Bo Nix, through no fault of his own but through some fair and many unfair questions about his play, exemplifies everything that’s wrong with modern football analysis and accelerates the evaluation of quarterbacks into something more like hysteria. He’s divisive, but only in the abstract sense.
Consider the past two weeks as stark and additional evidence.
The Broncos hosted the Raiders on Thursday in Week 10. Few teams play well on Thursday night. That’s not news. Denver did not play well. It still won, improving to 8–2, and tied for the best record in the NFL. But recaps of the Broncos’ performance, lackluster as it was, described a “stalled” offense and asked, “What’s wrong with Bo Nix?”
Ten days later, those same Broncos, with the same starting quarterback, went to Kansas City and scratched out a close, tough, last-second victory to improve to 9–2, one of only two teams to seize win No. 9 to this point. The offense, after that game, according to headlines, was “surging.” Nix became Captain Comeback in the aftermath—an apt moniker, given the Broncos’ fifth win in seven games in which they trailed in the fourth quarter.
Denver7 has a Bo-lieve-O-meter that perfectly captures the absurdity of evaluating quarterbacks week to week in 2025. Nix was, in fact, better on Nov. 16 than he was on Nov. 6. How much better? It’s hard to say. The NFL is a sport designed to make every team .500. Winning games requires far more than talent, schemes or any one player. There’s an oblong ball involved, and it can bounce in every direction. There are human beings beneath those helmets, with all manner of real-life issues to deal with. There are defensive coordinators who watch tape of, say, Nix and, you know, make adjustments.
It seems safe to argue that Nix didn’t improve over 10 days of one highly successful season in the way that reading about him, the Broncos and their offense after Weeks 10 and 11 screamed. The narratives that engulf Nix say more about us—a nation obsessed with football but filled with fans who don’t really understand the game beyond their fantasy rosters—than any ever said about him.
Context matters. Always has, always will; every pass, every quarter, every game, every season. And Nix, absent that very context, is not the easiest starting quarterback to assess. He can sling it, but not in every way and, sometimes, in nontraditional ways. He’s built more like a linebacker. He didn’t exactly light up SEC defenses at Auburn from 2019 to ’21, but still won 21 games. Then, he transferred to Oregon, developed as a passer, completed 77.4% of his passes in his second year, and threw for 45 touchdowns against three interceptions. He played well enough, in other words, to earn his first-round draft status. Not to lock down the No. 1 slot, but to go 12th in the 2024 draft.
The Broncos, ostensibly, understood his strengths and his limitations. To believe otherwise is tantamount to assuming that Sean Payton couldn’t see Nix for who he was and, especially, for who he could be. Yes, Nix went 5–5 in the first 10 games of his rookie season, all starts. Then, he elevated Denver back into the playoffs, the first time since the team’s Super Bowl triumph in early 2016, no less.
Then, Nix spent the offseason working with his private quarterback coach, David Morris of QB Country, a quarterback training and development company. Nix met with Drew Brees to better understand both elite quarterback play and his longtime, celebrated head coach.
How the 2025 season has gone in relation depends on the viewpoint. Those who believe 9–2 is 9–2 see an unimpeachable success. Those who observed the missed throws in Week 10 see a portending disaster. While Nix deletes his social media accounts to avoid the debates that rage around him, nobody knows for sure, not yet, including him and Payton.
It’s true that Pro Football Reference ranked these 2025 Broncos as the 54th-best of 58 teams that had gone on seven-game winning streaks since 1970. It’s also true that the Broncos are one of 58 teams to win seven consecutive NFL games since 1970.
It’s true that Denver possesses the third-ranked defense in the NFL and true that said defense has won a lot of games for the Broncos in 2025. It’s also true that every team in the NFL wants a great defense for its starting quarterback.
It’s true that Nix has been inconsistent in his not-yet two full NFL seasons. His average time to throw (2.62) lingers in the middle of NFL starters. It’s also true that some of that owes to scheme, tempo and Nix himself, who, again, is 25 years old.
It’s true that his EPA (23.87) has hovered in the bottom third of NFL starters for most of this season. It’s also true that he ranked first in EPA in his rookie year. Is this season’s EPA determinative? Was last season’s? Or is this better assessed as an early start to a body of work that will take years to fully complete?
Sports Illustrated asked four personnel executives in the AFC, people who study players in their conference for a living, day to day. Results were mixed: indecisive, inconsistent; struggles with intermediate throws; misses deep too often; too early to assess; starts slow; comes on late; dude wins; the bones for long-term success are there. That’s what came back. Not a single definitive conclusion. “It appears, to me, an outsider, that Payton doesn’t trust him,” one AFC GM wrote in a text message to SI.
