Broncos HC Sean Payton explains Bo Nix trick-play TD call

Broncos Head coach/offensive lineman Sean Payton reached deep into his bag of tricks after Sunday’s loss to Baltimore and pulled out a treat: the unofficial “Denver Special.”

That’s when wide receiver Courtland Sutton threw a touchdown to quarterback Bo Nix, who made a leaping, contested catch over a Ravens defender – the only time they completed the pass in a humiliating 41-10 blowout.

After the game, Payton dropped the call to an inquiring member of the media.

“It’s hard to explain,” he said. “You’re playing zero-funnel coverage.” It can get complicated. We have a number of zero-funnel hitters, but one of them, the guy who isn’t technically covered, is the QB. However, if you don’t get a zero funnel, move on to another play. We have the right look. I wouldn’t have called it if I had known it would have been that close. You did a good job. Courtland made a good throw. It was a close goal game.”

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Although it was a defeat, Nix took the win a little more from NFL history Thanks to Payton’s design, he became only the third QB to record a passing TD, a rushing TD and a receiving TD during his rookie season.

“We decided it at the right time,” Nix said of the trick play. “We knew they were going to be in the zero funnel and the guy actually made a good retreat and follow-up play and Courtland looked pretty good again on that play.

Nix finished the afternoon 19 of 33 yards for 223 yards and one interception, along with 36 yards on the ground and two through the air. The Broncos fell to 5-4 on the year but remain in the AFC playoffs as the seventh seed.

Next up is an away date with the 7-1 Kansas City Chiefs – the first such meeting between the division rivals in 2024.

“As a young team, you have to find ways to prevent something like this from happening again,” Nix said on Sunday. “As an older team with players who have been there a long time, they are in a position to just finish. Let’s move on to the next one and go play. But I think we really need to look at this and see why it happened. “Try to fix our mistakes so this doesn’t happen to us again, otherwise we’ll be right back in the same situation.”

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