ENGLEWOOD, Colo. — Hey, there’s Denver Broncos quarterback Bo Nix courtside at the Denver Nuggets game. There he is again, tossing out the first pitch before a Colorado Rockies game.
He also runs a football camp at a local high school. Nix is here and there in the city where he says he wants to be, now and for what he hopes will be long into the future.
“This is where I live, that’s the norm,” Nix said. “I’m going to find a way to not only embrace it and enjoy it but not take it for granted. I’m in a great spot. Denver is an unbelievable city.”
Nix arrived a year ago as the 12th pick of the 2024 NFL draft, representing hope for a Broncos franchise that has struggled to find quarterback stability since Peyton Manning retired following the 2015 season. He became the first Denver rookie quarterback to start a season opener since Hall of Famer John Elway — and started every game last season. He ranked sixth in the NFL with 29 touchdown passes, helping the Broncos end an eight-year playoff drought.
As Nix works through his first full NFL offseason, he knows what awaits as he tries to build on a successful rookie season and continue his march to be the Broncos’ long-term quarterback. He says he has already learned about the physical demands of career longevity and is committed to taking care of his body — he even had offseason arthroscopic surgery on his ankle — in preparation for the upcoming season.
He also knows teammates might look to him to provide a little more and that opposing defensive coaches — perhaps surprised by his success last season — will dissect his game. He wants his rookie season to be the first step to something far more substantial.
“I haven’t done anything up until this point, and I have a lot to prove and a lot to show,” Nix said. “You don’t want to get to Year 2 or go down the road, and all of a sudden you got stuck and didn’t get any better.”
JUST LIKE HIS usual routine in Denver, Nix has been a reliable presence around the Broncos’ complex this offseason. So much so that general manager George Paton joked earlier in the offseason that Nix would have to be told when he had to go home.
That doesn’t shock those who played with Nix before he arrived in Denver.
“He’s like another coach,” said Cardinals edge rusher Jordan Burch, a teammate of Nix’s at Oregon before being drafted in the third round of this year’s draft. “[He’s] serious all the time, great leader … I wasn’t surprised at all by anything he did last year. Just the way he carries himself, if he gets a chance, he’ll do whatever it takes to make the most of it for everybody.”
Former Oregon receiver Tez Johnson — a seventh-round pick by the Buccaneers in April who calls Nix his brother and regards the Nixes as his adopted family — said the offseason following Nix’s rookie year would show the Broncos’ organization more about the quarterback than the 18 games he started last season, including the playoff loss to the Buffalo Bills.
“I’ve seen it since I was adopted, since I’ve known him,” Johnson said. “He prepared like he was in the league long before he was in the league. He will prepare like he’s in the Super Bowl every week, he will always look at how he plays and look at what defenses will do against him. He’s not afraid — he never will be — to look at what he needs to do even if it’s uncomfortable.
“Those kinds of people succeed, you know?”
SOME OPPOSING DEFENSIVE coaches have privately said that many in the league were initially caught off guard by Nix’s speed and creativity as a runner. Even Broncos coach Sean Payton admitted his coaching staff was surprised, too. That will not be the case moving forward in defending Nix, who ran for 430 yards and four touchdowns in 2024.
“I always enjoy this part of it … you see different looks based on who you play from an opponent standpoint,” Payton said. “One of his traits that I think serves him well is his feet. He can move. It’s not always a clean pocket. I think when it gets a little muddy, he makes good decisions. He doesn’t hold onto the ball. … We anticipate that to be the same.”
Nix has also been searching for information about throws that defenses will try to take away in the coming season while continuing to hone the ones that worked best. He showed a high comfort level with crossing routes — only the Lions’ Jared Goff had more passing yards on crossing routes last season than Nix (693 to Nix’s 651). Nix also ranked fifth in passing yards on screen plays (467 yards). Those are short and intermediate plays that opposing coaches will likely try to remove from Nix’s progressions to force him to throw more outside the numbers, toward the sidelines.
Nix has looked at every dropback in 2024, when he completed 66.3% of his passes (15th in the NFL) for 3,775 yards with 29 touchdown passes to 12 interceptions while being sacked 24 times. He has even polled Broncos’ defensive coaches, most notably defensive coordinator Vance Joseph, about how opponents might adjust.
“Being around ‘VJ’ for a year and understanding the defense that I’m going to get [in specific situations] is a lot better,” said Nix of his ability to see the overall picture of the Broncos’ playcalls.
Nix said he also learned the value of resting his body early in the offseason, which included taking a break from throwing a football. Even though he didn’t miss a game in 2024, he dealt with a painful back injury during the last six weeks of the season — he suffered three transverse process fractures in a Week 12 win over the Raiders — and had arthroscopic ankle surgery immediately after the season was over.
But he has been fully engaged in the Broncos’ OTA practices and is expected to be the same for next week’s mandatory minicamp — the Broncos’ final on-field work in their formal offseason program.
“It’s just a lot of winding down and getting your body right,” Nix said. “That doesn’t mean fixing things that are hurt. It’s just like giving your legs some rest and not running every day. Giving your shoulder some rest and not throwing. I didn’t throw a football for a while, but I was doing a lot of shoulder care and arm care and doing some rotational work and doing different things that were kind of replacing the throw.
“That was good because I was able to do something different, work on my mechanics and tighten some things up. I wasn’t just out there wasting throws. … [I’m] feeling good and feeling strong. Going to continue that throughout the summer.”
