DENVER — Bo Nix’s season was done in the snap of an ankle bone, a freefall off an emotional mountaintop after leading the Denver Broncos to a 33-30 overtime win over Buffalo in the AFC divisional round Saturday.
But there is no time to mourn. The AFC’s No. 2-seeded New England Patriots and MVP candidate Drake Maye loom on the immediate horizon. This Broncos locker room finds itself in the strangest of all places: the future of the franchise suddenly ripped away, and having to step into an immediate future without him.
“I wouldn’t say it’s just another test, right,” right tackle Mike McGlinchey said. “Like, you don’t ever say that about guys getting hurt. I think, especially when it’s the leader and the quarterback of your team, there’s a little bit more nuance to that. But, certainly, we are a team that’s been battle-tested.”
The next test: to coalesce around the locker closest to the trainer’s room, the one the 29-year-old backup Jarrett Stidham calls home. Game-planning for New England without Nix will be tough. Adjusting Sean Payton’s offense to Stidham’s strengths in one week will be tough. But as McGlinchey and defensive tackle Zach Allen indicated Monday, rallying around career backup Stidham is a fairly easy task.
“I have no doubts that he’s going to go out there and play his butt off,” McGlinchey said Monday. “And I think our team is in a perfect position with Stiddy moving forward, and we’re lucky to have him.
“And we’re lucky that our team, and our coaching staff and our front office, invests in every situation that could possibly come up on a football field, because not everybody has a quarterback waiting in the wings as talented as Jarrett.”
Stidham, as McGlinchey said, has been waiting for a moment like Sunday “the entirety of his career.” He waited behind Tom Brady in his final year in New England — and Stidham’s rookie year — in 2019. He lost a quarterback battle to Cam Newton in 2020. He played insurance for Derek Carr in Las Vegas in 2022. He lost a quarterback battle to Nix in Denver in 2024. Six years have come and gone with only four NFL starts to show for it.
And yet the man’s made good money for good reason. He signed in Denver for two years and $10 million in 2023 to back up Russell Wilson and signed for two years and $12 million this past offseason to back up Nix.
“He’s like a second quarterback coach out there,” Allen said. “And on top of it, too, he can make every single throw.”
Added McGlinchey: “He’s more prepared than anybody would be in this situation. And he can ball. Like, he can flat-out play quarterback. And we’ve seen it every single day of practice.”
Will this be an easy transition in pure X’s and O’s? No. Payton made clear Monday that Nix takes the majority of reps on any given work week, with limited game-feel situations for Stidham.
Still, they will ride behind his No. 8 jersey, because there is no other option.
“He’ll be ready to go,” Payton said Monday, “and ready for the moment.”
