Before the injury to Denver quarterback Bo Nix, the AFC Championship Game between the Denver Broncos and New England Patriots was shaping up to have a very compelling and obvious storyline.
One about the return to prominence by two teams who’ve spent recent years on the NFL’s fringes, arriving here at a pace quicker than most would have imagined.
The catalyst for both turnarounds has been the emergence of young franchise quarterbacks.
The Patriots landed Drake Maye with the third pick of the 2024 NFL Draft, after Caleb Williams and C.J. Stroud went first and second. Nine selections after Maye, the Broncos took Nix, a pro-ready player who had started more college games than any quarterback in history.
And thanks to the work of two second-time head coaches in New England’s Mike Vrabel and Denver’s Sean Payton, these two teams are back butting heads for a Super Bowl berth, 10 years after they did it with Tom Brady and Peyton Manning.
But that whole storyline got hijacked and buried once Nix broke his ankle on the second-last play of overtime last Saturday against Buffalo, ending his season and opening the door for 29-year-old backup Jarrett Stidham, a one-time Patriots fourth-round draft pick who has been on the roster for three seasons. The Broncos are his third team.
And so the storyline becomes trying to understand how monumental a loss Nix is for Denver and what a winning game script has to look like for the Broncos.
In losing Nix, the Broncos are losing a lot, starting with his knack for making clutch plays at key moments of a game, a quality that helped Denver rack up a slew of one-score wins during the regular season on the back of Nix’s seven fourth-quarter comebacks and five game-winning drives. He added to both those totals a week ago against the Bills.
Nix isn’t the most consistently accurate quarterback you’ll ever see but he has that knack for making the must-have throws count. And that’s hard to count on from Stidham given his lack of recent play time.
Another thing you lose by Nix’s absence is his legs. Nix was the Broncos’ third-leading rusher during the regular season and led the team in rushing in each of its last two games.
So what do they have in Stidham? Well, at $6 million a season, he’s one of the NFL’s highest-paid backup quarterbacks and the Broncos have already extended him once, suggesting their words about believing in him are more than just niceties.
Payton doesn’t pay his backup quarterback $6 million a season if he doesn’t believe in him.
And in his four NFL starts, he hasn’t been shy about throwing the football, averaging 34 attempts per game. Overall, his NFL body of work amounts to 1,422 yards passing with eight touchdowns and eight interceptions. But there’s a belief among some that he’s simply starter material who’s never had a chance in a good situation.
Then there’s the question of rust, which is difficult to measure as playing in this kind of game without having thrown a live pass in more than two years (aside from pre-season) is pretty much unprecedented.
Payton will choose the plays with which Stidham tells him he is most comfortable and the offensive game plan will be built around those.
The Broncos need a strong day of complementary football, starting with a defence and special teams that can keep this game low scoring and are able to put the offence on short fields.
Denver can win the game on defence. It’s the offence’s job not to lose it and Payton will in-game coach accordingly.
If the Broncos can get the game script they want, they still may need to win the turnover battle. And that’s where New England may be vulnerable.
No quarterback has fumbled more than Maye since the start of the regular season and no quarterback has fumbled more in the playoffs – six times in two games.
Facing a defence that led the league in sacks and is coming off a game in which it took the ball away from Buffalo five times, this could be the matchup that decides it.
This AFC Championship Game could absolutely be decided by a quarterback who can’t overcome his flaws.
But could it be the one we don’t expect?