Bo Nix sat, arms crossed, with the best moment of his professional career, and the worst, plain to see on his body.
Markings of victory started with his shoulder pads and No. 10 jersey, which Nix still had on an hour after he had thrown for 279 yards and three touchdowns, including a go-ahead score in the final minute of regulation, in an overtime triumph against Buffalo in the divisional round of the AFC playoffs.
Eye black smudged across his face and grass stains on his white pants, which touched the Empower Field grass for the final time when he dropped to a knee, well into field goal range, after engineering a 75-yard, franchise-lifting drive to set up a walk-off field goal and deliver Denver to the AFC title game.
The signs of agony were there, too, though.
Nix had his entire uniform on except his cleats and his right sock, which had to be removed to perform the X-ray that confirmed a season-ending fracture in his ankle. He was not in the locker room amid the Club Dub smoke, deafening music and unbridled celebration. Instead, he sat in a hallway with his coach, Davis Webb, to his left, along with backup QBs Sam Ehlinger, Jarrett Stidham, and his family.
The whiplash of emotions over one hour was felt by Broncos fans, players and coaches — many of whom were driving home and at first thought the Nix news was fake. But no one felt that swirl more intensely than Nix himself.
He went from the brink of a Super Bowl run in his second year in the NFL to a helpless onlooker. From the center of the huddle to an Empower Field suite, a distance that must have felt like an ocean. From one step away to two ankle surgeries and an entire offseason spent working back toward just putting a game uniform on again.
Nine days later, the Broncos’ season finished four points shy of beating New England and playing in the Super Bowl. Nix still sounded fresh off the injury, but with at least some space to broaden his perspective. He talked through the injury itself, his reaction and emotions and then pointed to one potential silver lining.
“Fortunately for us in the NFL, there’s not really a timeline,” he said Jan. 28. “The timeline is on us and we can push it as much as we can. There’s going to be more years of this, more wins around here, more opportunities to go play for championships and thatap the most important part.”
That is mostly true. If the Broncos and Nix have their way, he’ll be leading this team for another decade or more.
Still, when Nix takes the field Sept. 14 at Arrowhead Stadium, he will do so with a lot of new around him, too. Not so much in on-field personnel — though there’s one major addition — but in the apparatus built specifically around the quarterback. Thatap because time is of the essence, too.
Nix is eligible for a contract extension after the season, meaning he will get very expensive very quickly. The Broncos have an enviable core of talent across their roster and have spent $500 million-plus in the past two years retaining as much of it as they can. It only takes looking at Denver’s head coach himself, however, to understand that cores age quickly in the NFL. In the middle of training camp, Spotrac data showed only five rosters older on average than Denver’s.
For Nix and the Broncos, the time is now. What January revealed is that you never know when your best shot at a championship might arrive. Super Bowl windows in the NFL are often like the windows a quarterback searches for down the field. Sometimes by the time you recognize an opening, itap already starting to close.
While Nix rehabbed this offseason, the Broncos went about re-racking much of what made them an AFC force in 2025. Two marquee changes, though — promoting Webb to play-caller and trading a first-rounder and more for Jaylen Waddle — are Denver’s attempt to capitalize right now.
The window is open.
The clock is ticking.
Changing of the headset
Payton sensed time working against him as early as the middle of the 2025 season.
Forty seconds once seemed like an eternity, but now they melted away more quickly.
Nix occasionally looked to the sideline as Payton scanned his playsheet through game-day eyeglasses. He’d spin his finger, imploring Payton to get a play in.
“Letap go,” broadcast cameras caught Nix yelling more than once.
Instead of barking back, Payton started to think about the longer term and about the dynamo standing next to him on the sideline.
Payton was once Webb. Or very much like him. He was 36 when Jim Fassel first gave him the chance to call plays for the New York Giants. It was December 1999, and Fassel missed some of the preparation week before the Giants played the New York Jets to attend his mother’s funeral.
The Jets’ head coach: Bill Parcells. Their defensive coordinator: Bill Belichick.
“I was like, ‘Thanks for the assignment,’” Payton quipped this summer.
With Payton at the controls, the Giants torched the Jets for 41 points and 490 yards. They had scored more than 24 once over their opening 12 games and hadn’t generated more than 384 yards.
Quarterback Kerry Collins threw for 341 yards that day and afterward, , said, “Some of the red zone calls were courageous; they were aggressive.”
Almost exactly 26 years later, Payton’s self-scouting left him pondering similar themes in similar terms but from a substantially different posture.
“Itap said that, as you get older, maybe you don’t drive in the rain at night,” Payton mused in January, two weeks past his 62nd birthday, as the Broncos prepared to face Buffalo. “I can’t let that happen as a play caller. Thatap something that I have to mentally make sure itap quick. Itap quick and decisive and itap daring at the right time.”
Payton could have tried to implore himself on that front through this offseason. He could have let Webb go to another team in a play-calling coordinator role.
