There is no doubt that the Denver Broncos’ decision to select Bo Nix in the first round of the 2024 NFL Draft has sparked debate throughout the offseason. The Broncos entered the quarterback pool in the 2024 draft, which featured six quarterbacks off the board in the first 12 picks. Nix was clearly the sixth and final one.
Based on the way the media had discussed Nix as a prospect in the lead-up to the draft itself, anyone taking Nix in the 1st round would have been contested but the Broncos took him with the 12th overall pick, pretty premium NFL Draft real estate. That decision by Sean Payton and the Broncos has led to a lot of frustrating discourse over the course of the offseason. The selection itself has contributed heavily toward the Broncos being ranked dead last in a lot of pre-season roster rankings, power rankings, and certainly quarterback room rankings.
For example, FanSided.com ranked the Broncos’ quarterback room as the worst in the NFL this year, and they had some fascinating things to say to justify their decision. “The Denver Broncos made the terrible error of selecting Bo Nix 12th overall. I apologize, but until shown differently, that is a complete mistake. Nix comes to the NFL with more experience than any other prospect. He started five collegiate football seasons, totaling 61 games divided between Auburn and Oregon. It took Nix a few years to get on the pro radar, but by the end of his fifth and final season at Eugene, he was college basketball’s most dependable quarterback.”
The slip-up of calling Nix “college basketball’s” most reliable quarterback aside, I want to address the more important and certainly the more frustrating aspect of this analysis. Kline starts off by saying that the Broncos made the “abject mistake” of drafting Nix 12th overall, and that it’s a “mistake through and through” until “proven otherwise”.
This is wild thinking. A selection of a player who has yet to take the field is already a mistake. The old “guilty until proven innocent”. I don’t understand this thinking whatsoever. If you didn’t like the pick, you didn’t like the pick. People are going to analyze draft picks the way they want every year. But to say that a pick is a mistake until proven otherwise makes absolutely no sense when the guy hasn’t taken a single NFL snap.
