s lowest target distance in 2019 (6.4 yards) and second lowest in 2020 (6.1) and New Orleans went 25-7 those two years. In the future Hall of Famer’s final season, he played through injury to himself (aforementioned broken ribs) and his wideout corps (Michael Thomas missed nine games, leaving a 33-year-old Emmanuel Sanders as the only non-tailback to have more than 40 catches). The Saints still won 12 games and found a way to overcome the Chicago Bears and first-ever Nickelodeon Valuable Player award winner Mitchell Trubisky in the playoffs.
It would make for a stupidly debatable 2024 if Nix can do a late-stage Brees (or New Orleans-era Teddy Bridgewater) imitation and use his accuracy and ability to mitigate risk and plant the foundation of a Broncos revival. It’s also unlikely, but not impossible. Denver’s schedule is littered with winnable games and the pecking order behind the Kansas City Chiefs in the AFC West is a big ol’ mess.
Getting that done with a rookie quarterback (who may not have Courtland Sutton in the lineup) and rebuilding defense will be difficult. Payton has earned the benefit of the doubt when it comes to maximizing his returns from steady, accurate, and occasionally unexciting quarterbacks. But he’s burning that goodwill at an excessive rate. Failure in 2024 won’t mark up his resume too heavily, but it will have the Broncos feeling a bit of buyer’s remorse for the head coach for whom they’re paying an alleged $18 million each year.