Broncos’ Bo Nix isn’t afraid to voice his goals: ‘I want to be the best in the world’

The golden-haired prince, wearing Denver’s golden crown, didn’t deflect the shine. Bo Nix embraced it, just as he’s always done.

His peers officially think more highly of him than Dak Prescott, Jordan Love or Tua Tagovailoa, and such recognition on the NFL’s Top 100 was a “cool honor,” Nix affirmed Saturday.

But the 25-year-old also doesn’t want to be just the 64th-best player in the league, as he was ranked. All offseason long, veteran teammates from Mike McGlinchey to Pat Surtain II have lauded Nix’s sheer competitiveness behind the scenes. The world got a peek behind the curtain on Saturday.

“It doesn’t really matter what you’re ranked,” Nix told reporters. “It’s just an internal standard that I have, that I want to be the best in the world.”

Nix wants to climb. Equally, he doesn’t want to free-fall.

This has been his first extended break from football since he was a kid at Oregon chucking deep routes to Troy Franklin in a different-colored jersey, and an idle mind is the devil’s playground. He has spent his first NFL offseason touring some of the most beautiful places on this planet, beaming with wife, Izzy, in front of the caverns of the Colosseum and the canals of Venice. He has spent his first NFL offseason on a royal tour of Denver.

He also has spent this offseason, as he hinted Saturday, trying to avoid the concept of a “down year.”

“I think it’s more of the fear of not being ready, not being enough for the team,” Nix said. “That’s what continues to drive me, and what’s not going to give me an off year.”

That fear hasn’t manifested itself, though, in additional reps within a comprehensive offseason plan that’s pulled in long-time quarterback coaches and throwing guru Tom House and Drew Brees. Nix has thrown less to do more elsewhere. Improving lies in his mental foundation, he insisted. In that dream he’s had to lead a franchise since he was in sixth grade, running across fields in Alabama.

He had four or five days to sit with all-time great Brees in the sun of San Diego. Both have been tasked as disciples to grease the wheels on Sean Payton’s humming offensive machine. Both share somewhat-overlapping strengths. But Nix didn’t focus that time with Brees on the intricacies of ball, or a call sheet, or a formation.

Xs and Os change over time, Nix noted. Technique changes, too.

But how to be a leader? That carries over, Nix said.

“Your job is to go out there and complete passes and to score points,” Nix said, speaking to how he approached conversations with Brees. “Everybody understands that. It’s the off-the-field. How are you encouraging guys? How are you making sure guys are seen, and making sure guys are getting what they need and being put in a position to succeed so that we all can help each other?”

There are few secrets there. Everyone in Dove Valley can feel Nix’s presence. He first drew Evan Engram and Dre Greenlaw and Talanoa Hufanga to Denver by the strength of his film and the strength of his presumed character. He then proceeded to chuck his first ball of OTAs “over everybody’s head,” as Hufanga grinned this week. He’s engaged in back-and-forth route diagramming with veteran receiver Courtland Sutton as if they’ve played the same number of NFL snaps.

This is Nix’s team, his teammates affirm. But it was also “kind of his team when he got here,” as All-Pro guard Quinn Meinerz said this week. The 25-year-old simply has to worry less entering Year 2, about formations, concepts, or even simply where to find Denver’s locker room.

Now he is worried about franchise-quarterback-level intricacies, not rookie-quarterback-intricacies.

“I can get there and do it, and knock it out, and now I can focus on the next level of things and the details and not really the overall picture,” Nix said. “A lot of the times, as a rookie, you just don’t want to look like an idiot.