NEW ORLEANS — The Bron­cos’ open­ing offen­sive sequence Thurs­day night at the Super­dome pro­vid­ed a glimpse of where the unit is through sev­en games this season.

Rook­ie quar­ter­back Bo Nix and com­pa­ny can make easy things look dif­fi­cult. They can also make dif­fi­cult things look easy.

They strug­gle in the pass­ing game but hit big plays here and there. They’re hit­ting their stride in the run­ning game. They’re bad on third down and not great in the red zone but fly home from the Bay­ou at 4–3 and feel­ing good. Offen­sive­ly, they’ve shown enough glimpses where it’s easy to squint and see the pos­si­bil­i­ty for upward mobil­i­ty but also won­der if that progress will actu­al­ly mate­ri­al­ize against qual­i­ty competition.

“We’re build­ing. We’re fig­ur­ing it out,” head coach Sean Pay­ton said after his team rolled to a 33–10 win against the Saints. “… We’re work­ing on how to win that game. You don’t say, ‘This is how we are going to play regard­less.’ Based on who we were play­ing tonight, what do we feel we had to do to win that game? It might change a week from now.

“Cer­tain­ly the reps our young quar­ter­back is receiv­ing and our receivers are receiv­ing — we’re young as a team, so that is invaluable.”

On this night, Pay­ton dialed up plays that fit rook­ie quar­ter­back Bo Nix’s eye from the start.

Nix took off and ran for 15 yards when he iden­ti­fied man cov­er­age on the first snap out of the shot­gun. The next three plays went play-action from under cen­ter, zone read out of pis­tol, and then a rarely seen orbit motion to play-action.

That play, Nix made his most viral throw of the night: a com­plete­ly air­mailed ball for tight end Lucas Krull, who was wide open. Nix missed tight end Adam Traut­man for a like­ly first down on third-and-10, too, on the open­ing march.

Over the rest of the night, Nix hit some plays down the field. He missed oth­ers. He extend­ed plays and he put major stress on the New Orleans defense because of the con­stant threat that he could take off, either by design as part of the run game or by extend­ing pass­ing plays.

Payton’s adamant that the NFL is a week-to-week league. But this looked like a team that was start­ing to lean into its strengths and away from its weaknesses.

Through sev­en games, here’s what we’ve learned about the Den­ver offense and what the next steps need to look like for the Bron­cos to con­tin­ue to build on a most­ly promis­ing over­all start to their 2024 campaign.

The Bo Show looks different than expected

The night Den­ver draft­ed Nix in April, Pay­ton out­lined sev­er­al in-house stats and ana­lyt­ics that he led the coun­try in 2023 at Ore­gon: sack dif­fer­en­tial, turnover dif­fer­en­tial, accu­ra­cy, third-down pass­ing, end-of-half and end-of-game.

“Sec­ond in red zone,” Pay­ton con­tin­ued that night. “Then let’s do anoth­er pass­ing sta­tis­tic and remove a lot of the short, under­neath throws. Obvi­ous­ly, that’s part of what (Ore­gon does) offen­sive­ly, so you remove that and you come back with the ana­lyt­ics and it’s still first.”

Through camp and pre­sea­son work, Nix looked more and more like he’d play from the pock­et, get the ball out of his hands quick­ly and rely on mov­ing the chains that way.

In the reg­u­lar sea­son, the picture’s been different.

The Bron­cos are near the bot­tom of the NFL across a vari­ety of met­rics. Not that many rook­ies hit the ground run­ning. Bumps in the road are expected.

What’s been inter­est­ing is that Nix has looked more com­fort­able out of sys­tem than in. He’s been more dan­ger­ous as a run­ner than as a passer.

“At times, things break down and those hid­den (scram­ble) yards, I think, are real­ly impor­tant,” Nix said. “They get extra first downs and they are ways of sneak­ing yards in.”

