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Seth Wickersham
Editor’s note: This story is an excerpt from the book “American Kings: A Biography of the Quarterback,” which will be available on Sept. 9 from Disney Publishing’s Hyperion Avenue.
“DO YOU PROMISE with every shred of your integrity that you won’t discuss this with anyone?” Sean Payton asks me on a March 2024 afternoon.
“Yes,” I say.
On this day, Payton is 60 years old and in his 18th year as an head coach, now with the Denver Broncos, and 27th season working in the NFL, one of the greatest offensive minds in history. He’s in the market to draft a quarterback. I want to know what’s possible. Payton wants more than just a quarterback. He wants a franchise guy.
A year earlier, a Broncos scout had given him an analysis of a particular quarterback, slotted to be drafted high, and said that the quarterback would need everyone in the building supporting him to succeed. Payton shook his head. If you’re going to pick a quarterback early in the first round, he said, “it needs to be a guy who builds the building, like John Elway.”
If inflated Air Raid statistics, the performative Combine and Pro Day, a 15-minute interview, and pee tests and interviews with coaches, secretaries, trainers, and teammates don’t help answer the single most important question in sports — how do you know an NFL quarterback when you see one?– it’s worth looking at something wholly different. Nobody knows what that is. But Payton has a theory. A series of metrics. It’s inside a folder he holds this morning, with the logo from the Denver Broncos on the top and quarterbacks on the side. It’s filled with the names of prospects — Caleb Williams, Drake Maye, J.J. McCarthy, Bo Nix — and numbers.
In 2017, when Payton was with the Saints, he thought he had found his future replacement for Drew Brees in Texas Tech’s Patrick Mahomes, who was raw and quirky, with a low but fluid release. New Orleans held the eleventh pick in the first round. Payton was sure that Mahomes would fall to him.
When Payton scouted Mahomes, he sought to develop a formula that would evaluate the most vexing trait for college quarterbacks making the transition to the NFL: processing speed, the ability to react a fraction of a second faster than required in college. He tried to do it not by researching a quarterback’s successes but by analyzing his failures. Quarterbacks with high rates of sacks and turnovers either freeze or panic, he felt. “If a quarterback is sacked quite a bit in college, per drop back, you can improve that some,” Payton says now. “But it generally means the processing is a little delayed.”
He didn’t take into account offensive line competency, and he was unconcerned with arm strength. Brees had a B-level arm. What he did at a Hall of Fame level was multitask — making adjustments at the line of scrimmage and recognizing problems and solutions-all in seconds. Payton valued this skillset because he knew it was what he lacked as a quarterback at Eastern Illinois in the early ’80s. He could throw well enough to play in the Arena Football League and as a replacement player during the 1987 NFL players strike. But he wasn’t a multitasker. That magic was the difference between making it and not. Payton says it’s like if he’s driving a new Mercedes-Benz, with dozens of cutting-edge features. Payton would get in and be overwhelmed by all the dials and keys. Drew Brees would ease onto the road and select music and adjust the temperature in the front and back, all while seeing traffic from all sides.
Payton came up with a formula: He looked at the rate of negative plays against Mahomes’s total drop backs: percentage of sacks, fumbles, interceptions, then added them together for the average. (He also liked to see a quarterback’s completion percentage, although it wasn’t factored into the algorithm.) Like golf, a low score was best.
Attempts: 1,349 Sacks: 68 (5%) Fumbles: 14 (1%) Interceptions: 29 (2.1%) Completion percentage: 63.5 Average: 8.1
Payton liked that score. It meant that on average, something negative happened only 8.1 percent of the time. He thought that maybe, just maybe, it might reveal evidence of quick processing. Something that measured results but in the aggregate, those results might be evidence of a future superstar. But he had little context for it. He was starting from scratch; he didn’t have a database built over decades. The score was augmented by his meeting with Mahomes. Payton typically gives a prospect a 17-page packet of offensive designs the night before a meeting. Payton would test his recall the next day. Mahomes was the gold standard: He knew everything. Payton was floored and asked him how he did it. “I’m pretty good with tests like that,” Mahomes said.
On Draft Day in 2017, everything was going Payton’s way. The tenth pick arrived. It belonged to Buffalo. The Bills valued more picks over a new quarterback. Mahomes was still available. Payton was ten minutes from his guy. What happened next, of course, is lore only in retrospect. The Chiefs traded with Buffalo. As soon as it happened, Payton knew. He respected Andy Reid. Mahomes changed Reid’s life and legacy, turning him from a good but underperforming playoff coach into a first-ballot Hall of Famer. Payton is now on his second team, trying to re-create old magic.
