Last season, Denver Broncos quarterback Bo Nix ranked eighth in the NFL in passing yards (3,931) and 10th in touchdown passes (25). In Nix’s second pro season, the Broncos co-led the NFL in wins (14), tying the franchise’s single-season record, dethroned the Kansas City Chiefs in the AFC West, and secured the No. 1 playoff seed in the conference.
Nix out-dueled Josh Allen in the divisional round of the playoffs and set his team up to host the AFC championship game before a freak injury torpedoed his and the Broncos’ Super Bowl dreams. Sounds like the achievements of, say, the NFL’s 18th-best quarterback, right?
Well, that’s exactly where NFL.com’s Nick Shook ranked Nix among 2025 quarterbacks. Nix was not only ranked 18th, but he was also rated in the ‘tier three’ of quarterbacks.
“Bo Nix didn’t find a true sense of consistency until after Thanksgiving, diluting his overall 2025 résumé. Still, if what we saw from Nix down the stretch is a preview of his future, Broncos fans have plenty of reason to be excited,” Shook wrote.
The Bo Bias
I’m sorry, but the 2025 iterations of Patrick Mahomes, Lamar Jackson, Joe Burrow, Jordan Love, and Baker Mayfield — all of whom are excellent quarterbacks — weren’t better than Nix. Now, can Nix be more consistent from a down-to-down basis? Absolutely.
Let’s not forget that he’s coming off his second NFL season. By the way, as the sixth quarterback drafted in the 2024 first round, Nix stands head-and-shoulders above his fellow classmates. Nix leads all the signal-callers in his class in total wins, passing touchdowns, and total touchdowns. That includes high-profile top-three picks like Caleb Williams, Jayden Daniels, and Drake Maye.
Just keeping it within the two-year scope of Nix’s career, let’s also not forget that by passing for 25 touchdowns and 3,500-plus yards in each of his first two NFL seasons, Nix joined Peyton Manning and Justin Herbert as the only two quarterbacks in league history to achieve that feat through their first two years.
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Jan 17, 2026; Denver, CO, USA; Denver Broncos quarterback Bo Nix (10) throws during the fourth quarter of an AFC Divisional Round playoff game against the Buffalo Bills at Empower Field at Mile High. | Ron Chenoy-Imagn Images
Nix became the first quarterback in the history of the NFL to win 20-plus games while passing for 7,500-plus yards and 50-plus touchdowns through his first two seasons. Nobody has ever done that before. That unique achievement belongs solely to Nix.
And yet, Nix has yet to be selected to the Pro Bowl. He gets no love from the ubiquitous offseason lists and rankings (aside from the NFL Top 100 Players last season, which is voted on by the players), and he’s disrespected by the advanced analytics sites.
I’m not saying that Nix should be ranked as a top 10 quarterback yet. He should be ranked just outside that group, somewhere between 11th and 13th. Ranking him 18th puts him in the bottom half of the league, which is an absolute joke.
Origins of the Bias
It’s hard to say why Nix struggles to get the respect from the national press that he deserves. I can tell you that it’s obviously about more than what he does or doesn’t do on the grid-iron.
Like my podcasting partner, Zack Kelberman, often says, “Bo Nix could walk on water, and his critics would say it’s because he can’t swim.”
Perhaps the bias stems partly from Nix’s pre-draft stock in the national media, most of which rated him as a Day 2 quarterback who was over-drafted by the Broncos at No. 12 overall. Many of those analysts are bitterly clinging to those takes as Nix continues to rewrite the NFL record books and lead the Broncos into bona fide Super Bowl contention.
Another potential reason is the general dislike of Sean Payton in the national press. That is a little more understandable, as Payton can be hard to love, but Nix shouldn’t be painted with the same brush as his head coach.
The Payton effect is also magnified when it comes to Nix. In other words, the idea is that Nix is only thriving in the NFL because Payton is his coach. And yet, I don’t see anyone discounting the great things Caleb Williams did last year because his coach and play-caller is Ben Johnson.
Do you see the double-standard?
The Takeaway
Last summer, Payton boldly proclaimed that Nix would be a top-five quarterback within the next two or three years. Payton also said that his 2025 Broncos squad could be a Super Bowl contender, and he was laughed at and mocked from sea to shining sea.
We all know that if Nix doesn’t injure his ankle on the third-to-last play of the divisional round, the Broncos handle the New England Patriots in the AFC title game and would have been in the Super Bowl. Would the Broncos have been able to outlast the Seattle Seahawks?
We’ll never know, but I would have liked Denver’s chances because of the quality of defense and Nix’s fourth-quarter clutch gene. Payton’s forecast for his team turned out to be spookily accurate, so folks like Shook and the throngs of his fellow Nix haters should take heed of the second half of the Broncos head coach’s prediction.