When two teams meet in the playoffs one of them is supposed to be happy afterward, right? Denver was momentarily joyous after outlasting Buffalo in overtime, but now their Super Bowl hopes rest on their backup quarterback.
Bo Nix broke a bone in his ankle toward the end of yesterday's epic. It will be Jarrett Stidham starting against either the Texans or Patriots next Sunday. Not ideal, with Stidham having not thrown a pass in a regular-season game since 2023.
Many will remember those games, the final two of the 2023 season when Sean Payton benched Russell Wilson to avoid the starter getting hurt (and making it more difficult to get out of his contract).
Stidham, ironically enough -- should the Patriots win today -- was a fourth-round selection by New England back in 2019. He didn't make any starts for them, with some guy named Tom Brady and then Cam Newton ahead of him; he ultimately surfaced with the Raiders in 2022 (whose head coach at the time was former Patriots coordinator Josh McDaniels) and then the Broncos a year later. He started four games for those two teams.
Good news for Broncos fans is he didn't totally fall on his face. Granted, playing out the string for eliminated Raiders and Broncos teams is a little different than starting the AFC Championship games against the Texans or Patriots, but he completed some passes.
Those four starts are shown below; he went 1-3 in them.
| JARRETT STIDHAM GAME LOG | |||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Year | Opp | Cmp | Att | Pass | TD | Int | Sk | Att | Run |
| 2022 | S.F. | 23 | 34 | 365 | 3 | 2 | 0 | 7 | 34 |
| 2022 | K.C. | 22 | 36 | 219 | 1 | 1 | 6 | 7 | 50 |
| 2023 | LAC | 20 | 32 | 224 | 1 | 0 | 2 | 6 | 6 |
| 2023 | at L.V. | 20 | 34 | 272 | 1 | 1 | 5 | 3 | 2 |
| Average | 21 | 34 | 270 | 1.7 | 1 | 3.3 | 6 | 23 | |
Rushing stats shown because while he didn't run for Denver, he did in his two starts for the Raiders -- 34 and 50 yards. He also took 13 sacks in those games, which should be great news for fans of whatever team will be making the trek to Denver next week. Call him the anti-Bo Nix in that regard.
Can Denver win with Stidham? Maybe. Sean Payton will have to come up with some trickery perhaps, and they'll also need to hope that either Pat Bryant (concussion) or Troy Franklin (hamstring) is able to suit up. At one point in yesterday's game they were lining up Nate Adkins at wide receiver. Marvin Mims having about the biggest game of his career saved them.
But hard to look at the game and not feel that Houston's defense will have a choice matchup for sacks and takeaways, should they win tonight. And since Denver's defense at no point really stopped Buffalo's offense yesterday (takeaways were the difference, not defensive stops), you'd probably feel good about whatever offense faces the Broncos a week from now.
--Andy Richardson