RPO? More like RPBo.
“I train for that, and I make sure that I work to keep some of that,” Broncos quarterback Bo Nix told reporters after the Broncos hung on to beat Indianapolis, 34-30, in their first August preseason debut. “It’s big when plays break down. … It’s important to be able to extend plays. I think it’s really beneficial for the offense, and you never know when you will need (your speed), so it’s always good to train it. And it’s good to have.”
The arm’s there. The head’ll come. Can’t bench those legs. The Broncos offense looked better Sunday when the run was a constant threat. And Nix running in particular.
The rookie’s first NFL touchdown pass was a dagger drawn straight from your PlayStation 5. Third-and-goal at the 1, fake the shotgun handoff, look off the safeties, fire a dart to an in-motion Marvin Mims just before the left pylon. Pop. Pop. Pop.
“But I felt very calm and relaxed back there. It was just a game,” Nix told reporters after the rookie completed 15 of 21 throws for 125 yards, leading the Broncos to four scores over his five drives at the controls. “They were still in Cover-3, quarters and man. It’s the same defense, and so you’ve just got to figure out which one they’re in and then execute the play that’s called. But I thought we did a great job with our play calls today. We stayed in rhythm. We ran the ball efficiently, and that’s always nice. So overall, it was a very productive day.”
It’s early. It doesn’t count. All true. So is this, though: Of the 21 Colts players NFL.com charted with a tackle during Nix’s four drives, only three were rookies.
It’s OK to dream. A little.
And it’s OK to put any ideas of a quarterback “race” this month to bed. Nix is your Week 1 starter in Seattle, unless he stinks up Empower Field on Sunday. Or, Heaven forbid, the injury bug somehow bites the kid on the backside.
Mind you, said bug would have to catch him first.
It’s funny: Whenever a young Drew Lock ran the ball, you held your breath, as it was often a prelude to complete disaster. When Nix took off Sunday in Indy, good things tended to happen. On one zone read to the short side of the field, Nix kept the rock with a blocker in front of him, set up his escort, caught the defense flat-footed, and turned the confusion into an 11-yard gain. Jarrett Stidham doesn’t offer that threat. Neither does Zach Wilson, although both had some juicy moments against the Colts, too.
Stiddy ran the 40-yard dash in 4.81 seconds at the NFL scouting combine five years ago. Wilson ran a 4.84 in the spring of 2021. Nix recorded a 4.71 at his pro day a few months back. Per Pro-Football-Reference.com charting, Stidham threw only two times (out of 66 attempts) and never ran from an RPO last fall. Wilson took a shot off RPO 14 times over 368 throws — a rate of 4% — in 2023. Nimble Nix gives Sean Payton’s offense a leg up. Literally.
“Well, I mean, it was great to see in the game setting,” the Broncos coach told reporters when asked about Nix’s wheels. “We’ve seen it in practice, so it wasn’t alarming or surprising.”
It’s his job to lose. The rite of passage for a young NFL quarterback is when a prodigy goes from having his day dictated by the defense to forcing a defense to have to adjust to him instead.
The good ones, the keepers, call the tune. The greats, be it a Peyton Manning, a Patrick Mahomes or a Lamar Jackson, create whole arias on the fly.
You could feel the speed bumps early on. Nix hung Greg Dulcich out to dry like an old flannel. He skipped a ball to Lil’Jordan Humphrey the way a stone skips the surface of a pond. He escaped a screen pass that, in a regular-season tussle, gets picked off 94 times out of 100. He butterfingered the exchange behind center, a newbie no-no.
But here’s the thing: The longer Nix was in the water, the faster he swam.
By his second series, the game stopped looking too fast, the stage stopped looking too big. No. 10 was on time and on point. Every box on Broncos Country’s list, Nix eventually found a way to tick.
Sacks taken? Zippo. Red zone production? On three trips inside the 20, Nix’s drives netted 17 points — two touchdowns and a field goal.
Two-minute drill? Two tosses to Lucas Krull got the Broncos from their own 16 to midfield in 40 seconds. On third-and-9 at his own 49, Nix had the wherewithal to not only stay in the pocket with a defender bearing down on his rib cage but also fire a rainbow up the left boundary to Devaughn Vele with enough hang time for Vele to either make a play or flop for the pass interference call. Vele managed the latter, setting up a first down at the Colts 22 and a half-ending field goal by Will Lutz for a 13-10 Broncos lead at the break.
Third down? Seven attempts, five conversions. Third-and-forever? Three tries, two first downs, including a nifty 22-yard dart on the run to Courtland Sutton at the end of the first quarter that seemed to get everybody’s juices flowing again.
“The moment wasn’t too big for him,” Sutton told reporters later. “The moments are only going to get bigger.”
And yet my favorite moment out of Sunday came from Mims. Turns out that when the Broncos wideout tried to give Nix the ball from his first-ever NFL touchdown, the rook shrugged the rock off to somebody else.
“I tried giving Bo Nix the ball afterwards but I think he gave it back to the refs,” Mims told The Post’s Ryan McFadden. “So he is waiting for that first regular-season (touchdown), I guess.”
It’s coming. He ain’t done nothing yet. Bo knows.
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Originally Published: August 12, 2024 at 11:14 a.m.
