Steve Spagnuolo tried to throw a changeup on a Christmas night third-and-6.
Bo Nix didn’t hesitate.
The Broncos this season saw more zone coverage from opposing defenses than any team in the NFL, according to Sumer Sports data.
The undermanned Chiefs delivered a heavy diet in Week 17.
“We saw a ton of zone coverage, soft zone,” Denver coach Sean Payton said after. “They were going to force us to rope-a-dope a little bit.”
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Kansas City did just that and kept the Broncos close throughout the game.
On this third down, though, Spagnuolo, the Chiefs’ veteran defensive coordinator, brought pressure and played man coverage behind it.
Nix, operating out of the gun, started a half roll to the right. Kansas City’s pressure overloaded from his left and tight end Adam Trautman did a good job pushing defensive lineman Charles Omenihu up the field on the right side.
Nix never even hit the top of his drop. He recognized the coverage and the gaping ‘B’ gap in front of him, bailed out of his drop and took off for 14 yards.
If Nix stepped through an ankle tackle by George Karlaftis, he’d have broken a huge gain and perhaps even a 55-yard touchdown.
“He saw it, he shot his shot and it worked out really good,” Denver quarterbacks coach Davis Webb told The Post recently. Broncos quarterback Bo Nix (10) in the first half against the Kansas City Chiefs at GEHA Field at Arrowhead Stadium in Kansas City, Missouri on Thursday, December 25, 2025. (Photo by Andy Cross/The Denver Post)
Rhythm, recognition and calmer feet
Nix is through two regular seasons now as a starter. He’s played 35 NFL games, including last year’s wild-card loss to Buffalo.
His Year 2 numbers look, on the whole, a lot like his Year 1 numbers. He didn’t make the leap into the stratosphere. Completion percentage? Slightly down. Quarterback rating? Same. Estimated points added per drop back? Slightly up. So on and so forth.
Stats, of course, don’t tell the entire story of Nix’s 2025 season. His coaches saw improvement, particularly in the second half of the season, after some weeks of considerable struggle.
Now, at the helm of a 14-3 team and two home postseason wins from the Super Bowl, Nix is tasked with trying to guide the Broncos on a run toward a world championship.
How is he, in particular, better equipped to do so than a year ago?
“I think the offense as a whole has found a decent rhythm in regards to how we want to play it, run and pass,” Webb said. “He’s done a good job, really the last seven or eight weeks, of really controlling the line of scrimmage. In and out of the huddle, operation, protections.
“He’s made a jump in recognition.”
Also on the list: calmer feet and a more decisive approach for when to take off and run. They’re all related and intertwined. The third down against the Chiefs shows all three at work and perhaps provided a blueprint for how Denver can maximize Nix’s effectiveness in the postseason.
Start with the recognition.
Nix has now seen Spagnuolo’s defense four times in his career. Same for Los Angeles Chargers coordinator Jesse Minter and Las Vegas’ Patrick Graham. All three draw high praise from Payton and the Broncos’ coaching staff.
But it’s not just specific coordinators.
Webb and the Broncos quarterback room talk frequently about coordinator “families.”
“Jesse Minter, he comes from the Baltimore family,” Webb said. “So that’s Wink Martindale, that’s Mike Macdonald in Seattle. His first game ever was against Mike Macdonald. So you can pull from those experiences.”
The more you see, the more you know, the more you can cross-reference, the more comfortable you get.
Each coordinator has his own wrinkles for each matchup and preparation matters, but there’s not much substituting for experience.
Nix has some familiarity with Buffalo and Sean McDermott, of course, since they played a year ago in the postseason. He also has a terrific resource in Webb, who spent three seasons as a player with the Bills and knows McDermott well.
The staff also sees Nix’s footwork calming as the season progresses.
In mid-December, offensive coordinator Joe Lombardi said Nix’s feet, “have gotten a lot better,” since just before the Broncos’ Week 12 bye, noting “the way he handles himself in the pocket and just trusting the protection.”
For Webb, that carried through the latter stages of the regular season. In part because of Nix’s between-snap habits, but also because of the leap in recognition.
There’s a time and a place for happy feet. There are times and places where being too itchy to get moving can wipe big-play potential off the board.
“It’s not allowing a pressure or something to affect him for the next throw,” Webb said. “‘Hey, deep breathe it out, understand this is the game within the game.’ Understand when the pocket is clean and we’ve got guys with either space or a coverage beater or a man-to-man matchup. That’s the time to have conviction with your throws as opposed to ‘uhhhhh’ and thinking about what happened before.
“He’s done a good job of that as of late.” Bo Nix (10) of the Denver Broncos scrambles for a gain against the Los Angeles Chargers during the third quarter at Empower Field at Mile High in Denver on Sunday, January 4, 2026. (Photo by AAron Ontiveroz/The Denver Post)
Escaping pressure
Interestingly, Nix has also done something else lately: He’s taken off and run more.
Part of that is opponent and plan-driven. Part of it is pressure-driven. Nix’s two highest scramble totals, per charting by The Post, have come against the Chargers. Perhaps not surprisingly, those two games are also the two highest pressure rates against Nix.
In Weeks 17 and 18, though, Nix scrambled 10 total times. That’s Nix running on a designed pass play, so not including anything that looks like a designed run option for him or quarterback draws, sneaks and kneeldowns.
Before Week 17, he’d scrambled 10 times in Denver’s previous nine games.
Payton, during the Christmas game, told Nix and Webb he thought there were running lanes to exploit, but Nix said after Week 18 that he doesn’t think that’s what’s led to the uptick.
“Sometimes I see or feel good lanes, sometimes I don’t have it that day and it’s harder to feel,” he said after Denver’s 19-3 win over L.A. earlier this month. “Some of that is doing it early and feeling it early. I think today, the third play of the game, we got a pressure. It just happens and you escape, you get there and it sort of gets you involved. It’s like hitting a free throw early in a basketball game. You just feel what it feels like, see the ball go through.”
Nix scrambled a season-high six times against the Chargers for 48 yards. The week before: Four for 32.
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He and Webb would, of course, love it if Nix could sit in the pocket and attack the Bills down the field consistently.
“We’ll be aggressive in how we call these games,” Payton asserted Friday.
They’ll count on Nix to continue to do what he’s done better in recent weeks: Play with comfort, confidence and decisiveness, whether that’s throwing the ball or deciding to keep it and run.
“He’s found a good rhythm of using his feet when needed as opposed to his eyes either coming down or allowing previous plays -- whether that be a close pressure or a sack — affect him,” Webb said.
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