The NFL divisional round began with an incredible game in Denver on Saturday. The Bills and Broncos went to overtime, but the Broncos emerged on top after hitting a 23-yard field goal to win it in the extra frame. Three more games are on deck, starting with 49ers-Seahawks.
What are the main lessons and takeaways from each divisional round matchup, and what's next for these teams? We asked national NFL reporter Dan Graziano and NFL analyst Ben Solak to help size up every matchup from the second round and look forward from all angles. For each divisional round game, Solak is answering one big remaining question and Graziano is judging the legitimacy of one potential overreaction.
Let's jump in, making sense of Bo Nix's performance and the Bills' playoff woes. And we will continue to react to games as they happen over the course of the weekend.
Broncos 33, Bills 30
'Bo Nix is the best draft pick Sean Payton has ever made.' Overreaction?
No, not an overreaction. Look, Nix certainly wasn't perfect Saturday. Yeah, he was 26-for-46 for 279 yards and three touchdown passes. Yeah, he threw the go-ahead touchdown pass with 55 seconds left in regulation. And yeah, he made a couple of really pretty deep throws in overtime that were flagged for pass interference to set up Wil Lutz's game-winning field goal. But there were absolutely stretches of this game where it looked like Nix was a bigger part of the problem than the solution.
We'd also feel a lot better about his performance if we'd seen him play a crisper third quarter after the Bills did everything they could to give the game away, turning the ball over five times. The Broncos had the opportunity to put Saturday's game in their pocket and couldn't do it.
But Nix was also great when the Broncos needed him, and now Denver is going to host the AFC Championship Game next week. Nix is one of the most exciting quarterbacks in the league, and he has absolutely done enough in his first two seasons to justify Payton selecting him 12th overall in the 2024 draft -- a selection that was derided by many at the time.
Payton wasn't taking over the Broncos thinking about a drawn-out rebuild. He saw a solid roster that could hit the accelerator pretty quickly if it bulked up in the trenches and found a QB who could run his offense. Payton wisely moved on from Russell Wilson and drafted Nix after literally five other quarterbacks went in the top 10 picks. He built out the lines. He turned the defense over to Vance Joseph, then went out and signed key reinforcements on that side of the ball in free agency. The result is the top-seeded team in the AFC playoffs and one home win away from getting to his second Super Bowl. That puts him two wins away from becoming the first coach ever to win the Super Bowl with two different teams.
Payton is 62 years old and has plenty of good coaching years ahead of him. But he has run the Broncos with a sense of urgency since the day he got the job. Nix might not have the athletic upside of Caleb Williams or Jayden Daniels or Drake Maye, all of whom were drafted ahead of him in 2024. He's not the first QB from that class to take his team to a conference championship game (Daniels did it last season). And with Williams and Maye both playing Sunday, it's still possible that two other quarterbacks from the 2024 draft class advance even deeper into the playoffs this year than Nix has already gotten. Nix has his flaws, and we saw some of them Saturday, even in the biggest win of his life. But Nix is a quarterback who can run Payton's offense -- and within months of Payton drafting him.
That's a big part of the reason Payton loved him and picked him 12th. Payton thought he had a team that was good enough to help him make NFL coaching history if he plugged in the right quarterback, and by the time the 2024 draft rolled around, Payton identified Nix as that quarterback. He's one game away from being proven right. (Oh, and in case you've read this far and are still yelling the same thing: Payton didn't draft Drew Brees.) -- Graziano
The lingering question: Why do the Bills keep losing in the postseason?
I have no idea. What is there to say? The Bills turned the football over five times, and no team that turns the ball over five teams deserves to be in the game at all. Josh Allen's end-of-half fumble to let the Broncos get up 20-10 was an inexcusable mistake. He was stripped to start the second half to give Denver an even bigger lead. He threw a pick immediately off a key defensive takeaway.
It felt like Allen was digging the hole, and then as always, Allen was the one to pull the Bills back out. But there were too many misses. Allen failed to connect with Khalil Shakir on a third-and-8 screen in the red zone that could have scored, and he missed an open Dawson Knox at the end of regulation on a throw that could have walked the game off. Allen was simultaneously one of the biggest reasons the Bills were still in that game, while also being one of the biggest reasons they fell short.
The Bills have now made it to seven consecutive postseasons with Allen at the helm, which means they've suffered seven postseason losses. There's really no unifying factor on the field, though. Wide receiver talent was a big deal in this game; Allen was 0-for-9 throwing 20-plus yards downfield, and downfield production is often a receiver stat. The pass rush has been an issue and was again in this game; Nix was pressured on 20% of his dropbacks, and the Bills needed to send blitzes to get home. Defensive back depth was also a big deal; two of Nix's three touchdowns came targeting backup defensive backs.
Still, when you've lost seven playoff games, there are some obvious unifying factors -- coach Sean McDermott, GM Brandon Beane and Allen. The Bills' triumvirate has been in place for the better part of a decade and has yet to get over the hump. Whether fair or unfair, the buck stops at the top, and the fact that the Bills have failed to make a Super Bowl in Allen's tenure despite seven postseason appearances is an enormous failure.
If the Bills made changes, I'd totally get it. If they didn't, I'd totally get it, too. They've been so close so many times. I really don't know what to say. What a devastating loss. -- Solak
