It was closing in on noon on a sunny, mild late-winter morning in Eugene, Ore., and Bo Nix was reaching down to grab his bag as he and the Denver Broncos braintrust were wrapping up three hours of meeting time, and getting set to head out to the field for his workout.

What’s in your backpack? Sean Payton asked.

Nix reached inside, and grabbed a roll of tape that he explained he’d need for his ankles if he were going to train. He also pulled out a spare pair of football cleats and a lacrosse ball that he said he’d use for rolling out his back. And what wasn’t in the bag was just as significant.

Everything was football-related. All of it.

Through the pre-draft process and in particular with quarterbacks, teams dispatch execs, scouts and coaches to cut through the noise. There’s the image projected, and there’s the real guy behind it, and sometimes, they don’t match up. Most of the time, that’s when a team will miss on a prospect. So moments such as the one Payton, Denver GM George Paton and their guys had that morning at Oregon are like gold for NFL teams.

Mostly because it confirmed the reputation that preceded Nix was real. He was the son of an Auburn quarterback who followed his dad’s legacy, struggled, and then built his own on the other side of the country. The 24-year-old had long cut the image of a gym rat, someone who couldn’t get enough football, and in that moment, that morning, the Broncos became true believers.

Thirty-eight days later, to the surprise of many, Denver made Nix the No. 12 pick in the draft. They did so at the conclusion of a process that’s more detailed that many people would believe—and varies from team to team.

…

Everyone knew the Broncos needed a quarterback. But no one was sure, given their position, and the likelihood that at least four quarterbacks would be gone by the time they picked, just how serious they’d get about selecting one once the draft got started.

So like the Falcons, and his old colleague Fontenot, and with that same experience from 2017, Payton worked with Paton to keep the circle small on the Broncos’ true intentions.

Still, Denver could only control so much. And that led to some grimaces early in the process when two guys who’d played for Payton in New Orleans—Fox college football analyst Joel Klatt and the recently retired Chase Daniel—identified Nix as a perfect fit. Seeing that, as they worked through the evaluations, prompted Payton to say to team CEO Greg Penner and his GM, “I promise you this: We’re not the only ones that feel this strongly about this player.”

It’s just that the group that did feel that way was probably smaller with Nix than it was with Maye or Penix or McCarthy, or certainly Williams or Daniels, and it was good with the Broncos if things stayed that way. And there was a twist that helped Denver in that regard.

Oregon scheduled its pro day for March 12, the day between the opening of the free-agent tampering period—when teams start agreeing to deals with veterans on the market—and the start of the new league year, when those teams can officially sign them. As such, just one head coach, Chicago’s Matt Eberflus, made it to Eugene to see Nix throw. He, of course, wasn’t taking Nix. And there wasn’t a single general manager in attendance.

The Broncos sent scouts, and got the tape, and what was eye-opening to those who really watched it was the free-flowing nature of the workout. Nix hadn’t had the best Senior Bowl week, and threw after Tennessee’s human Juggs machine, Joe Milton, at the combine, where it looked to scouts like he was guiding the ball a bit. Back in Eugene, though, his 72-throw session was marked with Nix asking evaluators what they wanted to see.

Where most pro days are a night at the movies, this was a night at the improv.

Nix was determined to answer every question.

For his part, before all this, Paton had four live exposures to Nix—once while Nix was still at Auburn, in 2022 at Colorado, last fall at USC and then at the Pac-12 title game. But he and his scouts kept their thoughts from Payton on the quarterbacks, so that Payton could do his own evaluation. It was only after college director Brian Stark and area scout David Bratten relayed their impressions from the pro day to Paton that Payton spilled the beans to his GM.

“I really like this guy,” Payton told them. And by then, the Broncos analytics staff backed up those feelings with hard facts. I’d heard from another team that the analytics had Nix as the draft’s most statistically impressive quarterback. Denver, clearly, saw it that way, too, based on what its own analytics director, Scott Flaska, was bringing back to the football brass.