IN 2024, THE Broncos hold the twelfth pick in the first round. Payton has met with Caleb Williams and Drake Maye, out of diligence. He knows both will be gone when the Broncos pick, but he plugged them into his processing formula anyway.
Williams: Attempts: 735 Sacks: 83 (11.2%) Fumbles: 32 (4.4%) Interceptions: 14 (1.9%) Completion percentage: 66.9 Average: 17.5
The average was high for Payton’s taste, but it didn’t matter.
With Maye, Payton likes his size and arm and competitive upbringing. Like with Williams and Jayden Daniels, he won’t be an option at pick 12. But he looks at Maye’s data:
Maye: Attempts: 942 Sacks: 69 (7.3%) Fumbles: 14 (1.5%) Interceptions: 16 (1.7%) Completion percentage: 64.5 Average: 10.5
J.J. McCarthy of Michigan has a better average than either Williams or Maye: 7.8. And the Broncos theoretically have a chance at him. But the guy Payton loves, the quarterback who he has a shot to pick, is at the top of the sheet that the coach pulls out of the file and hands to me.
“I want this kid,” Payton says.
Bo Nix, from Oregon. He had a strange college career, starting sixty-one games — an NCAA record. He was twenty-four years old. He began his career at Auburn and transferred to Oregon. Payton visited him, and Nix had memorized the entire packet that the Broncos share with prospects, writing formations and plays neatly on the white boards in an office. Payton likes that he led the NCAA in completion percentage and he likes the type of completions he makes. At one point, Payton asked him what he had in his backpack, curious if he’d see anything suspicious or revealing, like dip or pain pills or candy. “Everything,” Nix said. He pulled out cleats, a backup pair of socks, and a lacrosse ball, which he rolled on his back and shoulders to loosen up.
Attempts: 878 Sacks: 10 (1.1%) Fumbles: 0 (0%) Interceptions: 10 (1.1%) Completion percentage: 74.8 Average: 2.3
Nix’s data is the best in the draft — and is better than Mahomes’s was. Payton doesn’t think Nix is the best prospect since Mahomes, of course. But he believes in his potential right now, for what Payton needs and where he’s drafting. And he believes that together, they can be special. He has a plan for his quarterback. And he knows that sets him ahead of so many rookies. This is rare. A quarterback needs coaching and infrastructure. Nix will end up as one of the best quarterbacks of the 2024 class because he has a head coach who knows offense, knows quarterbacks, isn’t afraid of being fired, and is more invested in him than in covering his own ass.
“I’ll get criticized for taking him at twelve,” Payton tells me of Nix. “I don’t give a f—. Three years from now is what I’m worried about.”
SEVEN MONTHS LATER, in January 2025, during the exact time that Caleb Williams is wondering who will be his third head coach in seven months, Jayden Daniels and Bo Nix are preparing for their first playoff games. Payton’s Broncos face the Buffalo Bills. The morning of the game, Payton sits in a cramped corner of the locker room at Highmark Stadium, an office for the visiting coach. The desk has one lamp; he asks an aide to fetch him another. Nix started all 17 games in 2024, threw 29 touchdown passes and ran for four more, and helped lead Denver to the postseason for the first time since winning Super Bowl 50 in 2016. He is still learning, but he can process quickly. Functionally and practically, he is no longer a rookie.
Payton holds two documents. One, on cardboard, was his play-calling sheet for the game. The other, a five-page packet, contained Nix’s favorite plays highlighted in blue. He needs to merge them. This is quarterback processing put to action. Payton knows that he can draw up as many imaginative plays as he wanted, but if his quarterback can’t run them, or lacks confidence in them, they are practically useless.
“I want to know the As and the Fs,” Payton says. He grabs a blue Sharpie and studies the two documents, beginning with running plays. Payton scans the sheet for highlighted plays, then puts a blue dot on his play-sheet next to that call, a reminder during the game. Nix likes a lot of the Run-Pass Option — RPO — plays, stuff that Payton lifted and adapted from Nix’s college playbook. “That is the world he lives in,” Payton says.
He works down the sheet. “How do you not like Ace Open?” he says to nobody. He shakes his head, knowing that Nix has final say. Payton flips to the first page of pass plays, titled Base Passing Game. Each play has an audible, which Payton tries to simplify into one word. For instance, the code for one play is Fauci, because it includes two “needle” routes. Another play is called “Fats” because it includes what’s called a “domino” route. “I had to explain that one,” Payton says. “The younger guys …” All of the plays are part of the processing process, of bringing theory into practice. Nix highlighted many pass plays. Too many. “Can’t have too many favorites,” Payton says. “It defeats the purpose.”
