For ten years, Mile High was a graveyard for quarterbacks. Trevor Siemian. Paxton Lynch. Case Keenum. Joe Flacco. Teddy Bridgewater. Drew Lock. Even a highly paid, cringeworthy Russell Wilson. All of them tried to fill Peyton Manning’s shoes. All of them choked.
Then came Bo Nix. The Broncos grabbed the Oregon product as the sixth quarterback off the board in the 2024 draft. Critics sniffed. Denver smiled. Two years under Sean Payton changed everything. Nix went 24-10. He dragged this franchise all the way to the AFC Championship game, though a busted ankle in the divisional round against Buffalo cut his run short. Still, winning cures everything. Or does it?
Not everyone is buying the hype. CBS Sports analyst Garrett Podell recently slapped the “overrated” tag on Nix. He has receipts, too. In 2025, Nix threw the ball 612 times—leading the league—but couldn’t even crack the 4,000-yard mark. Why? A pathetic 6.4 yards per attempt. That put him 28th out of 33 qualified passers, rubbing shoulders with the decaying remains of Aaron Rodgers and Kirk Cousins.
Podell points to ugly, sluggish wins against backup quarterbacks, like a Christmas Day slog against Kansas City’s third-stringer Chris Oladokun. Then there’s the punting. Denver booted the ball 75 times in 2025. Only three teams punted more, and all of them fired their coaches. Podell’s verdict? Nix is a passenger riding behind a stellar offensive line and a nasty defense.
It is a neat statistical takedown. But it ignores the only stat that actually keeps coaches employed: wins. Those previous Denver quarterbacks had great defenses too, and they spent January on the golf course. Nix and Payton brought relevance back to Colorado. Sure, the numbers are ugly. Who cares? With Jaylen Waddle joining the offense for 2026, the training wheels might finally come off. Let the nerds count the punts; Denver will keep counting the wins.
