18 hours Ago
INDIANAPOLIS — Sean Payton first met Bo Nix here at the NFL Scouting Combine last year. The seeds of their future partnership were planted weeks later during a private workout in Oregon. Their relationship blossomed during Nix’s rookie season in Denver as he and Payton helped guide the Broncos to their first playoff appearance since 2015.
At each point, Payton came away impressed by nearly every aspect of how Nix carried himself. Advertisement It took a trip to Cabo, Mexico, last month where Nix, backup quarterbacks Jarrett Stidham and Zach Wilson, and Payton were vacationing, for the coach to finally turn his nose up at one of Nix’s traits. “We went golfing and, as much as I love these guys as quarterbacks, they are awful golfers,” Payton said during an interview with FanDuel’s Kay Adams at the Super Bowl.
“I’m like, I don’t know who we’re beating, collectively.” Nix can be forgiven for having a rough time in the rough. The main purpose of the trip, after all, was to unwind after a marathon stretch of football that began with training camp for his senior season at Oregon 18 months ago.
Then, a trip to the Heisman Trophy ceremony in New York, where Nix finished third. The Senior Bowl experience. The combine and pro day preparation.
The pre-draft workouts and interview circuit. Rookie and veteran minicamps. A quarterback competition in training camp.
An 18-game rookie season in the NFL that ended with a playoff loss to the Buffalo Bills in January. “That first year is just so long for those guys,” David Morris, Nix’s personal quarterbacks coach and founder of the QB Country training program, said during a recent phone interview. “They never get a breather.
You’ve got to decompress and recover. There are a lot of hits and a lot of shots. There was no real break, basically from July of the previous year to the end of January.
So there’s rest days built into (offseason work) that are important.” What Morris knows well, though, is that the rest for Nix won’t last long. After undergoing a minor medical scope on his ankle at the end of January, the quarterback who turned 25 on Tuesday has already been back working out at the Broncos’ facility, general manager George Paton said this week.
Much of the upcoming work with Nix and Morris will take place in Alabama and will start where much of Nix’s work with the Broncos coaching and training staffs left off. GO DEEPER George Paton's vision as Broncos GM coming to fruition, but biggest test remains Morris, who backed up Eli Manning for three seasons when both were college quarterbacks at Ole Miss, said the Broncos have a similar throwing program for quarterbacks to the one he and the other coaches at QB Country employ with their players. One of its aims is to improve the generation and transfer of power in the torso while focusing on the movements that help the shoulder move more efficiently during the throwing process.
Advertisement “So it’s going to be rotational strength. It’s going to be trying to get faster and trying to get stronger, better change of direction,” Morris said of the focus the program will have with Nix this offseason. “They do a great job up in Denver of the overhead athlete (one whose arm and shoulder move in an arc above their head) or rotational athlete (one who has to rotate their body a lot) training program, and that’s what we do here, too.
He loves all that. I’d say Bo is kind of a junkie for really getting into quarterback-specific training. So I think in general it’s going to be a holistic approach.
” Broncos quarterbacks coach Davis Webb said in the week leading up to Denver’s playoff loss that he would send each of his quarterbacks into the offseason with a five-page document that broke down the work they did during the season and outlined areas where he and Denver’s staff would challenge them to improve. It’s the kind of spring and summer homework the quarterback will relish. It fits neatly into the targeted way Morris approaches his work with Nix.
“The details are everything with Bo,” Morris said. “He’s type A, a perfectionist, and he’s really intense about the way he works — you can call it old-school work habits. So if you can pinpoint two, three, four areas where you can really improve and grow and key on, that’s super important.
They have so much data and so much film from Bo’s first year that allows you to be detailed and have a good plan.” The work Nix has done with Morris has yielded major benefits in the nearly five years since they began working together. He went from a passer at Auburn who completed 59.
4 percent of his passes to one who connected on 75 percent of his throws during two years at Oregon, including an FBS-record 77.4 mark in 2023. “It was, ‘Hey, we need to work on some layered throws,'” Morris said.
“Accuracy stuff, mechanical things, and it really showed up. He jumped 2o percent in completion percentage. So if you can be specific — and that’s not just one change or two changes; it’s focusing on a lot of different things — you saw with Bo that he got better every game.
So the thought would be, as you head into an offseason, how do you pinpoint why the progress was made and how you stay on that same track even when you’re not playing 11-on-11 football?” Advertisement While Nix spends the offseason working on everything from his footwork to each incremental part of his throwing motion, opposing coaches will start their homework on the Broncos quarterback. They will try to find ways to account for the speed Nix displayed in 2024, surprising even Denver’s staff. They will try to figure out how to more effectively pressure a quarterback whose sack rate (4.
06 percent of dropbacks) was the lowest for a Broncos passer since Peyton Manning (2.77) in 2014 — and who hasn’t lost a fumble in the past two seasons dating to his last year at Oregon. GO DEEPER Broncos' quest for AFC West crown will take more than finding 'Loch Ness Monster' That chase from an invisible opponent is a critical part of the competitive environment Nix demands with his training.
He relished the opportunity last offseason to train ahead of the draft alongside Drake Maye (No. 3 pick by the New England Patriots) and Carter Bradley (signed as an undrafted free agent by the Las Vegas Raiders). “Just seeing those three guys go at it every day was fun,” Morris said.
“They went at it every day and made each other better, whether it was in the meeting room or the weight room or throwing the football. With Bo, you see the competitiveness show up everywhere. He has something called divine discontent.
It’s the thought that George Lucas, to this day, still isn’t satisfied with his Star Wars script. Bo is like that. He’s got that never-good-enough thing that is real.
” The Broncos will continue their evaluation work at the NFL Scouting Combine through the weekend and then prepare for free agency, steps toward building upon a roster that is coming off its first playoff berth in nine years. They believe a new weapon at running back, tight end or both could help the offense take another step. They think they can add depth and talent to a defense that was a top-10 unit last season by most statistical measures.
But some of their biggest opportunity for improvement rests with Nix and his capacity for a Year 2 leap. It’s a weighty responsibility, but it’s the kind that will fuel Nix during the coming months under the Alabama sun. “He’s not intimated by hard things or long days or any of those things,” Morris said.
“He wants it and knows there is no shortcut there. ..
. When you come down here to south Alabama, it’s kind of an old-school mindset of just getting to work. I think he likes that aspect of it where it’s going to be hard.
Training is supposed to be hard and it’s supposed to be uncomfortable. Drills are supposed to be challenging and frustrating at times even.” Learning to find the fairway more often in between? That might be too much to ask.
(Top photo: Ian Maule / Getty Images).
