After a two-week stretch of jitters and frustration, Denver Broncos quarterback Bo Nix found relief in Sunday’s game against the Kansas City Chiefs and delivered, leading his eighth-career game-winning drive in the fourth quarter to put the Broncos at 9-2 going into the Bye Week.
Prior to Sunday’s game, the Broncos offense and Nix in particular were struggling, and the acronym chart bros on Twitter were having a field day trying to right career obituaries, but the real game of football doesn’t care about your charts or what an X or Y-axis graph has to say. The game is played between the lines 11-on-11 in what is the ultimate team sport.
Nix and his team showcased to the world on Sunday why you shouldn’t write him off. Like UPS, he delivered.
Nix was 24-of-37 for 295 yards on Sunday, and while he didn’t have a passing or rushing touchdown, he played winning football.
In the fourth quarter, with two minutes remaining, Nix and the Broncos offense overcame a penalty that backed them up to a 3rd and 15, but Nix didn’t flinch. He found Courtland Sutton for 20 yards.
Denver had a 3rd and 8 several plays later, Nix found Sutton again for eight and a half. Then Nix struck a heart into the dagger of the Chiefs’ defense, finding Troy Franklin down the left sideline for a 30+ yard gain that helped set up Wil Lutz’s game-winning field goal to put Denver at 9-2 going into the bye week.
Throughout the game, Nix looked comfortable again. His footwork and mechanics were calm — he wasn’t hesitant inside the pocket and delivered some big throws, including some throws that were dropped by receivers that could have altered the trajectory of Sunday’s game.
“He’s outstanding,” Sean Payton said. “I think [he played] real well, he won. It’s his job. He won against a pretty stingy defense that can give you problems. There were some big plays there, and we had some early field position in the first half, and I’m like, man, there’s a couple of those field goals. One of them just needed to be a touchdown. I felt at halftime good about where we were relative to the matchup of our defense and their offense. Their early start, first 15-type team. I felt like, aside from some of the penalties, we did a good job in all three phases.”
The Broncos have their guy who can compete with Patrick Mahomes, and that’s something they’ve been searching for for a long time. Last year, Nix led what should have been a game-winning drive against KC, but a blocked field goal impacted that outcome. That wasn’t the case on Sunday, and Nix and the Broncos are atop the AFC in what is a changing of the guard inside the division.
“They were at the top and if you want to be the best you have to beat the best,” Nix said. “Some say, ‘If you’re scared, go to church.’ If you’re going to play this sport, if you’re going to play this game for too long, you can’t really be intimidated or there’s really no sense in going out there. If you don’t believe you’re going to win and eventually you get to the top, then I feel like you waste so much time throughout the week, but we work hard and we put together a great team to win games like tonight, and it paid off.”
For Nix and the Broncos, Sunday was a good day.