Broncos quarterback Bo Nix helped engineer yet another comeback Saturday in the fourth quarter and overtime of Denver’s 33-30 divisional win over Buffalo.
Early in his NFL career, that’s become his trademark.
Tuesday in Birmingham, Alabama, Nix will begin another comeback. This one will be much longer than trying to go 73 yards for a go-ahead touchdown in the fourth quarter or 75 yards to set up a walk-off field goal in overtime.
Nix will have surgery to repair a fractured bone in his right ankle performed by Dr. Norman Waldrop III, an orthopedic surgeon and foot and ankle specialist at the Andrews Sports Medicine and Orthopedic Center.
Speaking with reporters Sunday morning, Denver head coach Sean Payton declined to talk about the extent of the operation or how much of Nix’s offseason may be impacted.
“Listen, the surgeon gets his hands on the X-rays,” Payton said. “We have enough information for everyone. The focus is on the next week’s game.”
A pair of foot and ankle surgeons told The Post that ankle fractures that require surgery tend to take anywhere from three to six months of recovery. That wide timeline accounts for several variables like the exact nature of the fracture, whether — and to what extent — any ligament damage accompanies the fracture, whether there is any injury history that can complicate the surgical or recovery process and more.
“Bone in general takes, I usually say, a minimum of 6-8 weeks to heal,” Dr. Kenneth Jung, orthopedic foot and ankle surgeon at Cedars-Sinai Orthopedics in Los Angeles and a foot/ankle consultant for the Los Angeles Rams, said. “Depending on what they have to do ligament-wise as well, that may add a little bit of time to it. We usually say anywhere from 3 to 6 months.”
Added Dr. Nicholas Strasser, an orthopedic foot and ankle surgeon and assistant professor of orthopedics at Vanderbilt University, “You’d expect by the time the next season rolls around that (Nix would) be moving back to playing … It depends on the nature of the injury, but I would suspect that April to May, that timetable, he’d be working back into doing some drills. But I wouldn’t think that he’d be pushing to be back to full speed by that time.”
Payton’s typical offseason schedule starts with a weights and conditioning program in April, carries through OTAs in May and minicamp in mid-June before the NFL’s summer break arrives. Players report for training camp in late July.
The particulars of Nix’s injury aren’t known except for Payton saying it’s a fracture to a bone in his right ankle. Neither Jung nor Strasser are familiar with the particulars of Nix’s injury beyond having seen video of when it occurred during Saturday’s game.
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The tibia and fibula form the socket for the ankle joint, while the talus is the ball. Most ankle fractures occur in the fibula.
Occasionally, a fracture is stable enough that surgery isn’t required or immediately on the table.
That Nix had imaging done in the minutes after the game and was immediately recommended for surgery despite the stakes of the upcoming weeks for the Broncos, Dr. Jung said, is telling.
“In this case, it would have been unstable, which is why they said, look, there’s no way he’s going to be able to play on it and he’s going to have to have surgery to stabilize it,” Jung said. … “That means the bone shifted. You can walk around — he obviously has a very high tolerance for pain because he was still out there — but the fact that they’re indicating him for surgery that quickly, it was obviously, pretty clearly, an unstable injury. The bone shifted. Adrenaline is going, he’s trying to get through, final drive, right?
“But they take the X-ray, see things are not aligned and that’s when you say, ‘Look, you need to have surgery.’”
Adding a layer of unknown is Nix’s history of ankle injuries. He fractured his left ankle as a high school junior, missed about two months, but returned for a state championship run. Then in 2021, he fractured his right ankle at Auburn University and had surgery.
Oftentimes, Dr. Strasser said, hardware like plates and screws inserted during a repair are left on a joint permanently unless they cause discomfort over time.
“Occasionally we’ll go take it out if it’s symptomatic or bothering someone,” he said. “Most of the time, we tend to leave some of the hardware in, especially somebody that’s playing professional football.
“You try to leave it in if possible on the theory that it maybe protects from something else.”
Nix also had an ankle clean-up procedure after the 2024 season that was described by sources at the time as routine, though the exact nature of the work was never made clear.
Strasser and Jung each said that previous injuries or existing hardware can complicate matters in some instances and be of no consequence in others.
“The history of the injury makes it a little difficult to know what they saw,” Strasser said. “You assume he may have had plates and screws in the ankle beforehand. Was it in that same vicinity or was it in an entirely different area of the ankle? Either one is a possibility. … I’ve also seen situations where a fracture occurs above a previously repaired ankle fracture.”
“But typically when these things heal, the risk returns to what it was originally,” Jung added. “There’s not an elevated risk where he’s super fragile or he’s more likely to fracture his ankle.”
After surgery, Strasser said there’s typically an immobilization period of somewhere between 2-6 weeks.
“Then you start to let them put a little bit of weight on it, start working on some range-of-motion exercises to help prevent it from getting too stiff,” he said. “You try to do some other rehab outside of even the ankle — so core, hip, some other modalities you can use to help minimize any loss of strength as well. That’s such an important part of returning from these for athletes is maintaining strength in everything else, your calf and your other leg muscles.
“So then when you’re cleared to get back to it, you’re not trying to make that other stuff up.”
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