Jason La Canfora: NFL Preseason Week 2 Diary

The Denver Broncos nearly made the Super Bowl with a back-up quarterback starting the American Football Conference (AFC) Championship Game, and it feels like everyone’s forgotten.

They are the rare team in the National Football League (NFL) with a strong recent playoff pedigree and a future Hall of Fame head coach, yet no one really talks about them or seems to take them seriously enough.

While some are getting caught up in the fact that a not-very-good Falcons team pushed them around over the weekend in the second preseason game, the far bigger takeaway is that injured young starter Bo Nix returned to action and looked pretty damn good to me and others around the league.

Getting Nix a tune-up was pretty huge after a sudden and shocking playoff injury ended his season. It also gave him an opportunity to adjust to a new voice in his head – literally – with Davis Webb now calling plays for Payton.

Nix injured his ankle in the playoffs and then needed another clean-up procedure in the spring but is poised for a leap in Year Three under Payton. His downfield connection to new jitterbug receiver Jaylen Waddle was exactly what Broncos coaches wanted to see – Waddle throwing a double move in the seam and catching a perfect throw right in stride – as Nix quickly led a scoring drive and seemed totally at ease.

“It was like riding a bike” Nix commented to the media after the game. It looked just as smooth.

This passing game is going to hit new plateaus this season.

It’s a stout offensive line and the Broncos also boast a top five defense in the NFL. They don’t shutter facing Andy Reid and Patrick Mahomes and the big bad Chiefs in their division, and as one advance scout who has spent considerable time studying NFL rosters told me: “I think it’s the best team in the AFC.”

Rich Gannon: Bo Nix Is Going to ‘Take Off’

Former NFL Most Valuable Player (MVP) quarterback (QB) Rich Gannon, an analyst who studies draft prospects and follows the AFC West closely, fancies Denver to win the division, too, with Nix and Payton a big reason why.

“I did a lot of work on him coming out,” Gannon told me. “This guy had just about the most starts in NCAA history. His dad was a coach. He’s got everything you want – physical ability, mental toughness, athleticism. He checks every box you want. He’s got some juice and that swagger that Sean likes.

“I know they’re different types of quarterbacks in some ways, but I think Sean really sees a lot of (recent Hall of Famer) Drew Brees in this guy. He can go out there and be that extension of Sean on the field and handle all the volume he throws at him. He has the intellect to handle everything in that tool box – changing plays and changing protections and doing everything that Sean wants to be able to do. I really like him, Jason. I think this kid is going to take off.”

Having another coach now running the headset calling plays will let Payton focus on macro things, like Denver’s inability to move defenses around like Payton would like using an under-center rushing attack.

Maximizing their under-center run game was a huge offseason self-study for Denver’s coaches, and Payton is keenly aware that the pendulum around the league is swinging away from shotgun and pistol runs and more to the old-school I-formation stuff he has always believed in.

“I’m a little bit of a traditionalist in a few ways,” he told me before training camp in the understatement to end all understatements. “And yet I’m never not wanting to look at new thoughts and ideas. So, you get a guy like Bo Nix who’s got a vast databank of RPO offense in the gun, and we’re going to do that.

“But there is a portion of what we want to do under center – both in the run game, play action, passing game – and also with a fullback at times. And now that fullback can be a tight end or a traditional fullback, but I do think you’re kind of seeing it trending back a little bit.”

More under-center runs and passes – and early-down play action passes from under center – are coming to Denver and it will be great for Nix. His return and performance this weekend was the single biggest development of this just-completed slate of preseason games.

Joe Milton Is More Than a Backup

A few years back I was shooting the bull with former Super Bowl quarterback and longtime NFL broadcaster Phil Simms about under-the-radar quarterbacks as roster cutdowns were coming in the NFL (just as they will be next week). Simms couldn’t stop gushing about two talents – Malik Willis and Joe Milton.

Willis went on to become the most coveted free-agent quarterback this winter (albeit in a tepid QB market) and sign a lucrative deal with the Dolphins. Milton, many around the league believe, was perhaps going to be a little too much competition for Drake Maye in New England, and that dynamic didn’t wow the Pats; Maye was runner-up in MVP last season and Milton was shipped to Dallas, where he continues to impress.

Cowboys coach Brian Schottenheimer is going to great lengths to have you believe that Milton is in a knockdown fight with Sam Howell to back up Dak Prescott in Dallas, but the personnel guys and analysts I talk to around the league aren’t buying it.

“Joe Milton is a starting quarterback in this league right now” Simms has told me repeatedly over the years.

Milton continues to meet every challenge, and he carved up the Cardinals on Saturday (August 22) night, and if Prescott went down for any reason this season, consider me among those who believe the Cowboys could win with Milton. Milton makes a million bucks a season and has two years of team control left on his rookie deal, and at age 26, he would blossom if given a chance to play regularly.

Around the League: Watson, Brooks and Pittsburgh’s Quarterbacks

If you have a fantasy draft coming up, I’ll give you the same advice I gave my kids – draft Panthers running back Jonathan Brooks higher than where the “waiting room” of your on-line draft computers says to take him or has him ranked. He has the chance to be very productive and his injuries appear behind him. Longtime Panthers general manager (GM) Marty Hurney, who built Super Bowl rosters and still keeps a very close eye on that team, has been raving about him to me for months and now everyone is catching up.

“I think he’s a helluva back, I really do,” Hurney told me in the spring. This is from the guy who drafted Christian McCaffrey among others. I’m just saying … Deshaun Watson’s whiney comments about being booed this weekend are being read around the league as those of a guy who has made about $185m fully guaranteed already in Cleveland to play just 19 football games, not wanting to play this year either and pocket another $45m to watch from the sidelines. “He doesn’t want to play,” one GM said. I’m not sure owner Jimmy Haslam is going to fall for the ploy … the Patriots finding a seventh-round potential back-up QB who can also fill in at emergency punter and boom some 50-yard kicks is the most Bill Belichick thing ever. He may be gone, but that is right up his alley … Pittsburgh’s young QBs struggled more in the second preseason game, but I’d be surprised if they didn’t keep Drew Allard and Will Howard on the active roster and try to get any sort of draft pick for veteran Mason Rudolph.