Bo Nix‘s debut didn’t go according to plan.
Nix only completed two passes eight yards downfield or farther. He turned the ball over twice. His 47.5 passer rating was one of the worst by a Bronco in the post-Manning era. The Denver Broncos lost.
Head coach Sean Payton said after the game that it wasn’t the rookie’s fault. He placed blame on the running game, the pass protection and the receivers.
“We just got to be better around him,” Payton said.
Was he right?
Let’s dig into the game and see for ourselves.
The Protection
The Broncos’ protection was not good on Sunday… but there’s a catch.
In one-on-one matchups, the Broncos’ linemen were solid. For the most part, they handled the man in front of them, although there were a couple of hiccups like in the play below.
Quinn Meinerz gets beaten. Ben Powers gets beaten. Nix doesn’t have time to deliver an on-target pass to Courtland Sutton on a deep dig.
Here’s another example, this time with Garett Bolles losing his battle.
Maybe Nix would have thrown short of the sticks on 3rd & 9 even if he had good protection. Maybe he would have hit Josh Reynolds for a first down. Regardless, the play was doomed by the offensive line.
Generally, the one-on-one matchups weren’t the problem for the Broncos. The bigger issue was that the Broncos weren’t setting up the right protections before the snap.
Here’s an example…
The Seahawks pack the line of scrimmage with potential rushers. The Broncos try to decipher who is rushing and who is dropping in coverage… and they get it wrong.
The center has nobody to block because the defensive tackles drop. Bolles is stuck with two rushers coming off his edge. Nix is forced to bail immediately. (He also runs out of bounds for a six-yard loss instead of throwing the ball away, which compounds the mistake.)
New Seahawks head coach Mike Macdonald is known for his rush packages. Nix isn’t the first quarterback to struggle with decoding them. But the missed protection calls cost the Broncos a number of opportunities.
This time, the Seahawks send four rushers, and the Broncos have five blockers.
Easy, right?
Wrong. Macdonald outsmarts the rookie. The Broncos triple-team one rusher and leave a 3-on-2 on the other side.
Powers blocked two rushers about as well as possible, which helped Nix find the completion. The rookie did a good job throwing into the pockets behind blitzes on Sunday.
Here’s another example of a missed protection…
A run that converts a 3rd & 3 is a good play, but was Greg Dulcich about to run free through secondary for a big gain? We’ll never know, because the pressure was immediate.
Football stats are always hard to trust. Too many factors impact each play. But there are two that I think tell the story of the Broncos’ pass protection on Sunday.
The 33rd Team tracks pressure rates. They found that Nix was pressured on 44.9% of his dropbacks. That was the highest rate in the NFL.
ESPN tracks “pass-block win rate,” which gives a win to either the pass rusher or the blocker on every rep. If the blocker locks the rusher up for 2.5 seconds or more, he wins. If the rusher gets off the block in less than 2.5 seconds, that’s a win.
ESPN ranked the Broncos 20th in pass-block win rate.
So what story do those two stats tell? Individually, the Broncos’ blockers were below average, but the quarterback was doomed by the number of unblocked rushers that were allowed.
The Running Game
What are a young quarterback’s best friends? A good defense and a good running game.
The Broncos’ running game wasn’t good enough.
Denver’s running backs carried the ball 20 times and picked up 64 yards, good for 3.2 yards per carry. League average in Week 1 was 4.4 yards per carry, but that number includes quarterbacks, who almost always improve efficiency. (If you include Nix in the Broncos rushing stats, they averaged 4.0 yards per carry on Sunday.)
In other words, the Broncos were below average in the running game, but I thought they had opportunities to be much better.
Here’s a freeze-frame from one of the first plays of the game…
The blocking is set up perfectly. If Courtland Sutton can sustain his block, Javonte Williams would have a one-on-one with the safety. But Williams slipped on the cut and was down at the 12-yard line. (The Seahawks recently installed new turf and slipping was a major problem on Sunday.)
If Williams could have beaten the safety and scored, the Broncos would have finished with 4.44 yards per carry, beating league average. His own efficiency would jump from 2.9 yards per carry to 4.4.
While it was an up-and-down day on the ground, the Broncos were only one or two “ups” away from a good day overall. And the running backs had opportunities to make the necessary plays.
The Broncos ranked sixth in the NFL in run-block win rate, according to ESPN. Plays like this one certainly help…
Ben Powers and Luke Wattenberg both put defenders flat on their backs.
The Broncos’ offesnvie line wasn’t perfect. They gave up a couple of negative runs. The running backs bailed the linemen out of a couple of others. But the decision-making from the running backs was the biggest drain on the running game on Sunday.
Here’s an example. (It’s a screen pass, not a run, but it proves the point.)
This is the moment Williams caught the ball. Which way should he go?
To my eye, it looks like an easy decision. Both of his blockers have inside leverage on the two nearest defenders. If he cuts inside, his blockers can easily handle the two defenders and Williams will have a one-on-one with the linebacker.
Williams went to the outside.
Meinerz wasn’t able to get in front of the defender—this isn’t a surprise, the smaller defender has outside leverage and an athleticism advantage—and Williams is tackled at the line of scrimmage.
I like the bones of the Broncos’ rushing attack. I saw enough to be excited about the rest of the season. But they need more from their backs.