To combat the (fair) criticism that Nix came from such a screen/quick-game-heavy offense, they eliminated throws tagged as “givens” from the evaluation, as they did with all of the quarterbacks. From there, Payton and Paton got extensive, expansive advanced stats that elevated Nix above his peers. He was first in two-minute drills needing points, end-of-half two-minute drives, critical fourth-quarter two-minute drives, fourth quarter two-minute, and, importantly, negative play differential. He was second (to Rattler) in red-zone passing.

All of it, as the coach and GM saw it, was a result of a quarterback who played fast, and team-first, and could serve as the sort of point-guard-on-grass Payton has always coveted. It was something the Broncos needed, too, coming off a year through which Russell Wilson was second in the league (ahead of only Justin Fields) in time taken to throw per attempt, per Denver’s research.

So with all of these pieces, and a March 7 Zoom, plus the pro day done, Payton and Paton gathered a group to run the private-workout gamut. Each one would kick off with the quarterback getting a packet around 5 p.m. the night before to study, and be grilled on it the next morning. The visit would then begin in earnest around 9 a.m. the following day, with two hours in the classroom followed by a break and then a 75–80-throw workout.

The Broncos’ dance card for these visits had Nix, McCarthy, Maye and Rattler on it, with the team going to Penix’s pro day in lieu of the full on-campus treatment.

Upon arriving at the Oregon football facility on the morning of March 18 at around 9 a.m., Payton asked Nix how long he’d been there. He answered that he’d gotten there about an hour beforehand and, sizing him up, the Broncos folks (Payton and Payton were joined by assistant GM Darren Mougey, VP of player personnel Cody Rager, OC Joe Lombardi and QBs coach Davis Webb) saw a guy who was flat-out bigger than advertised.

He was stocky in his lower half, and had big hands. Solidly built, he left very little to wonder how he was able to play with such great control—he never fumbled over two years at Oregon.

The mental part followed. The information, and Denver intentionally gave the quarterbacks a little too much, was basically the first three days of an offensive install. Broncos center Alex Forsyth, a 2023 rookie who played with Nix in 2022, and who’s proven to be football brilliant himself, raved to the Denver staff about his former teammate’s intelligence. That most certainly checked out with Nix’s recall for everything Denver had sent him.

Then, he grabbed that backpack, emptied it for Payton, packed it back up, and went outside with the coaches to throw.

Webb ran the workout, and Denver wanted to confirm what it saw on tape—that the arm strength, while short of the truly elite guys, was very good, and his accuracy was on another level. The Broncos QBs coach also wanted to simulate a noisy pocket, and see Nix’s ability to move around, and throw with things muddy around him. All that was on tape stood up, with Nix throwing to WR Troy Franklin and RB Bucky Irving, and around 10 of his ex-teammates there to support him (which affirmed what the Broncos heard about Nix as a pied piper).

With that complete, the Broncos retreated for final draft meetings. Payton, Paton and Penner by then knew where things stood on Nix. They also knew they had to keep it to themselves. So on the board in the Denver draft room, all of the quarterbacks were stashed on the bottom left corner, in no particular order, both to prevent any sort of bias in discussion and also, simply, to keep the brass’ secret.

Enough people, by then, had connected the dots to where Denver had to be careful. Which is one reason why the Broncos stayed where they were at 12, resisting a trade back, and had mild concern that the Raiders could leapfrog them. Once Penix went at No. 8, that killed any idea of a trade down, since it took that option off the table for a Vegas group that had been linked to the Washington QB. Denver was locked in, fingers crossed that nothing would change.

And nothing did. Penix went 8, McCarthy 10 and Nix 12.

Would it have been nice to get an extra Day 2 pick and Nix? Sure. But if he’s what Payton and Paton think he can be, which is a lot more than most NFL folks believe he will be, then it won’t matter much what Denver gave up to get him.