About 15 minutes after the news conference ended, a confused Denver media was summoned back to the press room to speak with Payton again.
“Not good news,” he began.
Payton announced to the media, before telling his own players, that Nix fractured a bone in his right ankle on the fourth-to-last play of overtime, a scramble by Nix for minus-2 yards. Surgery was scheduled for Tuesday in Birmingham, Ala. Nix’s season was over.
Backup Jarrett Stidham, who hasn’t thrown a regular-season pass in more than two years, will start Sunday’s AFC Championship game against the Patriots.
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“This just is what it is,” Payton said to a stunned room. “We felt like it’d be best to just tell everyone now. I’ll take questions.”
It’s a wild turn of events for the Broncos, who went 14-3 and earned the AFC’s No. 1 seed behind Nix, their second-year quarterback. Sunday’s game will be their first appearance in the AFC Championship game since their 2015 Super Bowl season, when they also hosted the Patriots. Stidham, 29, has started just four games in seven seasons. He will become the first quarterback ever to throw his first pass of the season in the conference championship round.
No one of note even noticed Nix’s injury, starting with Payton. Nix remained in the game for the next two offensive snaps, throwing a pass that drew a 30-yard pass interference penalty to put the Broncos in position for the winning kick, then taking a knee to put the ball in the middle of the field.
Broncos quarterback Bo Nix fractured a bone in his right ankle on the fourth-to-last play of overtime Saturday against the Bills.Bart Young/Associated Press
“And then as he comes over, I kind of chest bump him, jab him like, ‘Freaking A!’ and he’s like, ‘Careful,’ ” Payton said. “I’m like, ‘You all right?’ He said, ‘Yes, but it’s hurting.’ I said, ‘What do you got?’ He said, ‘My ankle.’ I said, ‘All right, you’ll be fine,’ and I jabbed him in the chest again. I said, ‘Just enjoy this field goal.’ ”
Payton thought nothing of it in the locker room or his postgame news conference. After he left the podium, he went back to his office, where general manager George Paton and trainer Beau Lowery were waiting for him. Payton immediately knew it was bad.
“We always meet after the game and discuss injuries, but that was early,” Payton said.
They told him an X-ray found a fracture in Nix’s ankle. Payton left his office and found Nix sitting by himself in the hallway outside the locker room with his wife and parents.
“He knows that God has a plan for him,” Payton said. “He said he had [an ankle injury] in high school, and then he said he had one at Auburn. I said, ‘I didn’t realize that.’ I said, ‘If I would have known that, I wouldn’t have drafted you.’ He’s a tough cookie.”
At that point, the Broncos had dispersed, with players showering and leaving the stadium. Payton normally keeps injury news tight-lipped and waits until the first injury report of the week on Wednesdays to reveal any new maladies, but he knew this news was too big to contain. There also was the issue of Nix and his own postgame news conference. If he didn’t show up, everyone would know something was up.
So Payton called an unprecedented second news conference to announce the news.
“I felt like in essence, I’m talking to the team now,” Payton said. “There will be a lot of guys learning about it right now, which is tough. This was difficult. But like, let’s say I had a team meeting tomorrow at 9 [a.m.]. I would have tried to have kept it so I could talk to the team first, but the odds of something like this being kept quiet until Monday at 9 are impossible. So look, they’ll be disappointed. There will be a lot of emotions, and then the refocus takes place.”
Sunday, Payton let the media know that he didn’t call the second news conference to make their lives easier.
“I wasn’t trying to send you guys cakes or flowers,” Payton said. “We just discussed it, and I said, ‘Well, why don’t I just go in and tell everyone what happened?’ That seems to me like the smartest and easiest thing to do, and just be straightforward with it. At least then the players are going to hear that from me on the podium and not some national insider that gets it from an agent or that gets it from a doctor.”
Payton also let the media know that Nix’s injury was a special case.
“I’m not going to discuss any of the other injuries. Don’t ask me after this question, not one word,” Payton said. “I’m going to tell you Stidham’s starting and that’s all I’m going to tell you. Then I’ll see you on Wednesday.”
With that, Payton moved on to his most important task of the season — preparing Stidham for his first start in two-plus years, which just happens to be the AFC Championship game.
“He’s ready,” Payton said. “I’ve said this at the beginning of the season, I feel like I have a [No.] 2 [quarterback] that’s capable of starting for a handful of, a number of teams. I know he feels the same way. So watch out. Just watch.”
Ben Volin can be reached at [email protected].
