The Las Vegas Raiders were far from a good football team during the 2024 season. They went on a 10-game losing streak during the year and won just four games under Antonio Pierce, which included three against backup quarterbacks and a 0-6 finish in the AFC West.
In the midst of this historically bad season, the rest of the division took advantage, as both the Los Angeles Chargers and Denver Broncos made the playoffs behind the Kansas City Chiefs. While the Chiefs went to the Super Bowl, the other two got dismantled in the first round of the postseason.
Despite not having a notably good draft or free agency period, both of these teams are in Super Bowl talks once again. For the Broncos, this centers around an infatuation with a quarterback that still has plenty yet to prove in the NFL.
Sean Payton continues to delude himself further about Bo Nix
Bo Nix certainly exceeded expectations during his rookie season, as the Broncos won 10 games and made the playoffs. However, head coach Sean Payton's recent comments about Nix paint him to be a quarterback that he simply is not.
“He’s going to be one of the top four or five quarterbacks in the league the next two years,” Payton said. “That’s what we’re seeing right now."
It's fine for Payton to have high expectations or a belief in his young signal-caller, but this statement is just preposterous when looking at the NFL landscape. Last time I checked, Patrick Mahomes, Josh Allen, Lamar Jackson, Joe Burrow and Jayden Daniels are not retiring anytime soon.
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Those players, at a minimum, leave Nix outside the top five, and truthfully, he is not even approaching that. Players like Jared Goff, Justin Herbert, Jalen Hurts, C.J. Stroud and Baker Mayfield are all better than Nix and still have plenty of gas in the tank as well.
Nix's stats looked fine as a rookie, but there is a bit of nuance to them. His defense played at an incredible turnover margin and gave him the best starting field position in the league. The team was also one win against the Chiefs' backups away from losing three straight games to end the season and missing the playoffs.
The Broncos can be successful with Nix under center, as they demonstrated last season. However, it is very possible that he has already reached his ceiling as a player, which was not good enough for Denver to make noise in the playoffs.
Unless something happens that defies what NFL fans have seen from Nix thus far, it's a far cry to believe that he will be one of the league's elite quarterbacks in the coming years.