NFL Network’s Kurt Warner’s Advice for Broncos QB Bo Nix

Kurt Warner went to the tape on Bo Nix, and he found five plays that tell the whole story of Denver's slow starts.

The noise around the Broncos has centered on play calling. Is it Davis Webb running the show and not Sean Payton? Are they predictable early in games? Warner looked past all of it and focused on the quarterback in the loss to the 49ers.

"I broke down five plays that happened in the first half and there were huge opportunities on those five plays for Bo Nix to make a throw and set him up for points," Warner told Rich. Red zone trips, maybe some big-play touchdowns. "He passed on all of them."

The diagnosis is impatience. Warner said it's something he has seen from Nix throughout his career.

"When he gets to the top of his drop, he wants to move. He wants to create. He wants to throw on the run," Warner said. "He feels more comfortable there. And so too often he misses opportunities that are coming within the structure of the play that's called because he's impatient with it."

On those five snaps, Warner saw receivers who were what he would call wide open by NFL standards. Instead, Nix turned quickly to his check down or started moving rather than letting the play develop and "tying your feet to the route."

"You make two of those five plays in the first half and it changes the complexion of everything in that game," he said.

The puzzle for Denver is that Nix makes exactly those throws later in games, when the Broncos are trailing and he has no choice. Warner said the team has to figure out why he plays "a little more frantic early" and how to settle him down.

Rich asked the obvious follow-up: how do you fix that? Payton surely sees it, and the question he keeps hearing is when he'll take the play calling back, a question that would go away if the points started coming.

Warner's answer was personal. He didn't start playing quarterback until his freshman year of high school. Before that he was a receiver, and his instinct in the pocket was to take off.

"I don't want to stand in here and get hit. I want to go and create and move and make a play," he said. So his high school coach designed something called the Kill Kirk drill. Warner was not allowed to leave the pocket. He had to stand in until either a defender hit him or he found an open receiver, over and over again.

"I would get used to understanding bodies, understanding the pocket, understanding the timing of plays, and ultimately it would become one of my greatest strengths," Warner said. "But I hated it."

He wonders if Nix needs the same treatment. "Hey, Bo, there's no moving out of the pocket in this drill. You have got to stand in, and you've got to let things develop."

Rich, naturally, had a different theory on the drill's origins. He assumed Gregg Williams came up with it. Warner laughed that off. Williams, he said, was trying to knock him out so he wouldn't be in the pocket at all.