The Denver Broncos found the quarterback who has helped change the direction of the franchise in last year’s draft. Selected with the No. 12 overall pick, many felt the Broncos reached for Bo Nix, but the team couldn’t be happier with the player it got.
Payton got the quarterback he wanted all along and Broncos Country finally found its savior, but it took a painfully long time.
Following the retirement of Peyton Manning after the 2015 season, the Broncos tried several players to fill the role of franchise quarterback. But no move was worse than the one the team made in the 2016 NFL Draft, trading up in the first round to select Memphis quarterback Paxton Lynch.
Matt Verderame of Sports Illustrated recently put together a list of the biggest draft busts in the history of each team, and his selection for the Broncos is Lynch. That should come as a surprise to no one.
Lynch was bad, like, monumentally bad.
He came from an offense that spread it out at Memphis and he padded his stats. He came into the league as a player who couldn’t read defenses, couldn’t cycle through his progressions and wasn’t anything close to a leader. He also developed a reputation for being lazy, namely being more concerned with playing video games than reading his playbook, as a rookie.
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It was a red flag when he not only couldn’t beat out Trevor Siemian for the starting job in 2017 but, truthfully, looked well behind undrafted quarterback Kyle Sloter that summer.
The Broncos cut ties with Lynch following the 2017 season, sealing his fate as the worst draft pick in team history. Others may argue, but it really isn’t even close. Coming into the league with the kind of hype he had, combined with the fact that the Broncos traded up to get him, gives him that spot when you consider how bad he was on the field.
Several quarterbacks tried and failed where Lynch left off, but the bad pick by the Broncos sent the franchise back at least a couple of years.
One year later, fans should look back and embrace the fact that Nix was the sixth quarterback drafted in the first round. That so many other teams passed on him and so many scouts felt he might just be a dink-and-dunk quarterback that was too old to still be playing college football.
So much of what you get in the draft can come down to luck. The Broncos are fortunate that the other teams needing a quarterback chose to pass on Nix, but the rest of him coming to Denver wasn’t luck. Payton knew he had his guy, he just hoped he could get him. And he did. It’s the exact opposite of what happened when the Broncos took Lynch.
That was the team seeing a tall quarterback who put up big numbers in college and took a shot that he could do the same in Denver. It was a miserable move that represents some of the darkest days in Broncos history.
But the selection of Nix has brought the sunshine back to the Mile High City. From Lynch to Nix, the Broncos have risen from the ashes and back to being a contender.
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