Bo Nix grew up watching Tim Tebow. The Denver Broncos sat down with Tebow and their current quarterback for the team’s “Jersey Swap” series, a 13-minute video call in which a current player trades signed jerseys with a franchise great. Nix opens the season Monday night at Kansas City; Tebow says he’ll be at the home opener on Sept. 20 to hand his jersey over in person.
Nix, 26, calls Tebow his “childhood hero” in the first minute. He remembers the game-winning pass to Demaryius Thomas against the Steelers. He remembers meeting Tebow at a Fellowship of Christian Athletes event in Birmingham when he was “a no-name kid in high school.” He remembers that Tebow’s book was “the only book that I ever read” when his mom made him read.
Tebow remembers it too. He remembers going on ESPN before Nix’s first college game and picking Auburn, an incoming freshman at quarterback, to beat Justin Herbert’s Oregon. Auburn won.
“The success that you’ve had is so encouraging,” Tebow tells him. “But more importantly, the way that you’ve done it just makes me so proud of you as a player, more importantly as a person and a brother in Christ.”
The two spend most of the call swapping playoff stories. Tebow talks through the 2012 overtime win over Pittsburgh — players staying on the field an hour after the game, “hugging, talking, praying.” Nix walks through last season’s overtime playoff win over Buffalo, the one he got hurt in. They compare notes on being new dads. Tebow says his daughter has given him “a little bit more of a sense of how much the heavenly Father loves us.” Nix admits that when his wife leaves for two hours, “I’m scared to death.”
Then Nix reads the inscription he wrote on the jersey he’s sending: “Thank you for giving me someone to look up to.”
And he explains it. “I don’t think you realize truly how, just as a kid, when you’re looking for talents you have and how to use it — I really understood why you did things,” Nix says. “You were doing it for one purpose, one person only. And you were just literally trying to share Jesus. And I would tell myself, I want to grow up and be just like that. I want to do the exact same thing. I don’t want it to be about me, but I want it to be about sharing the gospel.”
“Really and truly, I do mean it,” he adds. “You did something special, and thank you.”
Tebow’s inscription to Nix: “Your faith, determination and resilience are second to none. So proud of you. Your brother in Christ.” Underneath it he signed the way he used to as a Bronco — GB², for “God bless and go Broncos.”
Watch the whole conversation here: