Broncos HC Sean Payton Responds to Criticism of Bo Nix's Footwork

Sean Payton gave criticis something new to consider on Bo Nix's footwork.

Oct 17, 2024; New Orleans, Louisiana, USA; Denver Broncos quarterback Bo Nix (10) passes against the New Orleans Saints during the first half at Caesars Superdome. / Stephen Lew-Imagn Images

Bo Nix's footwork and technical base have been inconsistent, especially of late. It's more a mark of the Denver Broncos starting quarterback's relative inexperience than anything, but as television broadcasts have increasingly illustrated, Nix's sloppy footwork is costing the team in the passing game.

Passes thrown short of the mark, or simply way off-target have become commonplace for the traditionally hyper-accurate Nix, especially early in games. He usually settles down and settles in, and the footwork improves modestly as a contest goes on.

While Broncos Country and media alike scream from the rooftops for the Broncos coaching staff to correct Nix's technical foibles, head coach Sean Payton pushed back at the notion with a word of caution.

“I think you have to be careful you’re not over-coaching," Payton said on Monday. "There are some things he does very well out of the pocket or climbing up in the pocket."

Payton's implication is that these things have already been taught and hammered home, and to do so further could risk complicating Nix's approach and perhaps making him internally overwhelmed when he's trying to execute on a synapse-by-synapse basis. There's some truth to that, but it would seem like coaching malpractice for Payton and Broncos QB coach Davis Webb not to point out Nix's technical lapses each week in the film room, at the very least.

Payton's focus is more on what can be done schematically to keep Nix in a smooth game-flow.

"I think we start with the focus on timing of the route, the depth of the route in the gun or under center, [is it a] three, five or seven [-step drop back]? We work on the rhythm of the play so that his feet marry up to the depth of the route," Payton continued. "The times where he’s climbing the pocket or moving in the pocket, we’re pretty smart about how much we saw or how much we try to fix.”

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The takeaway? Nix is still a work in progress. To squeeze him too hard at this pount would risk rupturing his mindset at this early juncture.

Payton's approach is to let the rookie learn and progress with the help of a very competent offensive coaching support system. And Nix is talented enough, and the team around him strong enough, that Denver has continued to find ways to win amid the rookie's trial-and-error learning curve. That should be highly encouraging to fans.

Stylistically, some in the media have called Nix 'Tim Tebow 2.0' as a passive-aggressive criticism. Nix has resorted to scrambling often of late, and in last week's 33-10 win over the New Orleans Saints, Payton called some QB-designed run plays that he'd been holding up his sleeve to great success.

Nix is, obviously, a much more proficient and polished passer than Tebow could have ever hoped to be. But Nix is also a lot bigger, athletic, and physical than people perhaps realized, and Payton is continuing to find ways to use those traits to the Broncos' advantage.

“I think that he’s a little bit faster than maybe we anticipated even coming out from a running standpoint," Payton said of Nix. "So it does give you some flexibility particularly on third down or in the red zone.”

Rome wasn't built in a day. And although Nix is a 24-year-old rookie and the most experienced college quarterback to ever be drafted, he's still in his first NFL season.

It'll take time for him to acclimate to NFL speed, and I'm not just talking about the rate and intensity with which opposing defenses attack a quarterback, but also the cognitive demands that are foisted upon a young signal-caller, the juggling of which is entirely unique and novel to the National Football League. This is one of the reasons Payton coveted a quarterback in the 2024 NFL draft with a "good processor."

The Broncos identified such traits in Nix. The fact that the Broncos sit at 4-3, winning four of their last five games, despite the vagaries of their sputtering offense, is, in part, testament to Payton getting it right with his evaluation of Nix's processing capabilities.

If the Broncos can be this effective while Nix is still just scratching the surface of his NFL potential, imagine what it's going to look like when it all finally clicks.

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