ENGLEWOOD, Colo. — You know it’s week 1 of the regular season because Broncos head coach Sean Payton has begun his weekly interviews with 9NEWS.
No sense trying to get cute or overlook the obvious: This week’s conversation was about the patience Payton used to bring along his rookie quarterback Bo Nix, how the rookie came to become a team captain, and how many new plays the coach and offensive play caller put into his 2024 play sheet.
Let’s review the plan you had to bring along Bo Nix. You probably had a good idea when you drafted him he’d be where he is now, starting the opener Sunday at Seattle. But you took an extremely patient approach. Nix was running third behind Jarrett Stidham and Zach Wilson. Then it was Stidham and Bo competing. Then Bo seized the moment in the preseason where even fans who are in it only for the chips and dip on Sunday could see Nix deserved to be the starting quarterback.
Payton: “I think as long as I’ve coached, and we’re talking about a first-round quarterback here and obviously that’s significantly different, but anyone that you’re drafting still has to come in and then earn their position where they’re at on the depth chart, earn their starting positions. I always say we’re rooting for all of them. When we draft someone, we have a vision. We’ve talk about what the vision is. To his credit, he’s worked extremely hard. But you have to have the evidence, or the players in the locker room will look at that in a way that isn’t authentic. So he’s earned it. And I’m sure he’s excited for the opportunity and we all are.”
Rookies aren’t captains because they usually don’t know. They don’t know where to go. They don’t know what to do if this happens. They have to ask the vets where to go, what to do. Bo, though, is different.
Payton: “It’s not often a rookie is named captain, and again, I think the quarterback position oftentimes is in that leadership role, and his teammates felt that strongly about it. It’s a first for me. Forget that it’s a quarterback. It’s generally pretty tough for a rookie to be voted on by his teammates as a captain. In this case he was.”
During this offseason, how much tape do you watch of unique plays run by other teams, maybe in college. How many new plays do you have in this year’s playbook?
Payton: “Yeah, I wouldn’t have a pitch count. We study trends. And we study trends in-season. So it’s not like this end-of-season … it’s kind of ongoing. Fifteen years ago, it was a little harder to access everyone’s video. If you were able to get it. Now the access is you get it the following day. So we try to find things we think fit. We try to find things that we think fit our personnel, whether it’s on offense or defense or even in the kicking game. And then sometimes in the spring, minicamp or even early in training camp you might look at a few things and maybe you like them, maybe you don’t.”