He has moments like Thurs­day night when he deliv­ers strikes on run-pass option con­cepts or hits his back foot at the top of a drop and rips a seam ball up the field. But he has not been con­sis­tent­ly accu­rate, whether he’s throw­ing down the field or not.

His feet get hap­py, espe­cial­ly if he doesn’t pull the trig­ger at the top of his drop.

That’s added up to an up-and-down offense and more free-wheel­ing than straight lace from Nix.

In a cou­ple of ways, though, Nix has been just as Pay­ton expect­ed: He doesn’t turn the ball over often and he doesn’t take many sacks.

In fact, in Nix’s first two starts, he threw four inter­cep­tions and was sacked four times.

In five games since, he’s thrown one pick — Nix hasn’t lost a fum­ble at all this year — and been sacked five times.

Those are great ways to mit­i­gate the over­all lack of effi­cien­cy. And it cre­ates a sense that, if Nix can just make a few more plays throw­ing the foot­ball and keep the cat­a­stro­phe rate as low as it’s been, there’s upward mobil­i­ty to be found.

The oth­er area where he’s been as adver­tised is in the lock­er room. Vet­er­an play­ers rave about his com­pet­i­tive­ness, and they are adamant that they trust him in big spots.

“He’s com­pet­ing so hard and I’m real­ly, real­ly hap­py to have him here,” right tack­le Mike McGlinchey said Thursday.

What’s next?: In the best-case sce­nario, Nix improves grad­u­al­ly over the rest of his rook­ie year and takes big steps in mas­ter­ing the foot­work and tim­ing of this sys­tem into Year 2 and beyond. Pay­ton and the orga­ni­za­tion clear­ly believe he’s capa­ble of that.

In the short term, though, Den­ver is best suit­ed to con­tin­ue to refine toward what Nix does best right now. The trick to that is max­i­miz­ing the strengths with­out com­pro­mis­ing the devel­op­ment arc on the weak­ness­es. Such is life when you’ve got a team that thinks it’s capa­ble of win­ning with a rook­ie quarterback.

The offensive line has settled in

Through two games, the Bron­cos’ vet­er­an, expen­sive offen­sive line played real­ly poorly.

Since then, it’s been pret­ty darn good.

Nix has been pres­sured only 23% or more in one of the past five games. The run game has kicked into gear. The group got McGlinchey back Thurs­day and has most­ly with­stood a run of injuries at right tack­le and cen­ter. Den­ver is lead­ing the NFL in ESPN’s pass-block win rate met­ric and is No. 14 in run block­ing. Left tack­le Garett Bolles has led that surge the past five games. The NFL’s Next Gen Stats has him allow­ing two or few­er pres­sures and no sacks in that span.

On Thurs­day night in par­tic­u­lar, the Bron­cos had a good matchup against a beat-up New Orleans front and they flat-out dom­i­nat­ed on the ground.

What’s next?: Keep on this path. There have been times in the past when this group looks like it’s about to take off, and then some­thing hap­pens. There are stiffer tests on the hori­zon, to be sure. How the offen­sive line fares when they arrive will go a long way toward deter­min­ing the offense’s fate.

The kids are ready at wide receiver

Rook­ie receiv­er Troy Franklin’s first four catch­es over the Bron­cos’ open­ing four games went for a total of 9 yards. In the past three games, four of his eight catch­es have gone for either 20-plus or a touchdown.

Devaughn Vele spent four weeks inac­tive, and in the two games since he’s returned to the mix, four of his five catch­es are for 17-plus yards.

Franklin’s growth from clear­ly not ready to play when train­ing camp fin­ished to now being a key part of the pass­ing game has been impres­sive. Vele’s nat­ur­al catch-and-run abil­i­ty is much need­ed in this offense. He turned a slant into 17 yards Thurs­day night and an ad-libbed catch-and-run into 37 against the Chargers.

