Through seven games of his first pro season, Bo Nix and the Broncos have won four and lost three with him playing quarterback.
Following last Thursday’s impressive 33-10 victory over New Orleans, in which Nix ran 10 times for 75 yards in addition to completing 16 of 26 passes for 163 yards, he has:
- Completed 61.2% of his pass attempts (137-for-224);
- Thrown for five touchdowns and five interceptions;
- Gained 1,246 yards passing; and
- Rushed 47 times for 255 yards.
So, asked a friend the other day, can Bo lead the Broncos back to the Super Bowl?
Not this year, I said.
My sense at this point is that he’ll be a pretty solid pro, long-term. But, realistically, it’s too early to say if he someday will play in a Super Bowl, let alone if it will be for Denver.
Thirty-four QBs have won the 58 Super Bowls. A look at some who won it all and how they started their careers shows just how hard it is to gauge the likelihood that any rookie quarterback will blossom into a champion.
Let’s start with a Hall of Famer who won three SBs in four years and was voted the most valuable player in one of them.
Troy Aikman didn’t win a game his first year with the Dallas Cowboys. He threw twice as many interceptions (18) as he did touchdown passes in 11 losses in 1989. The next two years his records were 7-8 and 7-5.
The only Heisman Trophy-winning quarterback to lead his team to Super Bowl success was anything but an immediate star in the National Football League.
Jim Plunkett was the first player chosen in the 1971 draft, by New England from Stanford. He had a losing record as a starter from 1971 through 1979 before going 9-2 with the Oakland Raiders, his third team, in 1980.
Plunkett was the MVP in Super Bowl 15 after that season, when Oakland beat the Philadelphia Eagles 27-10 to become the first Wild Card team (of seven) to win it all. Three years later he won it again.
Another quarterback taken No. 1 overall in the draft, Matthew Stafford, also played a long time before winning a Super Bowl.
Stafford labored for 12 years with the Detroit Lions, who had only four winning seasons in that time. (He was 74-90-1.)
Traded to the Los Angeles Rams before the 2021 season, Stafford led them to a 12-5 record in his first year in The City of Angels and threw three touchdown passes in a triumphant Super Bowl in February 2022.
Looking farther back, while Terry Bradshaw and Joe Montana each won four Super Bowls, both started inauspiciously. Bradshaw went 3-5 and 5-8 as a starter for the Steelers in 1970-71. And Montana was 0-1 and 2-5 his first two seasons with the 49ers in 1979-80.
With Sean Payton in town now as coach of the Broncos, Drew Brees’ name comes up quite often in discussions about Bo Nix and what he might become with Payton as his coach.
Brees, it should be noted, played five seasons in San Diego before he became Payton’s pupil in 2006. After getting into only one game as a rookie, he went 8-8 and 2-9 in his next two seasons with the Chargers and had a 30-28 record as their starter.
He was in his fourth season with Payton when he won the Super Bowl and was voted the game’s MVP.
The yardstick by which Nix is being judged, though, is a pair of quarterbacks who were No. 1 overall draft choices and led the Broncos to Super Bowl glory: Peyton Manning and John Elway. Neither, though, was an instant hit.
Manning came to Denver after 13 years with the Indianapolis Colts (ironically the team for whom Elway refused to play and from whom the Broncos acquired him in 1983).
The Sheriff won Super Bowl 41 with the Colts and SB 50 with Denver, but his debut season was forgettable: a 3-13 record and a league-leading 28 interceptions.
The Duke of Denver, meanwhile, started 4-6 in ’83, throwing 14 interceptions to seven touchdown passes, and completing only 47.5% of his throws. Steve DeBerg (5-1) got the Broncos into the playoffs that year.
So, as my friend asked, will Bo lead the Broncos to a Super Bowl victory in his career?
We’ll have to wait and see.
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Denny Dressman is a veteran of 43 years in the newspaper business, including 25 at the Rocky Mountain News, where he began as executive sports editor. He is the author of 16 books, nine of them sports-related. You can write to Denny at dennydressman@comcast.net.