DENVER — Bubble? What bubble? Bo Nix and Tim Patrick are a match made in Mile High Heaven. Don’t overthink this one, Sean Payton. Nothing about a rookie quarterback is a sure thing, so you surround him with as many sure things as possible.
Nix needs friends. Has a Broncos quarterback since 2020 had better friends than Patrick’s two hands? “You get any butterflies running around, Empower for the first time in forever?” I asked the Broncos’ veteran receiver Sunday night after Denver stomped what was essentially the Packers’ bench, 27-2. The sure thing shook his head.
“I got (nervous) in Indy a little bit,” Patrick told me. “But other than that, (because of) practice, the way we practice makes it feel like game day without the fans. So it looked good.
” Sure did. Four catches. Thirty yards.
Nothing fancy. Not much YAC. A typical Patrick half, more or less.
The guy on the bubble saw four targets from Nix, turned two of them into first downs; converted a third-and-9 into a 14-yard gain on another; and turned yet another into a 2-yard touchdown. “He’s going to have a great season this year,” teammate and running mate Courtland Sutton gushed. “Comeback Player of the Year is riding all over his destiny.
And I can’t wait to be a part of it.” Ah, but it’s a numbers game, you say. Can’t cut Troy Franklin, you say.
Patrick is coming off two devastating leg injuries, you say. He makes too much money. He’s not fast.
Yeah, well, he was never “fast.�.