{"id":1032242,"date":"2026-10-20T02:09:36","date_gmt":"2026-10-20T02:09:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/1032242\/"},"modified":"2026-10-20T02:09:36","modified_gmt":"2026-10-20T02:09:36","slug":"bo-nix-is-playing-scared-heres-how-broncos-can-fix-it","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/1032242\/","title":{"rendered":"Bo Nix is playing scared. Here’s how Broncos can fix it"},"content":{"rendered":"

When he sees Bo Nix<\/a>, Justin Anderson sees a man fighting The Bear.<\/a> Only not the Chicago kind.<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cWhen our attention gets locked onto threats, we activate our sympathetic nervous system, which is the defensive posture,\u201d Anderson, a venerated sports psychologist,<\/a> told me over the phone Monday as we discussed Nix, the Broncos\u2019 mercurial QB1.<\/a> \u201cAnd it\u2019s fight-or-flight. And that is really good if we\u2019re fighting a bear. It\u2019s not really great for these high-precise performance moments.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf you\u2019re concerned about making a mistake, your attention now becomes focused on what could happen there. And when that occurs, we get into what we call a \u2018threat response.\u2019 It\u2019s really interesting research, from the brain standpoint.\u201d<\/p>\n

It\u2019s also really, really boring offensive football. Nix threw for 107 yards<\/a> in a \u201cThursday Night Football\u201d showcase vs. Seattle. During a potential Super Bowl preview. Bo averaged 3.2 yards per dropback. The Broncos won in overtime, 17-14, and did so in spite of No. 10 as much as they did because of him.<\/p>\n

Anderson\u2019s been there, by the way \u2014 he was a former quarterback at Minnesota Duluth.<\/a> Even broke his ankle playing with the Bulldogs all those decades ago. He cowboyed up through a bum elbow. And what he came away with watching Nix on Thursday was a man scared to fail, a QB scared to make a mistake.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat I saw is, I think, (was) a quarterback trying to manage the game,\u201d said Anderson, the founder of Premier Sport Psychology. \u201cI think what we\u2019re seeing in a lot of places is, (quarterbacks) are being told, first and foremost, \u2018Do not turn the ball over.\u2019 And it makes a lot of sense, because in every (NFL) building, every analytics department is saying, \u2018Hey, whoever wins the turnover battle wins the game.\u201d<\/p>\n

Only after six games, the Broncos are the NFL\u2019s ultimate inkblot test. You can look at that little squiggle and interpret it any way you like. They\u2019re 4-2 without having played four quarters, or even three, of complementary football yet. They\u2019re still in the playoff hunt after a rugged opening six weeks that featured the best three teams in the loaded NFC West; a good Jacksonville bunch (4-2); and a road ambush by the still-unbeaten Chiefs (5-0).<\/p>\n

Of the six defenses they\u2019ve faced, four rank among the NFL\u2019s top eight in fewest yards allowed. The 0-6 Chargers, however, opened the week 17th in that statistical category, and Nix and his mates managed just 224 yards of offense against them, too. So is it the head? Or the heart?<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s a science behind it. There\u2019s a physical (side of), \u2018Are you healthy, or not?\u2019 All the other things (are) relative to the mental toughness, the mental fortitude,\u201d Broncos coach Sean Payton<\/a> told reporters Monday. \u201cThis is a tough league. We hit every aspect, and I think that\u2019s one of the things that attracted us to Bo in the beginning is we had seen his ability to climb through adversity.\u201d<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, another sports psychologist, Dr. Pete Temple out of Mind\u2019s Eye Sports Performance in Chicago<\/a>, emailed me Monday to say he saw the same stuff that Anderson noticed from afar.<\/p>\n

\u201cI obviously don\u2019t know what\u2019s going on in Bo\u2019s head, but I wonder whether he\u2019s gotten away from trusting the process that made him successful in the first place,\u201d Temple wrote. \u201cFor a quarterback, that might be as simple as: \u2018Get the play. Make your reads. Let it rip.\u2019<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen athletes become overly focused on outcomes \u2014 whether they\u2019re worried about making mistakes, trying too hard to succeed, or concerned about what others are saying, it can interfere with their ability to perform naturally \u2026 (Nix) hasn\u2019t suddenly forgotten how to play quarterback. But it\u2019s possible that worrying about what might happen has interfered with his ability to trust what he already knows how to do.\u201d<\/p>\n

So how do you get that trust back?<\/p>\n

1. Show him the good plays<\/p>\n

Nix is 29-13 as the Broncos\u2019 QB1, including the postseason. He\u2019s 18-5 over his last 23 regular-season starts. No. 10 leads the NFL with three fourth-quarter comebacks and four game-winning drives.<\/a> Remember Buffalo? The Jaguars? The Rams?<\/p>\n