Instead, he fired offensive coordinator Joe Lombardi and promoted Webb. He didn’t announce the play-calling change until a month later at the NFL Scouting Combine, but Webb had known since he accepted the job and called it a “no-brainer” once play-calling was on the table.
Few subjects this offseason have generated the unanimity that Webb has around the Broncos’ building. Everybody, to a person, believes Webb is going to be really good as a play-caller.
Right tackle Mike McGlinchey , when asked about the franchise’s faith in Webb earlier this summer, paused for a moment, as if considering it for the first time.
“Yeah, thatap a good point,” the ninth-year right tackle allowed. “There is a lot of confidence for a guy thatap never done it.
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“I also don’t think itap wrong to have that confidence in Davis,” he continued. “And itap because of who he is and itap because of his love of the game of football. This is all he’s ever wanted to do. He’s been building this book for how he wants to do it for years now. I think there’s a self-confidence he has that really rubs off on everybody else. He projects that and he makes all the players who play for him feel it.
“Thatap the sign of a good coach.”
Can Webb help Nix elevate into NFL’s upper echelon?
Webb might be new to the offensive coordinator position, but his opening meeting this spring was not the first time he’d presented to the Broncos’ full offensive staff.
Weeks after Webb attempted 41 passes for the New York Giants in the final week of the 2022 season, he flew to Denver to interview for a job coaching quarterbacks under new Broncos coach Sean Payton.
Webb, as part of the interview, was asked to present to Denver’s newly assembled offensive staff, of which he would eventually become one of the final pieces.
Logan Kilgore had just been brought on as a quality control coach but knew of Webb, both as a fan and student of football but also because he’d built a close relationship with the Manning family over more than a decade and coached Arch Manning in high school during the 2022 season. Webb had spent his rookie season as a third-round pick in 2017 backing up Arch’s uncle and future Hall of Famer Eli Manning.
As Webb delved into the ins and outs of quarterback play and shared his experience and coaching philosophy, the room was mesmerized.
“He was extremely polished, extremely intelligent, good communicator,” Kilgore recalled recently. “The visual presentation that he provided was incredible. If you’re a former player, maybe things don’t always translate to that (coaching) side so fast.”
They did for Webb, in part, because he and essentially everybody he’s come across in his football playing days knew he one day was going to be a coach. Webb has every game plan since his days playing for his father, Matt, at Prosper High in Texas. In December 2012, Eric Morris was hired by Kliff Kingsbury’s Texas Tech staff. One of his first assignments: Visit Webb, who was committed, about to sign and a month from joining the Red Raiders’ program.
“You could just tell, the minute that I got in there, that he was super confident in what he did and loved ball and was very opinionated,” Morris recalled.
When Webb got to Lubbock, it didn’t take long for the coaching future to show up tangibly.
“He was always a guy that had ideas,” Morris said. “‘Hey, Coach, what if we did it this way? What if we motioned X here? What if we moved formation to the boundary?’
“So you could always just tell, the wheels were always spinning with him.”
Webb, a prolific note-taker and collector of all manner of football ideas, has built a playbook and a plan for himself over many years.
Of course, so, too, has Payton, who still holds the final say in all things Broncos.
What, ultimately, Denver’s offense looks and feels like with Webb at the controls remains to be seen. Some clues have started to emerge, though, and they build on themes that unsurprisingly sound like the stories from those who coached Webb along the way.
He has good, unique ideas of his own and the ability to coach them well, but he also excels in taking already good ideas and shaping them into better ones.
Players in training camp talk largely about tailoring and tinkering. They talk about similar concepts out of a tweaked formation. Same play, but with pre-snap motion. Payton-esque scheme all dressed up with new-school sleight of hand. Streamlined verbiage to facilitate thinking and playing fast.
This, though, is not tinkering for tinkering’s sake. This is a change targeted specifically at making life more efficient for Nix.
Running the football with conviction and regularity is a point of focus, but it would also help keep defenses honest against Nix, who led the NFL in pass attempts last year.
Nix, Payton says, reads defenses quickly. Sometimes too quickly. He might come off his No. 1 read just before that guy is about to become available. Experience and work should help him play with the right pace at the right time, but Webb hasn’t stopped there.
“There were some long hours in the offseason as a passing game staff of really trying to evaluate and watch the last two years of him playing and how does the first read marry up with the second read,” Webb said.
One final factor: The Broncos are giving Nix more game-day freedom in Year 3.
He, in his coaches’ eyes, has earned it.“He’s handling some stuff at the line of scrimmage more than maybe he has in the past,” Webb told The Post. “Taking what we talk about in the QB room out and flying it. He’s grown in so many areas protection-wise, defensive recognition, play understanding.
“I’m really, really satisfied with where he’s at right now.”
Jaylen Waddle should change Denver’s offense substantially
Josh Allen took major strides in the 2019 season, his second starting for Buffalo.
The club went from 6-10 in his rookie season to 10-6. A roster makeover started to come into focus. Allen’s production jumped, though he still only completed 57% of his passes and accuracy questions lingered around the 2018 first-round pick.
