There are three types of winning quarterbacks: A win-because-of quarterback, a win-with quarterback, and a win-in-spite-of quarterback. The 2025 Denver Broncos are 9-2, sitting at the top of the AFC, and they’re winning with Bo Nix as their quarterback.
Every single Broncos game that you watch this season, Bo Nix looks like a garbage can compared to the way pretty much everyone on defense plays. The thing is, that’s kind of what it was like with the Broncos in 2015, when they won Super Bowl 50.
Going into Week 12 of the 2015 season, the Broncos were 8-2, in third place in the AFC (behind Tom Brady’s Patriots and Andy Dalton’s Bengals), and they were winning with Peyton Manning/Brock Osweiler as their starting quarterback. This is all just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the similarities of these two iterations of the Broncos.
The 2025 and 2015 Broncos are a football Spiderman meme
Facts are facts: in 2015, the Broncos’ offense was 18th in yards per play, and their defense allowed the fewest yards per play. In 2025, the Broncos' offense is 17th in yards per play, and their defense has allowed the fewest yards per play.
Now, for the sake of fairness, I’m not going to get into a bunch of the Next Gen Stats and the EPA per-play kind of stats because those weren’t things back in 2015. I’m trying to keep these comparisons fair. Every number I’m using for this is coming from ESPN and Pro Football Reference.
Quarterback Similarities:
In 2015, Peyton Manning was 39 years old, in his 17th season in the NFL, and four years removed from a major neck surgery. He got injured and missed half of that season, meaning the grammatically-incorrect-tattoo haver, Brock Osweiler, took over from Weeks 10 through 17.
Those two guys stunk up the joint for most of the season. Manning averaged 224.9 passing yards per game and had a completion percentage of 59.8 percent, while Osweiler averaged 246 passing yards and had a completion percentage of 61.8. This season, Bo Nix is averaging 220.1 passing yards per game and has a completion percentage of 61.2.
These are teams that are/were not winning because of a dangerously effective and efficient passing game… or a running game.
Offensive Similarities:
In 2015, the Broncos were averaging 107.4 rushing yards per game (17th most). In 2025, the Broncos are averaging 122.3 rushing yards per game (11th). They’re a little different, but they’re both in the middle-ish third of their respective seasons. That’s to say, neither of them is so dominant that it makes up for their lack of a passing game.
Now, the glaring difference between these two offenses is their wide receivers. Manning and Osweiler were throwing to Demaryius Thomas and Emmanuel Sanders, who had the seventh and 15th most receiving yards in 2015. Nix is throwing to Courtland Sutton and Troy Franklin… who have the 18th and 35th most receiving yards in 2025.
If I’m listing all of the similarities between these two teams, I have to mention the glaring differences. Thomas and Sanders were disgustingly better than Sutton and Franklin are right now… like, way, way, way better.
Defensive Similarities:
This is where it gets juicy. These two defenses were/are amazing. In 2015, the defense was allowing an NFL-low 4.4 yards per play. In 2025, the defense is allowing an NFL-low 4.4 yards per play.
They were shutting teams down week after week. At this point in 2015, the defense had allowed 20 points or fewer in seven games… and would you look at that? The Broncos have allowed 20 points or fewer in just seven games this season, too. It’s bizarre how close these two teams are to each other.
The scary thing is that while the 2015 defense was amazing, the 2025 one might be even better. The Super Bowl-winning defense allowed 18.5 points per game and had 3.25 sacks per game. This defense allows 17.5 points per game and has 4.4 sacks per game.
If you’re a 2015 Broncos fan and shut down any talk that this defense could be better, you’d look at the turnover rate.
The 2015 Broncos forced 1.7 turnovers per game and had four players with at least two interceptions: Aqib Talib, Chris Harris Jr., David Bruton Jr., and Danny Trevathan. This year, the defense has only 0.81 takeaways per game, and Dondrae Tillman is the only guy with two interceptions. The ball hawking in 2015 was something special, and those turnovers are a hell of a way to give a struggling offense some help.
Regardless, both of these defenses are deservedly at the top of the league in their respective seasons.
Who cares?
We know that these offenses and defenses are eerily similar/borderline the same exact team. The last time a defensive player was the Super Bowl MVP was Von Miller in Super Bowl 50. In that game, Manning had perhaps one of the worst performances a starting quarterback has ever had in a winning effort in a Super Bowl. He was 13-of-23 for 141 yards and an interception. He was sacked five times, had a Quarterback Rating of 8.6 (out of 100), and a passer rating of 56.6 (out of 153.8). He was historically bad.
Bo Nix isn’t above sinking to that level. This season alone, he’s had a sub-50 QBR five times and a sub-80 passer rating three times.
If they make it to the Super Bowl and you think they’ll win that game, Nick Bonitto will be the guy you want to be the Super Bowl MVP. In 2015, Von Miller led that team in sacks with 11. Bonitto leads the 2025 team with 9.5 sacks (with six games to go).
We know everything is the same between these teams. If you buy in on this whole thing, the Bonitto is going to be the guy. Miller was 30-1 to win in 2015, and you have to imagine it’d be a big number for Bonitto if the Broncos are still playing football in February.