The Receivers Didn’t Help Bo
On 3rd & 6, Bo Nix hit a gap in zone coverage and set Courtland Sutton up for a 15-yard gain.
But Sutton didn’t catch the pass.
(This clip could have been in the “missed protections” section, too. Powers has nobody to block. The defensive back has a free lane to the quarterbacks.)
The pass wasn’t perfect. It was behind Sutton. It might have been a little higher than you’d like, too. But Sutton needs to make the catch.
This third-down pass to Lil’Jordan Humphrey wasn’t caught either.
The drops weren’t the only way the receivers let Nix down. They also slipped at the top of their routes a couple of times. One pass to Josh Reynolds that looked incredibly dangerous on the TV broadcast was actually the result of the receiver slipping.
There were some more nuanced plays, too.
One example came on the second drive. I don’t know how this play is coached, but if Reynolds had slowed down a little he would have been wide open in the middle of the field for a decent chunk of yards. Nix peeked at him but decided to check the ball down instead.
That feels like the kind of play that Patrick Mahomes and Travis Kelce have killed the Broncos with over and over.
Mix all of this with an NFL-worst 2.6 average yardage after the catch, and it’s easy to see that the receivers hurt their rookie quarterback far more than they helped.
Bo Didn’t Help Himself
The receivers didn’t help Bo Nix.
The running backs didn’t help Bo Nix.
The offensive line probably didn’t help Bo Nix, although he’s partially to blame for the pressure he was under.
But Nix certainly did not help himself, either.
Nix must have thought the linebacker was going to run with Dulcich. The linebacker did no such thing.
If you’re going to throw this ball, you have to throw it early. Instead, Nix stared his receiver down, which signaled where he was going to the safety. Nix threw this ball off his back foot, so it floated. The ball was also short of where he probably wanted it, which took away any chance for Sutton.
Not good.
Here’s another play that wasn’t good.
My question on this play is whether it was designed for Nix to set his feet where he did, or if he was supposed to have a lane to the sideline. Dulcich was supposed to crack the edge rusher and set the edge, but he couldn’t keep him sealed inside, which might be why he stopped where he did.
But the more important point is that Nix made a bad decision and bad throw.
Here’s another throw that simply was not open.
Some of Nix’s mistakes weren’t as egregious.
Like this one. It’s a good read. It’s a well-timed throw. The ball just sailed on him.
Or this one, that probably could have been further out in front to give his receiver a better shot at the ball.
Or this one, where he doesn’t notice a busted coverage. Sutton is free for a deep ball. I can’t kill him for going to the short throw, but it’s 3rd & 6 and I’d love to see him wait for a deeper option to develop.
I’ve got one more play for this section. It’s Nix’s first throw of the game.
Nix rolls out off of play-action on third-and-short. Williams is running to the flat. I’m freezing it here.
Williams made a little move. He pushed upfield, then made a quick cut back toward the first-down marker. The defenders hips are still facing slightly upfield.
At the moment above, Nix has a window to complete the pass. It’s a window that will close quickly, and it’s a tough window to hit on the run, but it’s a window nonetheless.
Most quarterbacks can’t make this play, but that’s why most teams would like a better quarterback.
It’s no surprise Nix doesn’t make the play. It’s his first NFL pass. The degree of difficulty is high. He hasn’t played with Williams enough to trust that he’s going to cut back to the marker. He shouldn’t be able to convert the first down. I don’t knock him for it at all.
Eventually, you’d like to be able to make that play. It’s the kind of play that makes Mahomes, Josh Allen, Lamar Jackson, Jalen Hurts and a few others special. Those plays are why it feels impossible to get off the field against the league’s elite passers.
The first step for Nix is to clean up the other plays in this section. Those are rookie mistakes. They’re either learning lessons, or they’re simple missed throws.
If Nix fixes those mistakes, he’ll be a competent NFL quarterback.
If Nix learns to hit those tricky, off-script, on-the-run throws into windows that are only open for the blink of an eye—like the on above—he’ll have a chance to compete with league’s best.
Bo’s Best Plays
We’re ending with the positives.
Here’s a third down in the second quarter. Nix climbed the pocket and drilled Sutton over the middle of the field.
It’s an awesome play. It’s the type of play that made Nix an interesting prospect.
If we’re nit-picking, Nix would hae given Sutton a better chance to catch the ball and run with it if he’d thrown the ball a little higher.
Another great throw came right before halftime, when Nix hit Josh Reynolds on a back-shoulder ball up the sideline to get into field-goal range.
Nix ran simple concepts well, too. Here’s a quick curl flat that should be a staple of the Sean Payton–Bo Nix Offense.
And here’s Nix ripping a slant on 4th & 2 into a tight window.
Were Denver’s offensive failures Bo’s fault?
To use a Sean Payton phrase, “There’s dirt on everybody’s hands.”
The protection, for various reasons, was bad.
The receivers were bad.
The running backs were bad.
I’d say the coaching was bad, too. Take the final clip above, for example. Why are four players running to the same spot? The window didn’t need to be that tight. And Nix is a good runner whose legs probably should have been used more.
But Bo didn’t come close to maximizing his opportunities, while also making some egregious mistakes. He deserves as much blame as anybody.
