{"id":907549,"date":"2026-06-02T01:30:20","date_gmt":"2026-06-02T01:30:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/907549\/"},"modified":"2026-06-02T01:30:20","modified_gmt":"2026-06-02T01:30:20","slug":"nfl-legend-says-broncos-should-keep-bo-nix-on-pitch-count-this-summer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/907549\/","title":{"rendered":"NFL legend says Broncos should keep Bo Nix on pitch count this summer"},"content":{"rendered":"

Slow Bo is better than No Bo.<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cOn the outside looking in, I would have him on a (reps) restriction,\u201d Warren Moon<\/a>, the Hall-of-Fame quarterback, told me over the phone Monday when I asked about Bo Nix, the Broncos\u2019 QB1.<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cI think (the Broncos) should put him on some type of pitch count, like you would put a quarterback on a pitch count if he had problems with his shoulder.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou put him in, limit his (reps), and you see how he\u2019s handling it in practice. It\u2019s something they\u2019re going to have to monitor as they go along and see how much (this month) he can take and how much he shouldn\u2019t take.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Broncos open Organized Team Activities this week<\/a>, ramping up to a mandatory mini-camp June 16-18. Nix, who\u2019s coming off January ankle surgery, followed by another procedure in April, is expected to do more watching than throwing this month.<\/p>\n

Which, to Moon\u2019s ears, isn\u2019t just safe. It\u2019s smart. The former great who played six seasons in Canada before a 17-year NFL career with the Oilers, Vikings, Seahawks and Chiefs once tried to rush back from a bum right ankle himself. Fall of 1996.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe quick movements that you have to make in the pocket, you just aren\u2019t able to make as quickly,\u201d Moon recalled. \u201cI tried to practice with it as much as I could. They tried to give it time to heal \u2026 I probably should have given it a lot more time.\u201d<\/p>\n

Moon had sprained his right ankle against Detroit in Week 1, then sat out a week. In hindsight, he told me, it should\u2019ve been longer. Warren fought like holy heck to play through the pain. Even though he couldn\u2019t plant. Couldn\u2019t cut. Couldn\u2019t move. If you\u2019re Warren Moon, you can fake it as an NFL signal-caller on one good leg. Until the pocket collapses.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen I got that ankle sprain, it made me feel like I was The Mummy, like I was Frankenstein\u2019s monster,\u201d the 69-year-old chuckled. \u201cI couldn\u2019t move at all. I just didn\u2019t have the mobility, just didn\u2019t have the lightness on my feet to do the things that I was comfortable doing.\u201d<\/p>\n

Moon sat out Week 2, then made six straight starts before the ankle got dinged again during a home loss to Chicago on Oct. 28. With one working ankle, Warren tossed six scores with seven picks, completing 56.6% of his throws. In \u201994 and \u201995 with the Vikings, Moon had averaged seven tilts per season of at least 275 passing yards. After the ankle mess, he managed just two such games for Minnesota in \u201996 over eight appearances \u2014 a freak injury that, in hindsight, opened the door for the Brad Johnson Era in Minneapolis.<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cWhen you were trying to move in the pocket to avoid somebody, I just didn\u2019t have the same quick-twitch ability as I did when my ankle was healthy,\u201d Moon offered.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd then when you look at someone like Bo Nix, someone who relies on his mobility \u2014 if it\u2019s not completely healed, it\u2019s going to definitely hamper his mobility. Which is one of his strengths.\u201d<\/p>\n

Moon is a Nix fan, by the way. Says he even reminds him of somebody Warren used to run into during those business trips to Denver those many moons ago.<\/p>\n

\u201c(Nix) has a little bit of John Elway in him, in the way he moves,\u201d Moon said. \u201cHis arm\u2019s probably not as strong as John\u2019s. John was one of those guys who could bring his team back at the end of a game. That\u2019s one of the things Bo has done a good job of \u2026<\/p>\n

\u201cThen there\u2019s the movement, of course, (Nix) being able to move around and make plays with his legs. He would be similar that way, in those aspects of his game.\u201d<\/p>\n

Like Elway, those aspects are hard to replicate \u2014 and even harder to replace, as Steady Stiddy reminded us against the Patriots in the AFC Championship.<\/a><\/p>\n

\"BoBo Nix (10) of the Denver Broncos scrambles for a gain against the Los Angeles Chargers during the third quarter at Empower Field at Mile High in Denver on Sunday, Jan. 4, 2026. (Photo by AAron Ontiveroz\/The Denver Post)<\/p>\n

\u201c(The Broncos) do a lot of things because of Bo\u2019s mobility,\u201d Moon said of Nix. \u201cThey do a lot of rollouts, a lot of bootlegs, a lot of play-action to take advantage of his throwing ability on the run. And you want to make sure he\u2019s able to do things where Sean Payton can still run the type of offense (that) he still wants to run. I\u2019m sure that\u2019s something they\u2019ll be looking at at (during) the OTAs.\u201d<\/p>\n

When it comes to ankle recoveries, Moon added, it\u2019s also about looking at the long view. Any rep Nix can manage on the field during June is found money. The points on the calendar that matter more are the start of training camp in late July and sometime around the second preseason game against the Packers on Aug. 21. Anything before that is gravy.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe main thing is that (Nix) is there physically, as the leader of the football team,\u201d Moon continued. \u201cThat he\u2019s going to be in the meetings, for the (instruction) that he needs to digest, that the team sees that he\u2019s doing things.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe fact that he\u2019s there (at OTAs), that\u2019s huge. It\u2019s not an Aaron Rodgers deal where you don\u2019t know if he\u2019s going to show up or not, where the team is wondering, \u2018Is he going to be our leader?\u2019 They know, \u2018Hey, our QB1 is here.\u2019 (The Broncos) seeing that he\u2019s doing what he can on the field, that confidence bleeds over to the rest of the football team, too.\u201d<\/p>\n

Want Bo in the flow?<\/p>\n

Low and slow is the way to go.<\/p>\n

\u201cI really like what they\u2019ve done in a short period of time. The future looks great for them,\u201d Moon stressed. \u201cAnd the kid from Miami (Jaylen Waddle) they got in the offseason \u2014 I know Sean is going to come up with a lot of ideas as to how to use him. They\u2019re going to be right there in the thick of things at the end of the regular season. Just like they were last year.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Slow Bo is better than No Bo. \u201cOn the outside looking in, I would have him on a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":907550,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2064],"tags":[1586,114,925,232,49536,56402,5748,241,692,231,258,19602,7,14706,6742,110,929,1014,262,2444,2443,233,926,6,4266,5295,1813,9,2833,9516],"class_list":["post-907549","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-los-angeles-chargers","tag-aaron-rodgers","tag-afc-championship","tag-bo-nix","tag-broncos","tag-broncos-offense","tag-broncos-quarterbacks","tag-broncos-takes","tag-chargers","tag-chicago","tag-denver","tag-denver-broncos","tag-empower-field-at-mile-high","tag-football","tag-jaylen-waddle","tag-john-elway","tag-kansas-city-chiefs","tag-latest-headlines","tag-los-angeles","tag-los-angeles-chargers","tag-losangeles","tag-losangeleschargers","tag-minnesota","tag-more-broncos-news","tag-nfl","tag-organized-team-activities","tag-sean-keeler","tag-sean-payton","tag-sports","tag-sports-columnists","tag-warren-moon"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":"Validation failed: Text character limit of 500 exceeded"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/907549","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=907549"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/907549\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/907550"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=907549"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=907549"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=907549"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}