Bo Nix looked at the tape from Denver’s 31-10 face-plant at Arrowhead and called it “pretty pitiful, actually.” Good instinct. Wrong target.
The preseason hype around this Broncos offense was real — this offensive line was getting mentioned as one of the best units in the sport before Patrick Mahomes’ Week 1 return ever kicked off. None of that showed up Monday night.
The box score for Nix himself isn’t the disaster his own quote makes it sound like: 17-of-28, 131 yards, a 19-yard touchdown to Evan Engram, one interception. That’s not the line of a guy who torched his own season opener. What actually torched it was Nix getting sacked four times, tying a career high, and fumbling three times, only one of them lost, behind a line that was supposed to be the strength of this roster.
His negative-play rate jumped to 21.4 percent on the night. Last season it sat at 5.3 percent. That swing has nothing to do with Nix suddenly forgetting how to read a defense and everything to do with the five bodies who stopped giving him anywhere to stand.
Take the sack-fumble that got the most airtime. Kansas City sent only three rushers, and right tackle Mike McGlinchey was so sure he had his guy blocked that the rusher spun free and hit Nix mid-drop. McGlinchey owned it afterward, telling reporters, “You’ve got to take it, you’ve got to learn from it, you’ve got to flush it as fast as possible.” Good on him. It’d be nice if the people calling this line elite back in August were saying it too.
Nix told reporters it was a “nasty wake-up call,” that Denver “literally gave ourselves no chance to succeed and made it easier for them, point blank, period.” That’s a franchise quarterback doing exactly what you want him to do after a bad night. It’s also a quote that’s going to get replayed forever, because “I sucked” is a better headline than “our offensive line just gave up four sacks and three fumbles.”
Sean Payton didn’t hide behind his quarterback either, which is more than you got out of him during Sean Payton’s preseason run of noise about this roster’s ceiling. He called the result “a slap in the face,” and followed it with the part that actually matters: “I don’t feel like we played up to our standard, and certainly that starts with us as coaches, myself.” That’s Sean Payton admitting the coaching staff let Denver down, in a game where Davis Webb was calling plays for the first time in his career and got a fraction of the scrutiny Nix’s mouth did.
I had a couple bucks on the Broncos to cover Monday, so I watched this one with actual money on the line, and even I’m not blaming the guy who got hit four times for a line that was supposed to be the whole point of this rebuild.
That said, Nix still has to hang onto the football no matter who’s rushing him, and three fumbles in one night isn’t purely a pass-protection issue. Some of that’s on him too.
But the pitiful part of Monday night isn’t wearing number 10. It’s the group in front of him that got outclassed by a defense everybody in the building knew was coming.
Here’s the reaction that’s been making the rounds since:
https://twitter.com/lockedupjb/status/2099697373429563707
Nix said “pretty pitiful.” The five guys who let him get hit like that should be saying it right along with him.
