Has Bo Nix has been coached out of some of his freedom in the pocket?

Bo Nix is one of the best off-schedule passers in the NFL. Turn on almost any Broncos game and you’ll see him scramble outside the pocket, reset his feet and load up for a deep shot.

Those plays have produced some of the biggest moments of his career. They’ve also produced a lot of his mistakes.

That raises a question the morning show has been asking: Why does Nix keep ending up throwing from outside the hashes when the pocket in front of him is still intact?

On a recent edition of “Stokley and Evans, with Mark Schlereth” on 104.3 The Fan, Schlereth offered a theory.

“There’s also a part of me that feels like Bo has been coached so stringently about never taking a sack. ‘You can’t take a sack, you can’t take a sack.’ That he escapes the pocket early,” Schlereth said.

The numbers show that avoiding sacks has worked. Nix has been sacked 51 times across 37 career games, about 1.38 per game. The historical NFL average is 1.67. By that measure, he’s done his job well. The cost is that he sometimes leaves a pocket that was still holding up.

Schlereth described what he wants to see instead.

“Sometimes, he doesn’t climb the pocket. Trust that the guy is gonna come out of his break with an anticipation throw, and you gotta climb up there. And as you climb up there, you’re gonna put yourself in a little bit of harm’s way, but you’ve got enough time. Instead, he’s trying to jump out the back of the, you know, right side of the pocket,” he said.

Stepping up keeps the protection working for him, keeps his eyes downfield and lets anticipation throws land on time. Drifting backward and to the right makes the field smaller and turns routine plays into scrambles.
Schlereth then pointed to the bigger issue.

“You’ve almost been coached to the point, where you coach the freedom out of what they do,” he said.

He connected that to the pattern Broncos Country knows well.

“And then all of a sudden, they get behind by 16. They get behind in the second half, and there feels like there’s just more freedom to go out and make plays,” Schlereth said.

That may explain the slow starts better than anything else. Nix plays loose when he has nothing to lose. If he can play with that same freedom from the opening snap, the Broncos offense could get a lot more efficient.

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