Bo Nix and the Denver Broncos won again in Week 8, but the result did little to quiet the questions around the offense. Denver trailed the Kansas City Chiefs 24-13 in the fourth quarter before rallying for a 28-24 victory. Broncos hero Shannon Sharpe, however, still took aim at Nix and the passing game afterward.
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“How many F’ing passes is Bo going 2 get batted? F—-KKKKKKK,” Shannon Sharpe posted on X.
Nix went 20 of 32 for 222 yards and two touchdowns with no interceptions, but he had five passes batted away in total on Sunday night, per Arrowhead Pride’s Ron Kopp Jr. George Karlaftis alone batted away three of Nix’s passes, while R Mason Thomas and Khyris Tonga batted away one each. Nix’s accuracy was 62.5% against the Chiefs, only slightly better than the 60.7% he recorded in their previous meeting in the season.
The Gazzette’s Paul Klee counted six batted passes unofficially, of which four were deflected at the line of scrimmage.
Bo Nix technically had a good game against the Chiefs and against the Cardinals in the previous week. However, there were some disparaging numbers about the QB before these matchups.
He entered the Chiefs game averaging 5.7 yards per attempt, the shortest average for any quarterback through the first seven games of a season since Drew Brees in 2020, CBS Sports’ Garrett Podell noted. This was also Brees’ last season, which Podell highlighted to bring out how lackluster the passing attack has been with Nix in the lead so far this season.
Earlier in the season, Denver was tied for the third-fewest explosive plays and ranked second in three-and-out rate (31.8%) this season per ESPN. This was nowhere near the Broncos offense that looked like one of the best only a year ago.
Perhaps some of that can be because head coach Sean Payton handed over playcalling duties to Davis Webb ahead of the season. Payton relieved him of the responsibility midway through the campaign, taking over before the Chargers game.
Since then, the Broncos have been on a winning streak.
The recent trend is encouraging. The Cardinals and the Chiefs games were better showings for Nix. He earned passer ratings of 88.6 against Arizona and 103.9 against Kansas City, his highest this season. Last year, Bo Nix had a 100+ passer rating in his second game. Thankfully, he seems to be getting back into the groove at the right time of the season.
Shannon Sharpe had been critical of Nix before and did not hold back after the Week 6 overtime win over Seattle.
“Let’s put this in context,” said Sharpe on the Nightcap show. “The Broncos won a game in which they had less than 170 yards of total offense at home. Do you know how great your defense has to be to allow you to play this pathetic, this anemic, on the offensive side of the football?”
Nix has heard the noise, and his outlook hasn’t changed.
“I’ll never play a game where I’ll tell you I played good or didn’t have a need to change,” Nix said Wednesday. “For me, it all goes back to, ‘What can I watch? What can I take from? How can I be different? How can I change?’ I always feel like there’s something I can improve upon…
“Sometimes you can overlook the important things that you need to fix. These wins that you’re winning may turn into losses because you didn’t fix them over time. For me, it’s all about getting better. That’s just — in my opinion — the right way to be a professional. You never want to be the same. You never want to stay the same because to maximize my opportunity and my talents, I don’t have a choice but to get better. I can’t stay the same.”
Afterward, he was candid about how he felt and quick to credit the defense.
“I’m just tired. I’m just ready to go home and go to sleep. But it was just a really big win and the fourth-down was another crazy play by our defense,” Bo Nix said. “It’s just an incredible stand by them; they just battled and battled on that drive and came out on top.”
Winning has settled the scoreboard for now, but the questions about Nix and the passing game will keep coming until the offense matches what the defense is doing.