Good tape, affirming tape, is there. Go watch it, Temple says.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf I were working with him, I\u2019d probably have him watch film of himself playing some of the best football of his career,\u201d the psychologist said. \u201cNot to analyze his mechanics, but to reflect on what was happening mentally. What did it sound like inside his head? What was his energy like? His body language? His tempo? How much was he thinking versus simply trusting himself and playing?<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019d remind him that he hasn\u2019t forgotten how to be that quarterback. He may have just wandered away from (that) by spending too much time in the land of \u201cwhat-if.\u201d Getting back to \u201cwhat now\u201d \u2014 get the play, make the read, let it rip \u2014 can help reconnect an athlete with the skills he\u2019s spent a lifetime developing.\u201d<\/p>\n

2. Train your brain to ignore ankle pain<\/p>\n

Nix is at his best when he\u2019s thinking with his feet instead of thinking about them. But too often through these opening half-dozen games, No. 10 has avoided contact that would\u2019ve put his body, or the right ankle he fractured in the AFC playoffs this past January, at risk. Nix says he\u2019s not worried about his lower half, yet his play has repeatedly told us the exact opposite.<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cYou\u2019re not going to stop the fact that your brain\u2019s going to go there,\u201d Anderson said of Nix\u2019s injury history. \u201cI was working with a college quarterback years ago who had a torn tendon in his foot, and had a lot of pain, and he was like, \u2018Gosh, it\u2019s really impacting my accuracy, and I\u2019m struggling with this.’\u201d<\/p>\n

So Anderson came up with a visual exercise to work around those inhibitions. He suggested the college QB pretend to throw the rock on one leg, with the injured foot tied behind his back.<\/p>\n

\u201c\u2018Could you still throw an accurate ball on one leg?,\u2019 And he was like, \u2018Oh, hell, yeah, I could,’\u201d Anderson recalled. \u201c(He was) a good, confident guy. And I said, \u2018Well, that\u2019s what we need now to get your attention back to, is, \u2018Yeah, you\u2019re going to feel it. But regardless of whether you feel it, can you still hit the dime? Can you still hit the spot?\u2019 Once you started to recognize that, he was starting to use visualization and imagery, like, \u2018This is how it\u2019s going to feel. And this is what I\u2019m going to do when it feels that way.\u2019 So it\u2019s actually visualizing the distraction \u2026 And holy cow, when we do that, the brain now is starting to say, \u2018Oh, I know what to do in this situation.’\u201d<\/p>\n

3. Fake it, then flush it<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a chicken-and-egg dilemma, isn\u2019t it? Nix appears to be playing with a lack of confidence. The only sure way to get that back is through repeated success, whether that\u2019s because of process or results.<\/p>\n

\u201cAfter a bad game, and every athlete has bad games, you eventually have to put the game behind you and try to get some sleep,\u201d Temple wrote. \u201cWhich of these two scenarios would make that easier? 1.) \u2018I played scared. I passed up opportunities I know I could have taken. I didn\u2019t trust myself, and I played poorly because of it,\u2019 or: 2.) \u2018I didn\u2019t play well, but I trusted my preparation and my process. I made my reads, took my chances, and played with confidence. It just didn\u2019t go my way today.\u2019<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s always an easy question to answer. You can\u2019t guarantee a good outcome, even when you do everything right. But you can commit to playing with confidence, trusting your preparation, and giving yourself the best opportunity to succeed.\u201d<\/p>\n

Which means, ultimately, No. 10 has to relearn how to fake it to make it again.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy advice wouldn\u2019t be to tell Bo to simply believe in himself, or to try harder to relax,\u201d Anderson said. \u201cI\u2019d help him identify the attentional patterns that support his best football, understand what might be interfering with them, and deliberately train his ability to return to those patterns under pressure.<\/p>\n

\u201cRich Gannon once said that there are two types of quarterbacks: the ones that apply the pressure and the ones that feel the pressure. And you want to be the one applying the pressure.\u201d<\/p>\n

On this, everyone agrees: Bo needs to be the aggressor. If Nix doesn\u2019t relax and stop fighting the bear, it\u2019ll tear him to pieces. And rip this Super Bowl window up right along with it.<\/p>\n

Want more Broncos news? Sign up for the Broncos Insider to get all our NFL analysis.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"When he sees Bo Nix, Justin Anderson sees a man fighting The Bear. Only not the Chicago kind.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1032243,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2062],"tags":[4325,925,232,49536,56402,5748,241,692,564,231,258,2426,7,929,233,926,6,5295,1813,237,9,2833,505],"class_list":["post-1032242","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-denver-broncos","tag-analytics","tag-bo-nix","tag-broncos","tag-broncos-offense","tag-broncos-quarterbacks","tag-broncos-takes","tag-chargers","tag-chicago","tag-colorado","tag-denver","tag-denver-broncos","tag-denverbroncos","tag-football","tag-latest-headlines","tag-minnesota","tag-more-broncos-news","tag-nfl","tag-sean-keeler","tag-sean-payton","tag-seattle","tag-sports","tag-sports-columnists","tag-super-bowl"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nfl\/117470806921083640","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1032242","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1032242"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1032242\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1032243"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1032242"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1032242"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1032242"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}