Bo Nix doesn’t care about style points; he only cares about winning

There are quarterbacks who make the highlight reels every week. The ones with the effortless deep balls, the picture-perfect spirals and the stat lines that look like they were designed in a lab. Bo Nix is not that quarterback.

Nix is the kind of quarterback who makes you uncomfortable for three quarters and then makes you forget all about it in the fourth. And according to Mark Schlereth, that’s exactly who the Broncos need him to be.

On a recent edition of “Stokley and Evans, with Mark Schlereth” on 104.3 The Fan, the hosts broke down the reality of what Nix has been through his first two NFL seasons. A winner who doesn’t always win in the way people want him to.

Twenty-four victories in two years. Eleven one-score wins last season alone. A franchise resurrected from a decade of irrelevance. And yet, the style in which those wins have arrived has given critics just enough ammunition to keep questioning whether Nix is truly elite.

Schlereth wasn’t interested in entertaining the debate.

“I don’t believe that Bo is concerned with style points. He’s concerned with wins,” Schlereth said.

He then acknowledged the pattern that has defined the Nix experience. Slow starts followed by clutch finishes, conservative stretches followed by moments of brilliance when the game is on the line.

“So even if he wins, and it’s like what we’ve had the last few years. Where it’s been not very good early, really good late, but whatever. He’s just concerned about wins, not the style of the wins,” Schlereth said.

That exposes the disconnect between how Nix views his job and how portions of the national media evaluate it. Nix’s game isn’t built for aesthetics. It’s built for outcomes.

The early-game conservatism, the easy throws, the occasional three-and-outs, the methodical feeling of an offense not yet in rhythm, isn’t a flaw. It’s the preamble to the fourth-quarter version of Nix that flips the switch and finds a way to win.

Schlereth identified where the criticism originates.

“A lot of the people out there that discredit the Broncos are concerned with style points from their quarterback,” Schlereth said.

Mike Evans then asked whether any of that noise reaches Nix himself.

“But do you think he hears it? You think he’s heard it all summer long?” Evans asked.

Schlereth’s answer was as definitive as it gets.

“I’m sure that he’s heard it. And I’m 100% sure that he does not care,” Schlereth said.

That’s the line that should end every conversation about whether the external noise affects the Broncos’ franchise quarterback. Nix has heard the doubters since before he was drafted. He heard them when people questioned whether he was a first-round talent. He heard them when the slow starts piled up. He heard them when the national rankings buried him below peers with lesser résumés.

And through all of it, he kept winning, 24 times in two seasons. With a style that may never satisfy the aesthetics crowd but has delivered results that none of his critics can dismiss.

The Broncos don’t need a quarterback who wins pretty. They need a quarterback who wins. And Schlereth is convinced that Nix doesn’t just accept that identity, he embraces it completely.

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