Leading up to the 2024 NFL draft, Caleb Williams was the obvious candidate to go first overall and many pundits expected Jayden Daniels to go second overall.
There was also Drake Maye, then a group of quarterbacks including J.J. McCarthy, Bo Nix and Michael Penix. The Denver Broncos‘ staff scouted all of the top QBs in this year’s class, and one stood out.
“We went through that process with all of these guys, and we had a strong conviction [about Nix],” Broncos coach Sean Payton said Wednesday. “Then it’s tuning out the white noise relative to what you’re seeing. [In] 2017, we spent hours on these players. We had a certain grade on [Alvin] Kamara. I felt it wasn’t high enough, I remember just standing up on a chair in the draft room and saying, ‘We have this guy graded.’ There’s kind of this NFL train during the draft that takes place. You don’t know really who’s driving it, and you have to pay attention to it, but you don’t ever want to get on.
“All of those guys during the process did well, whether it was Drake, or J.J., Penix. You spent a lot of time with all of them, and we just had a conviction [about Nix]. His pro-day was on a Friday, and then he had a Saturday workout with us with meetings. We just kept looking at the tape and doing our homework on it.”
Nix was not considered a top-three QB in this year’s class by pundits, but it certainly seems that the Broncos had him ranked higher than most teams. Payton did not let the opinions of analysts and other clubs change his conviction about Nix.
“I think that’s sometimes one of the challenges during the draft, is it’s harder today to tune out for the scouts and the coaches,” Payton said. “Back in the ’70s or the ’80s, you didn’t — now there is so much information out there that even as an evaluator in the building — the scouts, the GM or a head coach — that you can sometimes hear too much, and you still really have to get back to what are the things you’re looking for? That can vary by team, and that’s good. There’s nothing wrong with that, but that was kind of the process.”
In the end, Payton picked Nix, and the quarterback went on to impress this summer before being named the starter ahead of the 2024 season. Nix ended up being the sixth QB taken in April’s draft, but Payton has implied he was the target all along. We’ll see how his career stacks up against the five other first-round QBs in the coming years.
