ESPN's Big Broncos Concern Boils Down to Bo Nix & the Playoffs

The NFL at large is waking up to the Denver Broncos' rising tide. As a 10-win team last season, the Broncos reached the playoffs with a rookie quarterback.

Bo Nix was a revelation and the biggest individual factor for the Broncos' return to January football, but it helped to have a top-10 defense and one of the NFL's best offensive lines. Entering 2025, the Broncos are spoken of nationally as a playoff contender, but ESPN's Ben Solak sees them as one of two "darkhorse" Super Bowl contenders.

"There are two teams that could reasonably project as having the best offensive line and the best defense for the 2025 season: Minnesota and Denver. As such, Minnesota and Denver register as 'Super Bowl dark horses' on my 'What sort of contender are you?' scale before I even know anything about their respective young quarterbacks," Solak wrote.

Solak isn't the only one at ESPN projecting the Broncos to have a top defense. Mina Kimes and Marcus Spears pounded the table for it just this week.

Denver's offensive line finished the 2024 season as one of the top-two in the NFL, depending on the publication. The Broncos are returning all five starters this season, which is absolutely amazing, but the true fulcrum of this team's destiny will once again be Nix.

On one hand, Solak sees the Broncos as a "darkhorse" contender, while on the other, he expressed misgivings over whether the team added enough weapons to Nix's arsenal to hang with the big boys in the playoffs.

"I wish the Broncos made a splashier move in the skill position group. When they lined up against Buffalo in the wild-card round, their offense simply did not present enough danger to a well-coached, deep Bills defense," Solak wrote. "Since then, they've added Evan Engram, RJ Harvey and Pat Bryant -- a veteran tight end and two rookies. I'm imagining this offense once again lining up against Buffalo and feeling much the same way. Wonder what the trade deadline ends up looking like for this team."

While he may be no fan of the Oxford comma (to each his own), Solak wanted to see the Broncos do more when it came to building the nest around Nix. My question is, what more could Denver have done?

The Broncos already have a Pro Bowl-caliber X receiver in Courtland Sutton, and one of the most dangerous up-and-coming offensive weapons in Marvin Mims Jr. This team's tight end production was atrocious last year, and the running backs weren't far behind.

That's why Denver signing Engram and Dobbins, and drafting Harvey, made perfect sense. Each move addressed the biggest vulnerabilities the offense had last season.

When it comes to the playoffs, beyond the quarterback, the Broncos have the trifecta: an elite defense, a top-shelf offensive line, and talented running backs. There's no way to guarantee that it will all come together in the postseason, but the pieces are there.

Yes, the Broncos are betting on their young receiving corps to show development in 2025, including Mims, Devaughn Vele, and Troy Franklin, but they're not bereft of talent or potential. What this team is short on is proven production, outside of Sutton and Engram.

If the Broncos are even right about just one of those young wideouts, it'll kick the floodgates wide open for Nix now that he has a running game and a reliable and explosive tight end. Mims is the likeliest candidate to breakout in 2025, but after seeing how Vele and Franklin produced last season, and how hard each obviously worked to develop their game during the offseason, the Broncos could have more than one young wideout emerge.

No one saw the Broncos coming in 2024. That won't be the case this season, although the NFL may still be selling Nix a bit short.