Slow Bo is better than No Bo.
“On the outside looking in, I would have him on a (reps) restriction,” Warren Moon, the Hall-of-Fame quarterback, told me over the phone Monday when I asked about Bo Nix, the Broncos’ QB1.
“I 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.
“You put him in, limit his (reps), and you see how he’s handling it in practice. It’s something they’re going to have to monitor as they go along and see how much (this month) he can take and how much he shouldn’t take.”
The Broncos open Organized Team Activities this week, ramping up to a mandatory mini-camp June 16-18. Nix, who’s coming off January ankle surgery, followed by another procedure in April, is expected to do more watching than throwing this month.
Which, to Moon’s ears, isn’t just safe. It’s 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.
“The quick movements that you have to make in the pocket, you just aren’t able to make as quickly,” Moon recalled. “I tried to practice with it as much as I could. They tried to give it time to heal … I probably should have given it a lot more time.”
Moon had sprained his right ankle against Detroit in Week 1, then sat out a week. In hindsight, he told me, it should’ve been longer. Warren fought like holy heck to play through the pain. Even though he couldn’t plant. Couldn’t cut. Couldn’t move. If you’re Warren Moon, you can fake it as an NFL signal-caller on one good leg. Until the pocket collapses.
“When I got that ankle sprain, it made me feel like I was The Mummy, like I was Frankenstein’s monster,” the 69-year-old chuckled. “I couldn’t move at all. I just didn’t have the mobility, just didn’t have the lightness on my feet to do the things that I was comfortable doing.”
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 ’94 and ’95 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 ’96 over eight appearances — a freak injury that, in hindsight,
“When you were trying to move in the pocket to avoid somebody, I just didn’t have the same quick-twitch ability as I did when my ankle was healthy,” Moon offered.
“And then when you look at someone like Bo Nix, someone who relies on his mobility — if it’s not completely healed, it’s going to definitely hamper his mobility. Which is one of his strengths.”
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.
“(Nix) has a little bit of John Elway in him, in the way he moves,” Moon said. “His arm’s probably not as strong as John’s. John was one of those guys who could bring his team back at the end of a game. That’s one of the things Bo has done a good job of …
“Then there’s 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.”
Like Elway, those aspects are hard to replicate — and even harder to replace, as Steady Stiddy reminded us against the Patriots in the AFC Championship.
“(The Broncos) do a lot of things because of Bo’s mobility,” Moon said of Nix. “They 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’s able to do things where Sean Payton can still run the type of offense (that) he still wants to run. I’m sure that’s something they’ll be looking at at (during) the OTAs.”
When it comes to ankle recoveries, Moon added, it’s 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.
“The main thing is that (Nix) is there physically, as the leader of the football team,” Moon continued. “That he’s going to be in the meetings, for the (instruction) that he needs to digest, that the team sees that he’s doing things.
“The fact that he’s there (at OTAs), that’s huge. It’s not an Aaron Rodgers deal where you don’t know if he’s going to show up or not, where the team is wondering, ‘Is he going to be our leader?’ They know, ‘Hey, our QB1 is here.’ (The Broncos) seeing that he’s doing what he can on the field, that confidence bleeds over to the rest of the football team, too.”
Want Bo in the flow?
Low and slow is the way to go.
“I really like what they’ve done in a short period of time. The future looks great for them,” Moon stressed. “And the kid from Miami (Jaylen Waddle) they got in the offseason — I know Sean is going to come up with a lot of ideas as to how to use him. They’re going to be right there in the thick of things at the end of the regular season. Just like they were last year.”