Maybe. Anyone who watched the Raiders debacle saw Nix sail some attempts over the heads of his receivers. There were moments where his footwork appeared sloppy. He tossed two interceptions, neither of which was bad luck, both of which were poor throws. He also played in a game absent any rhythm, on a short week that virtually all NFL players describe as sure to feature football, yes, but most often the worst kinds of football. This was that. The Broncos also averaged 3.1 yards per carry, committed 11 penalties, spent most of the game on offense backed up near their own end zone and didn’t allow Nix much time to throw consistently. He was part of their “bad” win. But only part.
Is there even such a thing?
He still won.
Same as in Week 11. Viewers could see Troy Franklin, a Denver wideout and Nix’s college teammate, continue to carve a larger role in the offense. The same sentiment applied to Pat Bryant, as Payton’s offense, with Nix as the centerpiece, rounded into better form.
This wasn’t a spectacular performance by any measure. But it was classic Nix—doubted, debated and nonplussed—in that he factored into another win. He did that against the dynastic Chiefs, who, yes, haven’t had the best season in 2025. But Kansas City entered that game with the fourth-best scoring defense in the NFL. Nix brought the Broncos back against that unit.
He didn’t outplay Patrick Mahomes, but the Broncos outplayed the Chiefs. Isn’t that the point?
Facing a critical third-and-5 late in the fourth quarter, with the ball snapped from Denver’s 20-yard line, Nix adjusted his offensive line, had time to throw, scrambled right and lasered an attempt to Courtland Sutton that ensured the drive would continue. No less of an authority than Chiefs defensive lineman Chris Jones told reporters afterward that Nix knew Kansas City’s defensive call and adjusted. Later in that same drive, Nix found Franklin, who caught another pass and ripped off 32 yards to set up the game-winning field goal.
What’s wrong with Nix? Nothing that held Denver back on Sunday, as the Broncos all but ended the Chiefs’ run of 10 consecutive AFC West division titles. Elite or not elite. Capable of continual improvement or fatally flawed. For now, who cares?
About that comeback: It marked Nix’s fifth game-winning drive in 2025, tied with Chicago’s Caleb Williams, the top pick in Nix’s draft. In the history of Broncos football, only one quarterback led more game-winning drives in a single season: Hall of Famer John Elway in 1985. Nix has eight such comeback victories in 28 regular-season games, the second-most for any quarterback in their first two seasons since 1950.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, wins are “not a quarterback stat.” But what about when they’re directly involved? Was Nix lucky, leaning on that defense, in each instance?
Instead of context, though, we’re left with modern evaluations of pro quarterbacks that consider some things but not the things that matter most. After Week 10, Payton reminded reporters, fairly, of the Broncos’ record. After Week 11, teammates spoke of “cowards” and “doubters” and “Dragonslayer69 with his 7-Eleven Slurpee in his mom’s basement.” They know what fans simply cannot know. That it’s hard to win any game in any week of any NFL season. That Nix is young. That he has grown. That they believe he will continue to do so.
SI reached out to 10 people in Nix’s orbit, from Auburn to now. Only two responded, and only one, Morris, the private QB coach, answered any questions. Anyone bent on hysteria might note that even those close to Nix decided they couldn’t defend him in public anymore. Anyone living in context (or, better yet, something closer to reality) would note the busy schedules involved, short deadline and divisive nature of Nix, which makes defending him mean defending things that are true, but more often defending things that aren’t grounded in truth at all.
I sent Morris eight questions, each related to the premise of this column. “Bo is one of those guys who, no matter the situation, he will make it right,” Morris wrote. “He likes challenges. He likes big expectations. … He’s also wise enough and brave enough to know sometimes you have to start over … like the move from Auburn to Oregon.”
Bo knows, Bo wins. “Bo,” Morris wrote, “can stand in the pocket and deliver with some of the best passers in the NFL, and he can scramble [and] run it with the best, too.”
We fear what we don’t understand. They worked together last season on “fast feet and drops and sound mechanics.” Those efforts have already paid dividends, Morris wrote, with more to come.
I asked: Is Bo Nix a quarterback who can win the right team a Super Bowl?
Morris answered: Yes, absolutely …
We’ll see. But that’s the part that really matters in evaluating. Seeing. And allowing for enough time to see a complete picture, rather than make pronouncements that might be right but aren’t, not now, not yet and maybe not ever.
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This article was originally published on www.si.com as What Bo Nix Reveals About Modern NFL QB Evaluations .
