Bo Nix knows what the numbers say about the Seattle Seahawks’ defense. Two days before the Denver Broncos host the defending Super Bowl champions on Thursday night, the quarterback said the biggest thing he is fighting this week is the urge to let that defense change how he plays.
“Honestly, really, and truly, the biggest battle right now is like, you want to be aggressive, want to be aggressive, want to be aggressive,” Nix said Tuesday. “And then … you’re like, well, this team is causing the most turnovers in the league. And then you’re like, OK, well, I can’t put my team in a situation where I’m turning the football over and putting our defense in a bad spot, giving them a short field. And at the end of the day, it’s like, who cares?”
Seattle came into the week leading the league with 11 takeaways, seven of them interceptions. Nix’s answer was to keep it simple. “Why would I go out there worried about throwing an interception? Why would I go out there trying to throw every football 50 yards down the field? Just play the play,” he said. “If the play’s there, hit it. If it’s not there, check it down, run, throw it away, punt. Who cares? That’s the play that I was dealt and I have to do. Just remind myself not to play hero ball.”
He added: “If it’s not there, I’m not going to throw it into a team meeting. I’m going to check the ball down and we’re going to move on.”
“One, two, three”
Nix has not had the start he wanted. Through five games he has completed 97 of 162 passes (59.9%) for 942 yards, six touchdowns and three interceptions, an average of 5.8 yards per attempt. In Sunday’s 23-17 win at the Los Angeles Chargers he went 16 of 27 for 123 yards and a touchdown.
Asked what he wants to clean up, he pointed at himself. “Making it simple, making things one, two, three, and let’s play fast, and let’s roll,” Nix said. “I think sometimes I can have a tendency of overanalyzing and overthinking things, and that’s when I’m not at my best. I want to have all the answers and get everything right, and it’s just too difficult. Eleven guys moving on defense, it’s tough to always figure it out. But I do think I can make the game simpler and just get back to one, two, check down, that sort of thing.”
He also pushed back on the idea that he is in a slump. “I think playing good and playing bad, it’s all a narrative, and I think it’s honestly kind of something we make up,” he said. “It’s just every once in a while a ball bounces away or something will happen this way. We’ll get a pressure on this look when we had somebody open, I had to throw it away, and I wanted to hold on a little bit longer, and the guy was open. And next thing you know, the stat line looks different.” He said he does not follow what analysts say about him. “I couldn’t tell you one that has said anything,” Nix said. “It’s their opinion. That’s what they get paid to do, just like I get paid to do this.”
“If you stop enjoying the wins”
The results have still been there. Denver is 3-2 and has won three of its last four games, and Nix said that matters more than how the wins look. “I heard long ago, I don’t know where it came from, it may have been from my parents, but if you stop enjoying the wins, you need to just go on and do something else because it’s not going to be fun for you anymore,” he said. “We’re sitting here at 3-2, and we’re having a good start to our season. There’s things we want to clean up. There’s things we want to fix. But we’re finding ways to win, like we did last year.”
Asked how he handles losing as a coach’s son, Nix told a story from his youth. “I wasn’t a great loser growing up,” he said. “I was that kid that cried after I lost, and I’d throw my helmet. And one time, I didn’t think my dad was at the game. He was out recruiting, and he showed up, and he saw me throw my helmet one time. And that was the last time I threw my helmet.”
“This is why you play the game”
Thursday night brings a national audience and a Seattle team that is also 3-2. Nix said that is the kind of night he signed up for. “There’ll be some extra juice on both sides. I think this is why you play the game. This is why you want to be an NFL quarterback,” he said. “Like Coach always says, this is a really important game. This is the most important right now on our schedule, but we’ll play in bigger just because we want to go to higher heights.”
The Seahawks visit the Broncos at Empower Field at Mile High on Thursday, October 15, at 8:15 p.m. EDT.
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