Bo Nix and the Broncos offense are getting one big thing right

Bo Nix is a Denver Bronco in part because the football union between Sean Payton and Russell Wilson was unsalvageable. And a massive reason why was how often Russell Wilson took sacks — often of his own volition.

By the end of the 2023 season, only five teams allowed more sacks or had a higher sack rate than the Broncos. Of the 52 sacks absorbed by Broncos quarterbacks, Wilson took 45 — and per the data compiled by Pro Football Focus, 30 of them were not attributable to pass protection.

Wilson was sacked once every 11.3 pass plays last year. Bo Nix has been sacked once every 35.5 pass plays this year — including none in the last two games.

No NFL team has a better sack rate than the Broncos so far this season. And Nix is a huge reason why the Broncos have gone from one of the worst to first in this metric.

“I think the sack statistic, by and large, is more a quarterback statistic than an offensive line statistic,” Broncos coach Sean Payton said Monday. “There’s some quarterbacks that are more difficult to protect for, some that aren’t.”

And Nix was one of those quarterbacks who avoided sacks through his own pocket presence, ability to feel the rush and proficiency at releasing the ball quickly.

“We saw all the time on college tape, he was someone that got rid of the ball,” Payton said. It becomes frustrating to rush, if you will, because of his ability to, to throw it away or to flush and find an answer or an incompletion.
But it’s something that he’s done well throughout his career.”

And with the development of Bo Nix still very much a work in progress — as seen by his first regular-season touchdown pass to Courtland Sutton, a pass that forced the wide-open receiver to adjust in flight to make the reception — there are plenty of areas in which Nix can grow.

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Consecutive games in which the Broncos allowed at least one sack prior to the Week 3 win over Tampa Bay.

With no sacks allowed in their last two games, the Broncos have their first back-to-back games without allowing a sack since Weeks 16 and 17 of the 2016 campaign, when Denver yielded no sacks to Kansas City and the then-Oakland Raiders in splitting a pair of season-ending games.

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Touchdowns scored by the Broncos through four games, including the Nix-to-Sutton pass Sunday. Only one season saw the Broncos score fewer touchdowns in games 1-4: 1971, in which the Broncos mustered just three end-zone trips in their first four games.

The Broncos’ touchdown tally is tied with three other seasons — 1964, 1968 and 2006 — for second-lowest in club history through four games. That said, the Broncos have a chance for improvement when they face Las Vegas on Sunday.

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The Nix-to-Sutton touchdown gave the Broncos their first scoring pass of the season, but it wasn’t enough to prevent them from a franchise low for touchdown passes in the season’s first four games. Never before now had the Broncos failed to amass at least 2 touchdown passes in the opening four contests of the season.

Denver is just the fourth team in the last 15 seasons with only a single touchdown pass through four games, joining the 2013 Jaguars, 2019 Jets and the 2021 Bears in this spot.