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.
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.
So we’re going to lead you through that process with three teams that took quarterbacks, and give you the why to the what we saw play out Thursday night, when five quarterbacks went in the top 10 for the first time ever, and six were gone in the first round for the first time since the vaunted Class of 1983. But rather than focus on the top three quarterbacks, we’re going to dive in on the next three, and give you all the moving parts, and the push and pull, as these organizations grappled with monumental decisions.
