Should the Broncos pay Bo Nix top-tier quarterback money?

With an extension two years away, the midday show debated whether Bo Nix is worth the kind of contract that the modern QB market demands

BY JOEY FREEBURG

Jun 25, 2026, 12:07 PM

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There’s no contract conversation in the NFL more difficult than the one that surrounds a young quarterback. The price tag of the position has spiraled into territory that fundamentally reshapes a franchise’s roster-building flexibility. The bigger the number, the harder it becomes to build a complete team around the player who just got paid.

For the Denver Broncos, that decisoin is closer than most fans want to acknowledge. It’s time for the conversation.

On a recent edition of the midday show on 104.3 The Fan, hosts Josh Dover and Jake Shapiro went head-to-head on the question of whether Bo Nix deserves the kind of contract the market currently demands for his position.

Nix’s résumé through two seasons is genuinely impressive. He led the Broncos to their first winning season in nine years and their first playoff appearance in a decade as a rookie. He followed it up by taking the team to the AFC Championship Game in his second season. Had he not fractured his ankle late in the Divisional Round matchup against Buffalo, there is a real argument he would have been playing in the Super Bowl.

That kind of track record builds momentum behind an extension. But it doesn’t necessarily justify the size of one.

That’s where Dover and Shapiro found themselves at odds.

Dover started with a measured concession about Nix’s ceiling.

“Bo’s never gonna be Patrick Mahomes-like,” Dover said.

Shapiro doubled down on the admission.

“And that’s the problem,” Shapiro said.

Dover wasn’t ready to concede the broader point.

“I don’t know if it’s a problem,” he replied.

Shapiro fired back with the clarification.

“If you pay him like Mahomes, it will be,” he said.

Dover then pivoted to the structural reality of the modern NFL, the part of the conversation that doesn’t get talked about enough when fans debate quarterback contracts in isolation.

“That’s just the market. Market value requires to pay your quarterback this number,” Dover said.

That’s the trap every franchise eventually walks into. Quarterback contracts don’t get negotiated in a vacuum. They get negotiated against the most-recent comparable deal, and those comparable deals keep climbing. A team can decide it doesn’t want to pay its quarterback at the top of the market, but the market doesn’t care what the team wants. It cares what other teams have already done.

Shapiro made the broader case for caution as clearly as anyone could.

“As soon as you give him that deal, unless you think he is one of the 20 greatest quarterbacks in the history of the sport, you have no chance of winning a Super Bowl,” he said.

Dover wasn’t buying it.

“I don’t think that’s the case,” he responded.

That exchange captured one of the most important debates the Broncos front office will have over the next few years. Shapiro’s concern is rooted in cap math. The teams that win Super Bowls in the modern era do so either with a top-tier quarterback on a rookie deal or with a generational talent whose production justifies the financial weight. The middle ground, paying a very good quarterback like he’s a great one, is where Super Bowl windows go to die.

Dover’s argument is rooted in the realities of the market. Nix has earned an extension. The number is going to be what it is. And operating without a franchise quarterback is far worse than operating with one who costs a lot of money.

There is no clean answer. But the conversation is coming. And the decision the Broncos make will define the next five years of the franchise.