ENGLEWOOD, Colo. — Denver Broncos quarterback Bo Nix was only days removed from surgery to repair a fractured right ankle suffered in overtime of the Broncos’ AFC divisional playoff victory over the Buffalo Bills. But his gaze was already on the horizon.
“I’m excited for this offseason. [It’s] definitely not the way you want [a season] to end, but my sights are already on next year,” Nix said roughly 48 hours after Denver’s 10-7 loss to the New England Patriots in the AFC Championship Game. “How I can be better, how I can lead the team better, and play better. … I’ll feel as good as new.”
The Broncos’ offseason took a sharp turn in the minutes following the Buffalo win, when their medical staff determined that Nix broke his ankle on a quarterback keeper three plays before Wil Lutz‘s game-winning field goal. Instead of a Super Bowl hangover, this becomes an offseason of correcting lost promise, getting Nix healthy and making moves to improve Denver’s offense.
“We go back to the start of the race,” Broncos coach Sean Payton said last week. “Thirty-two teams have to go back and go meet their parents, eat their oranges and get ready to start again. That’s really important.”
That reset starts with Nix. The soon-to-be 26-year-old said his recovery from what he calls a “typical bone break” will be “four to six weeks.” He added that the recovery timetable fits what his offseason plan would have been even if he had not been injured. That should put Nix on track to participate in the Broncos’ offseason program in April and be on the field for the first set of organized team activities in May.
The offense Nix will return to after healing could look quite different. After the Broncos were ground to a halt in the snow by New England — they had one first down and no drives that gained more than 17 yards in the second half — Payton made some changes. He fired offensive coordinator Joe Lombardi, who had spent 15 seasons with Payton in Denver and New Orleans, along with wide receivers coach Keary Colbert. Senior offensive assistant Pete Carmichael, who worked with Payton for 18 seasons, was hired to be the Bills’ offensive coordinator.
As Payton does his traditional offseason debrief of his expansive playbook, he is faced with improving an offense that was both inconsistent (the Broncos had the fourth-highest percentage of three-and-out possessions at 25%) and lacking of big plays. Wide receiver Courtland Sutton was the only Denver player who ranked in the top 50 in the NFL in receptions of 10 yards or more.
It’s a far cry from Payton’s Saints heyday, as Drew Brees threw for more than 4,000 passing yards in 12 of Payton’s 15 seasons in New Orleans and more than 5,000 in five campaigns. Nix, who finished 14th in the NFL in QBR (58.4), had 3,931 passing yards last season. But the coach is hoping his staffing tweaks will help Nix flourish.
Payton promoted Davis Webb, who Nix called an “awesome coach,” from quarterbacks coach/offensive pass game coordinator to offensive coordinator and bumped Logan Kilgore up from offensive assistant to quarterbacks coach. Whether Nix’s praise of Webb will result in Payton relinquishing playcalling duties is something to monitor. Payton has been a full-time playcaller since being named the Saints’ head coach in 2006. But it’s all on the table as he processes his frustrations with the Broncos’ offense — from his promise to study the run game to players expressing their own misgivings.
Ben DiNucci, a journeyman backup quarterback who the Broncos signed to the practice squad after Nix’s injury, took to X this week to endorse Webb as the playcaller, saying it was “the best thing possible for that building.”
Meanwhile, tight end Evan Engram — Denver’s biggest offensive acquisition a year ago — sees room for more impact for himself and the rest of the tight ends. He finished with 50 receptions for 461 yards and one touchdown and had two or fewer receptions in eight games. He was part of a tight end room that had only three touchdowns.
“I do think the tight end position can bring a lot more than it did this year, honestly, even speaking for the other guys in the room,” Engram said the day after the New England loss. “There’s a lot more we honestly could have helped with.”
As for Nix, the quarterback said he would “stay in my lane” as Payton works through the playbook and playcalling decisions. The quarterback’s goal is to be ready physically to begin the on-field work on schedule.
“I was going to give myself some time off anyway and this sort of makes me take that time off; I won’t be able to scratch the itch and get out there too early,” Nix said. “This will settle me down. … It’s nothing that really concerns me, nothing that really scares me moving forward.”