Then, in March 2020, the Bills traded a first-round pick and more to acquire Stefon Diggs from Minnesota.
Diggs isn’t the only reason Allen exploded onto the scene and established himself as one of the best quarterbacks in football in his third season, but he certainly didn’t hurt.
The results were immediate. Diggs in 2020 turned in the best year of his illustrious career, catching 127 balls for 1,535 yards in his first season playing with Allen. Allen finished second in the MVP voting.
Diggs spent four seasons with the Bills and averaged 111 catches, 1,343 yards and nine touchdowns per season.
All of that crossed Webb’s mind back in March when the Broncos finalized a deal sending a first-round pick plus to Miami for Waddle. Just like Payton saw some of his younger self in Webb, Webb saw shades of his football past in the Waddle deal.
“Just seeing the growth from (Allen and Diggs) at that time, there’s some similarities of what started to happen here,” Webb said this summer. “It doesn’t mean itap going to. We got a long way to go, but man, (Waddle) is good. I’ve just enjoyed the person and just watching him work. He is a blessing to be around.
“He’s a multiplier. He’s a thermostat.”
The Broncos have known the need since Payton arrived here in 2023. He quickly decided Jerry Jeudy was not the answer. Courtland Sutton is a valuable asset in his own right and has been Nix’s favorite target by far through two seasons together, but he is not a prototypical No. 1.
Waddle is.
The Broncos knew they didn’t need Romeo Doubs or Jauan Jennings in free agency. They eventually learned they could have drafted Omar Cooper at No. 30 out of Indiana. But Denver already had depth. They had quality players at the position.
They needed a ceiling-raiser and they happily paid a premium for one.
They worked on Waddle for months, dating to the trade deadline in November 2025. The tape spoke for itself. They talked with countless people about his makeup and work ethic.
Finally, they got their guy.
He’s been what the Broncos expected and more.
“Obviously, his speed down the field is noticeable but he can win underneath, he can win intermediate and that draws eyes,” Webb said. “You can see it when he’s out there practicing. Other guys are getting touches because he’s drawing attention on him. Whenever they don’t have eyes on him, he’s making plays.
“It allows us to be very versatile and it opens the run game up.”
The window
So much has to go right for a team to win the Super Bowl any given year.
The Broncos found out last winter that, even when all the stars start to align, they can come apart with the snap of a bone.
This is not a classic chips-all-in season where a front office and ownership group throw caution entirely to the wind. Denver has ample cap space and is clearly considering how to smooth the transition to life with Nix post-extension, should that be how the next 12 months play out.
Payton just signed a new five-year deal and says he wants to coach for quite a while yet.
For as good as the Broncos appear to be, they still have questions to answer.
Can they actually run the football better? Can J.K. Dobbins stay healthy a full season for the first time and can the Broncos remain one of the league’s healthiest teams for a fourth straight year? Can Vance Joseph’s defense maintain its high level of play? Can Payton, who seems genuinely excited by Webb’s promise, strike the right balance of “some suggestions, some mandates,” as he described his gameday role in the new play-caller’s ear?
Whatever happens, it is apparent from the starting line that Payton came that close to a Super Bowl appearance last season but came away realizing the offense needed change.
Here it is. A swashbuckling 31-year-old coordinator and an in-his-prime game-changer at receiver who are expected to help lift all boats.
None more than the quarterback.
“He understands how close we were a year ago,” Webb said, “but it was a year ago and we’ve kind of put that in the rearview mirror. We understand how close we were, but this is a brand new season. …
“Now everyone kind of knows we’re a good football team. And we are, but everybody knows it so there’s a new target.”
Bo Nix career stats
| 2024 | 2025 | |
|---|---|---|
| Completions | 376 | 388 |
| Attempts | 567 | 612 |
| Completion % | 66.1% | 63.4% |
| Yards | 3775 | 3931 |
| TD | 29 | 25 |
| INT | 12 | 11 |
| Rush Yards (TD) | 430 (4) | 356 (5) |
| W/L | 10-7 | 14-3 |
Davis Webb bio
Playing career |
||
|---|---|---|
| Year | Team | Back up QB to |
| 2017 | N.Y. Giants | Eli Manning |
| 2018 | N.Y. Jets | Sam Darnold |
| 2019-21 | Buffalo | Josh Allen |
| 2022 | N.Y. Giants | Daniel Jones |
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Coaching career |
||
| Year | Team | Title |
| 2023-24 | Broncos | QB coach |
| 2025 | Broncos | QB/passing game coord. |
| 2026 | Broncos | Offensive coord. |
Jaylen Waddle career stats
| Year | Games | Catches | Targets | Yards | TD |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
|
|
|||||
| 2021 | 16 | 104 | 140 | 1,015 | 6 |
| 2022 | 17 | 75 | 117 | 1,356 | 8 |
| 2023 | 14 | 72 | 104 | 1,014 | 4 |
| 2024 | 15 | 58 | 83 | 744 | 2 |
| 2025 | 16 | 64 | 100 | 910 | 6 |