Music thumps in the background from the locker room as players prepare for the game. It’s 90 minutes until kickoff. Payton noticed that one of his favorite plays, a design he saw on film from Sean McVay of the Los Angeles Rams, and adapted, wasn’t highlighted by Nix. “I’m force-feeding that one,” he says. He looks at his play sheet, a road map or a prison for a quarterback. Maybe both. After a few hours later, the game begins. The Broncos score on their first drive on a play called Boston College, a 43-yard bomb from Nix to receiver Troy Franklin. It’s Denver’s only score of the day, a contrast between a rookie quarterback and an MVP-caliber one. Josh Allen of the Bills is confident and relaxed, leading long drives; Nix is tentative and struggling to find rhythm. After the 31-7 loss, Payton is back in the office, face red from three hours in the cold and wind, eyes tired, experiencing the crash landing of a season ending. Nix is at his locker, taking off his pads.
“You have all these plays that you never have a chance to call,” Payton says.
Two disappointed men who know that the season is an undeniable success. Payton has something almost more valuable than a playoff win. He believes he’s found his guy for the rest of his career.
LEARNING TO PROCESS is itself a process. You think you’re done with school forever when you get drafted and sign a contract for tens of millions of dollars to be an NFL quarterback. Turns out, you’re getting paid a lot to study. On a May morning five months after the Bills loss, Bo Nix sits near the middle of a conference table in a large room on the second floor of the Broncos facility. Backups Jarrett Stidham and Sam Ehlinger sit around him. Quarterbacks coach Davis Webb is to the side, at a desk with three large computer monitors. Three screens are on the wall: Two with lists of play calls like UPS Alert Slash 37 Base and one with video of the play.
One of the hardest leaps for NFL quarterbacks is improving from rookie to second year. Defensive coordinators have studied them for an entire offseason. A continuation of a trajectory is expected. “Good to great” is Payton’s message for the team in 2025. He thinks the Broncos are a Super Bowl contender. Still, Nix is in a good place. Right now, Caleb Williams is working with his third head-coach, learning a new offense. McCarthy is hoping that his second season doesn’t end like his first one, with a season-ending knee injury. Daniels and Nix are building upon what they’ve learned, taking the next step instead of the first one.
“Hey Bo,” Webb says, swiveling to the screens. “What did you learn today?”
Webb flies through plays. All right, no issues here. Here’s the length of the wrap, we don’t have it, streak over the top, they collapse down, quarters, this definitely has a chance, just gotta be alert for that corner kicking back, it’s not there, you go back to the flat forever and always.
It’s a language that non-quarterbacks aren’t meant to understand, and quarterbacks sometimes barely understand. That will be the Sam right there. There will be the Will. … We’re going to the nickel. Ah, should we wash this? Should we whiz this? The general issue with Whiz is when the strong safety comes on down and does not flow with the Y coming back. Stays frontside side. He is free, unless the receiver digs him out. … Two on two backside you take it. …
“Talk to me, Bo Nix, in regards to the Mike point,” Webb says.
Nix points on screen to where the Mike linebacker is; identifying the Mike linebacker helps set blocking structures for the offensive line. In this case, the Mike is slightly offset.
“One-hundred percent,” Webb says. “Love it. Now let’s say they’re all bumped over. This X. That X. Strong safety right here. What are you thinking?”
“Mike in the middle,” Nix says.
Webb moves to the same play, flipped over “Xerox,” in football parlance.
“Nobody knows what Xerox even is,” Nix says.
“Are you serious? Stidham says.” “You don’t know?”
Nix shakes his head.
“You basically re-tweet the last play,” Webb says.
“It just became, gimme a Xerox,” offensive coordinator Joe Lombardi says. “But gimme a copy. Back before the digital world was ubiquitous.”
“So this is all Install One,” Webb says, bringing eyes back to the screen. “What’s the one thing we wish our Delta would do here?”
“Break,” Nix says.
“One-hundred percent,” Webb says.
They run through a few more minutes of plays, of fundamentals to improvisation, of formatting and stages of application. One is now. One is later today, on the practice field. Stages of learning, of processing, of a quarterback’s lifecycle. I sit in the room, as language and code fire across the room, wondering an age-old question: Can this be taught? How much quick processing you can coach up, train for, put in the hours on — and how much of is the gift simply in him, a kind of offering to the quarterback gods, to the mysteries of the human brain, and to hope that what the coaches have done is enough to unlock it? Webb knows he’s throwing a lot at Nix, but that’s what they both signed up for. That’s what they do. Before Nix leaves for practice, Webb says one last thing to him.
“We’re going to try to dominate now, so that in training camp you can just take a deep breath.”
