DENVER, COLORADO - DECEMBER 21: Jarrett Stidham #8 and Bo Nix #10 of the Denver Broncos take the fi...
Photo by Justin Edmonds/Getty Images
Here is the most damning thing about Bo Nix’s season opener: Jarrett Stidham, in a blizzard, with a week of emergency prep, against a Super Bowl-bound defense, was better. And maybe that means the Broncos wouldn’t have gone to the Super Bowl had Nix played.
The numbers would be funny if they weren’t painful. In January’s AFC Championship loss to New England, Stidham went 17-of-31 for 133 yards, 23 yards on the ground, one touchdown and one interception. On Monday night against the Kansas City Chiefs, Nix went 17-of-28 for 131 yards, three yards on the ground, one touchdown and one interception. Nearly identical stat lines — except for the context surrounding them.
Stidham was a career backup thrust into the biggest game of the franchise’s recent history after Nix’s ankle shattered in the Divisional Round win over Buffalo. He was playing in a snowstorm at Mile High against a Patriots defense that would carry Drake Maye to the Super Bowl. Nobody expected him to be great. He just had to be functional, he wasn’t. And it’s all everyone talked about all offseason, including just before the game.
Monday night, Nix had no such excuses. He was the franchise quarterback returning to a nationally televised stage. He had Jaylen Waddle, the prized offseason acquisition from Miami. He had J.K. Dobbins, a full offseason of chemistry with Evan Engram, and the schematic mind of Sean Payton backed by a new playcaller in Davis Webb. What he produced was 131 passing yards, a longest completion of 19 yards — the touchdown to Engram that briefly tied the game at 7 — and a 31-10 loss that was every bit the blowout the score suggests.
Waddle, the player Denver traded real draft capital to pair with Nix, finished with one catch for two yards on three targets. Courtland Sutton had two grabs for 11 yards. Pat Bryant (four catches, 42 yards) was the only receiver who moved the chains with any regularity, and even he was bottled up after halftime.
Then there is the ball security. Stidham fumbled once in the AFC Championship — a pressured backward pass that nobody will forget. It was costly, but it was singular. Nix fumbled three times Monday night. Three. He was sacked four times and looked skittish from the moment Steve Spagnuolo’s defense swallowed the first snap of the game for a loss. He finished with two rushing yards — a number that would be laughable for any quarterback, let alone one whose legs were supposed to be a weapon on a “100% ankle”
Stidham, for his part, ran four times for 23 yards in the title game while navigating a snowdrift of a pocket. He was more mobile in January’s elements than Nix was on a 72-degree night in September.
The final scores crystallize it. Stidham’s Broncos lost by three. Nix’s Broncos lost by 21. One was a backup playing above his pay grade in a game that could have gone either way. The other was the franchise, and he played the worst game of his NFL career to open a season Denver entered with legitimate Super Bowl aspirations.
If this is what Year 3 looks like, the conversations in Dove Valley on Tuesday are going to be long.