The Bron­cos con­sid­er Court­land Sut­ton their No. 1 tar­get still, and for good rea­son. On Thurs­day night, though, he was not tar­get­ed for the first time in his career. That despite play­ing 86% of the offense’s snaps and run­ning 22 routes, accord­ing to Next Gen Stats. That’s an anom­aly more than any­thing, but he’s cur­rent­ly on a 672-yard pace, which would eas­i­ly be the low­est pro­duc­tion of his career.

To Sutton’s cred­it, he’s been a good leader and he was hap­py as can be after the win Thurs­day night.

What’s next?: This would not have been even remote­ly in the con­ver­sa­tion two months ago, but it looks pos­si­ble from here that by the end of the sea­son, Franklin will be gen­er­al­ly accept­ed to be the Bron­cos’ most dan­ger­ous receiv­er. He’s got speed and explo­sion the group lacks overall.

Den­ver should get Josh Reynolds back from a frac­tured fin­ger at some point — he has to miss at least two more games on injured reserve — but Vele could make him­self dif­fi­cult to take off the field if he keeps progressing.

Javonte Williams is thinking he’s back

It’s hard to know just how close Williams was to run­ning out of time in his come­back quest for the Bron­cos, but he cer­tain­ly appeared to be near a role reduc­tion after the first three games of the sea­son. Audric Estime was on injured reserve, though, and when Tyler Badie was injured Week 4 against New York, Williams was right back to hav­ing a firm grasp on a big role.

Since then, he’s tight­ened his grip with his play.

Con­sid­er where Williams was after three games. He had gone 13 straight with­out crack­ing 4 yards per car­ry and aver­aged 3.11 over that span. He went the first three games this fall — and six out of sev­en dat­ing back to 2023 — with­out crack­ing 3 per carry.

Since then: 5.1 per car­ry over Denver’s past four games.

“I told you. I said it a long time ago. That dude’s dif­fer­ent,” fel­low run­ning back Jaleel McLaugh­lin said Thurs­day. “We’re going to con­tin­ue to keep see­ing it and I see it every day. It’s been great.”

Williams pro­vides high-qual­i­ty work in pass pro­tec­tion and has been a steady-if-unspec­tac­u­lar pass-catcher.

What’s next?: Pay­ton has said he’s not used to three run­ning backs play­ing in rota­tion. Den­ver might be smart to use three to keep the work­load down on every­body if rook­ie Audric Estime (two fum­bles in nine car­ries) can pro­tect the ball. In the mean­time, though, Williams’ resur­gence over the past four weeks has been a wel­come devel­op­ment and one the Bron­cos would be thrilled to see continue.

Denver’s struggles on third down are real

The Bron­cos con­vert­ed a rel­a­tive­ly mod­est 4 of 11 third-down tries against New Orleans on Thurs­day night. That rate, though, was their best for a sin­gle game so far this year.

Payton’s offense is con­vert­ing just 26.4% of third downs on the year, No. 31 in the NFL behind only the pre­pos­ter­ous­ly bad Cleve­land Browns (19.1%).

What’s next?: Pret­ty straight­for­ward: Denver’s got to find some way, any way, to improve from that mark. That’s going to take bet­ter tim­ing and rhythm from Nix in the pass­ing game. It’ll take con­tin­u­ing to use him in the run game like the Bron­cos did Thurs­day. It’ll take receivers mak­ing con­test­ed catch­es and help­ing Nix more. It’ll take the offen­sive line get­ting pushed even when the oth­er team knows Den­ver wants to run the ball.

Actu­al­ly, that’s a recipe for improv­ing on third down and for improv­ing across the board as the Bron­cos steam toward midseason.

Broncos passing game

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Met­ric	Rate	Rank
Com­ple­tion %	61.2%	28
Com­ple­tion % over expected	-6.4%	30
Yards per attempt	5.6	T‑28
Pass­er rating	74.4	29
EPA/dropback	-0.19	28
Dropbacks/game	37.1	13

Source: Pro Foot­ball Ref­er­ence and Next Gen Stats

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