{"id":703145,"date":"2026-01-25T04:49:14","date_gmt":"2026-01-25T04:49:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/703145\/"},"modified":"2026-01-25T04:49:14","modified_gmt":"2026-01-25T04:49:14","slug":"denver-broncos-playoff-hopes-rest-on-backup-qb-jarrett-stidham-ahead-of-afc-championship-game","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/703145\/","title":{"rendered":"Denver Broncos\u2019 playoff hopes rest on backup QB Jarrett Stidham ahead of AFC Championship Game"},"content":{"rendered":"

Before the injury to Denver quarterback Bo Nix<\/a>, the AFC Championship Game between the Denver Broncos<\/a> and New England Patriots<\/a> was shaping up to have a very compelling and obvious storyline. <\/p>\n

One about the return of prominence by two teams who\u2019ve spent recent years on the NFL\u2019s fringes, arriving here at a pace quicker than most would have imagined. <\/p>\n

The catalyst for both turnarounds has been the emergence of young franchise quarterbacks. <\/p>\n

The Patriots landed Drake Maye<\/a> with the third pick of the 2024 NFL Draft, after Caleb Williams<\/a> and C.J. Stroud<\/a> went first and second. Nine selections after Maye, the Broncos took Nix, a pro-ready player who had started more college games than any quarterback in history. <\/p>\n

And thanks to the work of two second-time head coaches in New England\u2019s Mike Vrabel and Denver\u2019s Sean Payton, these two teams are back butting heads for a Super Bowl berth, 10 years after they did it with Tom Brady and Peyton Manning. <\/p>\n

But that whole storyline got hijacked and buried once Nix broke his ankle on the second-last play of overtime last Saturday against Buffalo, ending his season and opening the door for 29-year-old backup Jarrett Stidham<\/a>, a one-time Patriots fourth-round draft pick who has been on the roster for three seasons. The Broncos are his third team. <\/p>\n

And so the storyline becomes trying to understand how monumental a loss Nix is for Denver and what a winning game script has to look like for the Broncos. <\/p>\n

In losing Nix, the Broncos are losing a lot, starting with his knack for making clutch plays at key moments of a game, a quality that helped Denver rack up a slew of one-score wins during the regular season on the back of Nix\u2019s seven fourth-quarter comebacks and five game-winning drives. He added to both those totals a week ago against the Bills. <\/p>\n

Nix isn\u2019t the most consistently accurate quarterback you\u2019ll ever see but he has that knack for making the must-have throws count. And that\u2019s hard to count on from Stidham given his lack of recent play time. <\/p>\n

Another thing you lose by Nix\u2019s absence is his legs. Nix was the Broncos\u2019 third-leading rusher during the regular season and led the team in rushing in each of its last two games. <\/p>\n

So what do they have in Stidham? Well, at $6 million a season, he\u2019s one of the NFL\u2019s highest-paid backup quarterbacks and the Broncos have already extended him once, suggesting their words about believing in him are more than just niceties. <\/p>\n

Payton doesn\u2019t pay his backup quarterback $6 million a season if he doesn\u2019t believe in him. <\/p>\n

And in his four NFL starts, he hasn\u2019t been shy about throwing the football, averaging 34 attempts per game. Overall, his NFL body of work amounts to 1,422 yards passing with eight touchdowns and eight interceptions. But there\u2019s a belief that he\u2019s simply starter material who\u2019s never had a chance in a good situation. <\/p>\n

Then there\u2019s the question of rust, which is difficult to measure as playing in this kind of game without having thrown a live pass in more than two years (aside from pre-season) is pretty much unprecedented. <\/p>\n

Payton will choose the plays with which Stidham tells him he is most comfortable and the offensive game plan will be built around those. <\/p>\n

The Broncos need a strong day of complementary football, starting with a defence and special teams that can keep this game low scoring and are able to put the offence on short fields.<\/p>\n

Denver can win the game in defence. It\u2019s the offence\u2019s job not to lose it and Payton will in-game coach accordingly. <\/p>\n

If the Broncos can get the game script they want, they still may need to win the turnover battle. And that\u2019s where New England may be vulnerable. <\/p>\n

No quarterback has fumbled more than Maye since the start of the regular season and no quarterback has fumbled more in the playoffs – six times in two games. <\/p>\n

Facing a defence that led the league in sacks and is coming off a game in which it took the ball away from Buffalo five times, this could be the matchup that decides it. <\/p>\n

This AFC Championship Game could absolutely be decided by a quarterback who can\u2019t overcome his flaws. <\/p>\n

But could it be the one we don\u2019t expect?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Before the injury to Denver quarterback Bo Nix, the AFC Championship Game between the Denver Broncos and New…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":703146,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2062],"tags":[73253,232,231,258,68831,2426,7,67362,6],"class_list":{"0":"post-703145","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-denver-broncos","8":"tag-apple-news","9":"tag-broncos","10":"tag-denver","11":"tag-denver-broncos","12":"tag-denver-broncos-sports-football-team-team-statscom-332","13":"tag-denverbroncos","14":"tag-football","15":"tag-new-england-patriots-sports-football-team-team-statscom-348","16":"tag-nfl"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nfl\/115953937094124151","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/703145","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=703145"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/703145\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/703146"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=703145"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=703145"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=703145"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}