Broncos QB Bo Nix to Avoid the Year 2 Slump in SI's 2025 Power Rankings

The Denver Broncos are a team on the rise. After wandering the quarterback desert for eight long years, the Broncos finally found Bo Nix, who led the team back to the football promised land with the help of Sean Payton.

The Broncos won 10 games with a rookie quarterback and made the playoffs, defying the oddsmakers and the vast majority of NFL prognosticators' pre-season predictions. Fast forward to February 2025, and while there are still echoes of skepticism and disrespect around the NFL media sphere, the Broncos are being power-ranked as a playoff team.

The latest evidence comes from Sports Illustrated's Conor Orr, who placed the Broncos at No. 14 in his early 2025 power rankings — barely making it as a playoff-included team. But the Broncos were the last team to qualify for the playoffs as the 14th and final team.

"Depending on which metric you prefer, or whether the eye test is your ultimate method, the Broncos could have been considered the best defense in the NFL last year. Again, hard to replicate year in and year out but this team is absolutely solid up front and is built around a generational talent at cornerback," Orr wrote. "Offensively, I think this is one of the few teams that we could almost lock in a step forward, because Sean Payton has telegraphed his offseason to-do list, which includes a versatile tight end/receiving back to unlock his offense. Bo Nix does not strike me as a quarterback who gets figured out or regresses."

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I would agree that the Broncos are one of those teams to be relatively confident in taking another step forward in Year 2 of the Payton/Nix era. But in the cold vacuum of an offseason power ranking, it makes sense to hedge by keeping the Broncos basically where they ended in 2024.

There's always the fear of the dreaded sophomore slump for quarterbacks, but the antidote to that is coaching stability. And when a young signal-caller has one of the best offensive minds carrying over as his play-caller, as Nix has in Payton, it only minimizes the risk of a Year 2 regression and increases the likelihood of a step forward.

The Broncos are intent on building the nest around Nix last year. Much was made about the 'limited' weaponry at Nix's disposal as a rookie, and while there's no question he was the tide that helped raise the ships around him, the Broncos' skill-position supporting cast was and is much better than 'they' would have you believe.

Running back was the exception. The Broncos boast one of the NFL's best offensive lines, but without a difference-maker at running back, the ground game could never achieve lift-off, which put too much of the onus on Nix.

Payton and Broncos GM George Paton are aiming to fix that this offseason. With upwards of $40 million in salary-cap space and a full complement of draft picks, including No. 20 overall, the Broncos are primed to add the necessary personnel pieces to build around Nix, reinforce Vance Joseph's defense, and take further steps toward leapfrogging their AFC competitors.

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