After he’d touched back down in Florida from Los Angeles, tugged back and forth between AFC West rivals, Evan Engram’s longtime trainer, Drew Lieberman, asked him what he’d thought of the Chargers.
“He’s like, ‘Damn,’” Lieberman recalled to The Denver Post, “‘that dude Herbert is a gunslinger.’”
The choice was there a few weeks ago for Engram if he wanted it. He’d seen Justin Herbert on tape. He’d felt the Chargers quarterback, widely considered one of the best in the league, was “superhuman,” as Lieberman put it. Los Angeles wanted Engram, and there’s an alternate world in which Denver’s new Joker chooses to fly farther west, the opportunity to catch passes from Herbert right there.
He chose the Broncos instead because of the system. And quarterbacks coach Davis Webb. And head coach Sean Payton.
And quarterback Bo Nix, in one way or another.
“I think it was looking at all that, and then saying, ‘Is this quarterback good enough to fulfill this and allow me to maximize my potential in this offense?’” Lieberman said of Engram’s decision. “And then, I think, when you turn Bo on, (Evan) was like, ‘Oh, not only is he good enough, like, he’s really good. Like, he’s really tough, he can make all the throws, he’s athletic.’”
The Broncos, of course, nabbed Engram, filling a matchup-nightmare need Payton has searched for since arriving in Colorado. And Denver made out in free agency as somewhat of a destination, with Dre Greenlaw and Talanoa Hufanga both coming from San Francisco. The Broncos were armed with a well-known HC, a widely respected ownership group and cap flexibility — and they used it to their advantage.
That free-agent haul, though, likely wouldn’t have happened without Nix’s development as a rookie. Payton essentially said as much at the NFL owners meetings in Florida this past week.
“I think we’re a team players want to play for; I think certainly we’re a city that that’s very appealing to athletes to want to live,” the coach said, speaking on Denver’s draw in free agency.
“I think a lot of that is a result of maybe some of the early success we had last year with the young quarterback.”
Take linebacker Greenlaw, who specifically went into free agency wanting to land with a franchise with an established quarterback, as his agent J.R. Carroll told The Post. The logic was simple: Have a good quarterback and you’ve got a chance to consistently play in the postseason.
“All of the teams that were vying, that were in the top of Dre’s list, all had really strong quarterbacks,” Carroll said.
Engram, who’d made the playoffs exactly once in eight NFL seasons with the New York Giants and Jacksonville Jaguars, wasn’t looking for a rebuilding situation. And Nix actively played recruiter with him, meeting the tight end in the Broncos’ facility on his visit to Denver. The quarterback’s maturity, Lieberman recalled, stuck out to Engram.
“(Evan) was like, ‘Yeah, like, this dude walks around like he knows what he’s doing,’” Lieberman said. “‘Like, he started six years in college, he walks around like he’s been around the block.’”
Nix has become a true ambassador, in free agency and otherwise, ahead of his second season in a Broncos uniform. He made a courtside appearance at a Nuggets-Lakers game in mid-March, then went to an Avalanche game two days later and launched signed footballs into the crowd. He’s always been the face, as Nix’s personal QB coach David Morris pointed out — Alabama’s Mr. Football in high school, a leader for two collegiate football powers in Auburn and Oregon.
Fitting into that role in Denver, Morris said, is just natural for him.
“This,” Morris said of Nix, “is kind of who he is.”
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