Blame the coaching staff for putting Bo Nix in an impossible position

The offseason is over. The hype is over. And the Denver Broncos’ season opener at Arrowhead delivered the kind of gut-punch reality check that no amount of training camp optimism can soften.

Denver fell 31-10 to the Kansas City Chiefs on “Monday Night Football.” And the performance raised questions that cut far deeper than one bad night from the franchise quarterback.

On a recent edition of “Stokley and Evans, with Mark Schlereth” on 104.3 The Fan, Mark Schlereth didn’t waste time dissecting Bo Nix’s stat line, 17 of 28 passing for 131 yards, one touchdown, one interception and three fumbles. The numbers are ugly. Nobody is arguing otherwise. But Schlereth’s frustration wasn’t directed at the quarterback. It was directed at the man calling the plays.

“You could sit and talk about how bad Bo was, and he wasn’t good. But man, he was put in a really tough position by this coaching staff,” Schlereth said.

Nix was making his first regular-season appearance since breaking his ankle in the AFC Divisional Round last January. He was rusty. He was tentative. He looked like a quarterback still finding his footing after months away from competitive football. All of that was predictable. What wasn’t predictable, or acceptable, was Davis Webb’s refusal to adjust.

J.K. Dobbins and RJ Harvey both averaged over 4.5 yards per carry on the night. The run game was working. And yet, the two backs combined for just 11 carries between them. Davis Webb, making his highly anticipated debut as the offensive coordinator and play caller, seemed determined to throw his way out of trouble rather than lean on the one thing that was actually functioning properly.

Schlereth then drew the comparison that made the failure impossible to ignore.

“I’m just gonna call it like I see it. What did Andy Reid do for a quarterback that was coming off an ACL, a torn ACL only what, after 10 months or whatever? Man, they’re gonna run the ball, they’re gonna keep him out of tough situations,” Schlereth said.

The contrast was damning. Reid handed Kenneth Walker the football 23 times for 173 yards and a touchdown. He protected Patrick Mahomes by building the game plan around the ground game, understanding that his quarterback’s first game back from a devastating knee injury wasn’t the night to ask him to win it with his arm. It was smart. It was calculated. It was exactly what good coaching looks like when your franchise quarterback is returning from a significant injury.

The Broncos did the opposite. They asked Nix to carry the offense through the air on a night when his legs were unreliable, his rhythm was off, and the run game was averaging nearly five yards every time someone handed the ball to a running back. Webb had the answer sitting right in front of him, and chose not to use it.

Nix will be better. His talent hasn’t disappeared. His competitive fire hasn’t dimmed. But Monday night was a failure of preparation and adjustment that falls squarely on the coaching staff’s shoulders. The quarterback wasn’t ready to shoulder the full load in his first game back. Andy Reid predicted it for his own quarterback and built a game plan accordingly. Davis Webb didn’t, and the 31-10 scoreboard is the result.

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