Bo Nix, new dad, spends more time at public parks these days.
Recently, a kid, Nix estimated around 12 years old, walked up to him at one and asked the question at the forefront of apountry’s collective mind.
“Are your ankles crooked?”
Nix answered with a question of his own.
“I asked him, ‘Does it look like my ankle’s crooked?’” Nix recalled with a smile Tuesday. “And he gave me a good, ‘No.’ Thank god he didn’t say yes.”
’s right ankle has been the enduring storyline of the Broncos’ offseason.
He fractured it in overtime of a playoff win against Buffalo in January, had surgery the next day, then began rehab.
Along the way, though, Nix felt soreness he attributed to “a little bit of an issue with bone spurs” in the ankle. In his first public comments since just after his first surgery, Nix outlined Tuesday how he, the Broncos and his doctors came to the decision to perform a second operation in April.
Nix said he could have played through the 2026 season, but was looking at another operation either after the season or sometime in the future to address the bone spur issue.
“It was just aggravating me for too long,” Nix said. “So what we did was, since I was a little bit ahead (in rehabbing), we thought it was best to go ahead and decompress it a little bit and still have plenty of time to get back for the summer to prepare for the season.”
Nix made it clear that, after the first operation, he was hoping he’d be able to take part in the offseason program when it began in May. That was the messaging from Broncos brass, too, through February and March.
“It was hard because I wanted to be full speed so fast, but thatap just unfortunately not how surgery goes,” Nix said. … “When I got back going, I felt really good, just a little bit of soreness and just wanted to go ahead and get it out of the way for good. Now they tell me — I didn’t get in there and look at it, but the doctors tell me the ankle looks as good as new and we’re right back to normal.”
Nix isn’t back to football normal just yet. He graduated Tuesday to being in uniform and helmet for the first day of the Broncos’ three-day mandatory minicamp. He took part in practice on a limited basis, working through the team’s stretch and modified individual work. He did not take part in any of the 11-on-11 reps, instead watching as Jarrett Stidham, Sam Ehlinger and tryout rookie Sawyer Robertson got work.
By late July, though, when the Broncos report for training camp, head coach Sean Payton says Nix will be fully healthy.
“He’s worked extremely hard on this recovery and he’s more than ahead of schedule,” Payton said Tuesday. … “I think it’s been a clean plan relative to the reps, what it is, what it’s not and as this week finishes. When training camp starts, I don’t think you’ll see any governor.”
Nix, for his part, says he doesn’t need one at the moment, either. The team is just being careful with him.
“I could go full-go right now if they wanted me to,” he asserted with a grin.
The Broncos don’t want him to, at least not right at the moment. Payton last week said Nix had taken some walk-through repetitions during the second OTA week. The veteran coach has been fielding questions about ’s health all offseason and sounded a bit tired of them Tuesday.
He’s happy Nix is back on the field, to be sure, but, “it’s not like today he’s put sunscreen on. He’s been out here and getting a lot of work.”
Nix, though, hadn’t said in his own words before Tuesday why the second procedure was necessary or what the first six months of his whirlwind 2026 had been like from breaking the ankle to becoming a father, rehabilitation and then the second surgery.
“At the end of the day, I’ve been here before,” Nix said. “I feel great, I’m going to be strong, I’m going to be fast, elusive. Everything I’ve done in the past I’m going to be able to do again.
“I mean, itap a broken bone for crying out loud. Everyone here has probably had an issue with a broken bone and you end up right back the same. I feel really confident in myself and my training and this is not going to hinder me at all.”
Nix has been through ankle injuries before — he injured his left in high school and then fractured his right at Auburn, though a different bone than the one that broke in January, Nix said — and noted a pattern he figured might be a silver lining in all of this.
“When I had an ankle injury in high school, we won the state championship,” he said. “When I had an ankle injury in college, we went and won a lot of games at Oregon. And now I expect it to be the same thing. …
“It probably won’t be the last time I’m injured and miss a couple games, but hopefully thatap not the case. We’ll take it however it comes, take it day-by-day, but right now itap just getting back healthy and, once the season comes, itap right in the past for me, and I don’t even think about it.”
