Bo Nix fractured his right ankle on a QB sweep. A designed run. The Broncos were already in field goal range in overtime against the Bills, up 33-30 with a kicker who needed 23 yards. And somebody in that coaching booth thought the smart play was to have their franchise quarterback carry the ball into traffic. Nix’s season ended on the second-to-last play of a game Denver had already won.
A week later, the Broncos lost the AFC Championship 10-7 to the Patriots in a snowstorm with Jarrett Stidham under center. Sean Payton fired offensive coordinator Joe Lombardi two days after that. Good. He should’ve fired him before the postgame press conference.
A Designed Run Cost Denver a Super Bowl Trip
The play itself was a sweep left. Bills safety Cole Bishop came in untouched and tackled Nix at the ankle. Nix lost two yards. He gutted out two more snaps, threw an incompletion that drew a 30-yard pass interference penalty, then watched Wil Lutz kick the game-winner from his knees. Payton said the fracture happened on that run. The designed run. Not a scramble. Not Nix improvising. A called play.
And this is where I lose my mind a little bit.
Nix threw for 279 yards and three touchdowns against Buffalo. Denver’s first playoff win since Super Bowl 50, a decade ago. He was 26-of-46 and doing exactly what the most important position in professional sports is supposed to do. Throw the football. Then they ran him into a pile.
Payton is the playcaller in Denver, not Lombardi. Everybody in the building knows that. Lombardi was OC in title, but Payton had the headset. Payton made the call. Lombardi got the axe. That’s the NFL. But the real crime isn’t who got fired. It’s the philosophy that put a franchise quarterback’s legs at risk when the game was already decided.
The Dual-Threat Lie Has Been Exposed
| QB | MVP Awards | Super Bowl Appearances | Designed Run Plays |
|---|---|---|---|
| Josh Allen | 1 | 0 | Heavy |
| Lamar Jackson | 2 | 0 | Heavy |
| Patrick Mahomes | 2 | 4 | Minimal |
| Tom Brady | 3 | 10 | Zero |
Look at that table for five seconds and tell me designed QB runs win championships.
Josh Allen is one of the most talented quarterbacks to ever lace up cleats. He’s also never played in a Super Bowl. Not once in eight seasons. His Bills just lost in Denver with Allen turning the ball over four times, and three of those came in moments where Buffalo needed him throwing, not tucking. Allen has 763 rushing yards in a single season. He’s also got zero conference championship wins. Those two facts aren’t unrelated.
Lamar Jackson won two MVPs and still can’t get past the divisional round with any consistency. Baltimore has 78 regular season wins over the last seven years. Most by any team without a Super Bowl appearance in league history. Jackson’s playoff record is 3-5 with 11 turnovers. The running isn’t the problem by itself. The running philosophy is. When your offense is built around your quarterback’s legs, you’re building on borrowed time. Ankles break. Knees tear. Shoulders separate. And then you’re starting Jarrett Stidham in the biggest game of the decade.
Fran Tarkenton invented the scrambling quarterback. The man went to three Super Bowls and lost all three. The Vikings haven’t won one yet, 64 years and counting. You’d think somebody would’ve noticed the pattern by now.
Without a Healthy QB You’re a Thousand Miles from Nowhere
I don’t care how good your defense is. Denver’s was spectacular this year. First in sacks, third in scoring, second on third down. The Broncos went 14-3 in the regular season and earned the AFC’s No. 1 seed. None of that mattered when Stidham took the field against New England. Without a healthy quarterback, you’re Dwight Yoakam standing in the desert. A Thousand Miles from Nowhere. That’s what Denver looked like in January.
Stidham completed 17 of 31 passes for 133 yards with a touchdown, an interception, and a fumble. The Patriots won 10-7. The Broncos’ defense held Drake Maye to 86 passing yards and it still wasn’t enough because Stidham couldn’t move the offense in a snowstorm. Christian Gonzalez picked off Stidham with two minutes left and that was it. Season over. Super Bowl gone. All because a designed QB sweep took out Bo Nix when the game was already in the bag.
You know what Patrick Mahomes doesn’t do? Run designed sweeps in overtime of playoff games. Andy Reid doesn’t call tush pushes for Mahomes at the goal line. That’s the Jalen Hurts business, and even Hurts does it from one yard out with a running start, not on an open-field sweep against a safety with a clean shot.
The Future Belongs to QBs Who Throw
The next generation already figured this out. Caleb Williams threw for 3,942 yards and 27 touchdowns in his second season. He led the Bears to their first division title since 2018 and their first playoff win since 2010. He did it by throwing the football. Ben Johnson isn’t drawing up designed runs for him.
Bo Nix, before the ankle, had 24 wins in his first two seasons. Tied Russell Wilson’s NFL record. He did it by completing passes, not by carrying the ball into the teeth of a defense. The play that ended his season wasn’t Nix being Nix. It was a coaching decision that treated the most valuable player on the roster like a running back.
Check the daily QB rankings and tell me how many of the top 10 are built around designed quarterback runs. Run the Super Bowl simulator a thousand times. The teams that win have quarterbacks who throw from the pocket and scramble when they have to, not because the play was drawn up that way.
Payton knows this. He coached Drew Brees for a decade. Brees couldn’t outrun a traffic cone and he won a Super Bowl. Elway won his rings as a pocket passer in his late 30s after spending a decade scrambling and losing big games.
Fire the Next One Too
Lombardi’s gone. Fine. But whoever replaces him needs to understand something: Bo Nix’s ankle is worth more than any single play in any single game. You don’t run your franchise quarterback on a designed sweep when you’re in field goal range with the game on ice.
The dual-threat era produced some of the most exciting regular season football we’ve ever seen. It also produced zero Super Bowl champions whose offense was built around the quarterback’s legs. Mahomes, Brady, Eli Manning, Peyton Manning, Brees. The guys who lift Lombardis throw the ball down the field. The scramble is an escape hatch. It was never supposed to be the blueprint.
Nix should be healthy by training camp. But the Broncos came within three plays of a Super Bowl trip and lost it because someone called a run play for the quarterback. That’s not bad luck. That’s bad coaching.
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