Bo Nix started all 17 regular-season games for the Denver Broncos during the 2024 regular season, then made his 18th start on Sunday in a 31-7 playoff loss to the Buffalo Bills that ended his rookie campaign.
After taking 1,130 offensive snaps in his first NFL season, the former Pinson Valley High School and Auburn quarterback said he was thankful to have gone from the No. 12 pick in the NFL Draft on April 25 to the Broncos’ starting lineup in Denver’s season-opening game on Sept. 8.
“I think the best experience is going out there and doing it,” Nix said. “When you see it — OK, say you’re on the sidelines seeing somebody else do it. You still, once you get in there, you’re feeling those moments for the first time, and that could be a year or two later, so it was a blessing to be able to play right away.
“I learned a lot. I feel like I’m further ahead, further along than what I would be had I not.”
But it wasn’t easy in a league where 18 of the 32 teams did not have the same quarterback in the lineup for every game. Nix revealed in speaking with reporters on Monday that he played in a 41-32 victory over the Cleveland Browns on Dec. 2 with three transverse-process fractures sustained in the previous game – a 29-19 victory over the Las Vegas Raiders on Nov. 24.A transverse-process fracture is a break in the bony extensions on the sides of a vertebra in the spine.
“It was a long 18-, 19-week season, but, fortunately, God was good to me this year,” Nix said. “He allowed me to stay upright. I was healthy, got to play each and every game. Obviously, we all play with some bruises and some cuts and scrapes, but the Vegas week was just I had a little transverse process fracture in my back. But that week got treatment and kind of made it through to that week. Monday night football, it was a stretch that we were all kind of banged up, and I wasn’t going to miss the first Monday night game, so I got treatment on it. And then we were fortunate to have an off week that next week and kind of went away after that. But for that moment, it was annoying, but we all play with annoying things.”
Denver guard Quinn Meinerz said Nix’s toughness was among the qualities that allowed him to lead the Broncos to their first playoff appearance since the 2015 season as a rookie.
“He doesn’t flinch,” Meinerz said on Monday. “He never flinched all year, whether he was playing in his first game or playing injured. That shows his toughness and his competitiveness, and you see it on display every single week.”
Asked what he’d learned during all that experience as a rookie, Nix cited two things.
“Right off the top is just understanding the difference in NFL and what I learned this year with red zone and third downs,” Nix said. “That’s the most important part of the game. So I feel like the red-zone and third-down areas on the field are where I can make growth and understand and be a little bit more aware of certain situations and just different football topics that I can learn from just within the reps that I had this year, just what I could do differently for next year and keep us on the field for longer.”
A “Right away, Bo captured this locker room by the way that he works, by the person that he is and the way that he progressed,” McGlinchey said on Monday. “It takes a lot of hard work to get better week-in and week-out, and it takes a lot of focus, and a lot of the guys aren’t ready to commit themselves to that.
I think Bo is certainly a shining example of that, and it permeated through our locker room.“The improvement from him going forward is just going to be exponential.”
Because of his teammates and coaches, Nix said he was able to have “a great rookie year.”
“Unfortunately and fortunately, I played on a lot of teams that seasons have ended, so you know all good things come to an end,” Nix said. “This has been a good run. Started where we were and then to be where we are now, play an extra week of football, have an opportunity to play in the playoffs. It’s exciting, and it’s an exciting time to be in Denver right now.
But I love this team, will always appreciate what they did for me as a rookie coming in, learning the NFL. It was an honor to play with those guys each week. As I also understand that teams change, so sometimes you don’t have the same team the next year, but got great guys in the locker room, really enjoyed being around them.”
