In Week 5 of the NFL season, the Philadelphia Eagles will face their first unfamiliar foe in the 2-2 Denver Broncos, who made the playoffs last season, breaking an eight-year postseason drought. Here is what to look for in this matchup:
1) Who is Bo Nix?
“He’s a lot like Baker Mayfield,” Vic Fangio said on Tuesday. “I think he might be Baker’s younger brother. Really good, really, really good.
“He’s a scrambler, he’s a competitor. He’ll throw the ball in tight places. He runs their offense really well. I think [Sean Payton’s] done a great job bringing him along and they got their quarterback for the future. They looked long and hard for many years and they’ve got one.”
Nix was the 12th overall pick in the 2024 NFL Draft, but he’ll turn 26 in February. He had 61 career starts in college, playing against good competition at Auburn and Oregon. He also started all 17 games for the Broncos as a rookie last season. In other words, he is a little more seasoned than your typical second-year quarterback.
In 2024, Nix completed 376 of 576 passes (66.3%) for 3775 yards (6.7 YPA), 29 TDs, and 12 INTs, finishing third in NFL Offensive Rookie of the Year honors, behind Jayden Daniels and Brock Bowers. He also improved throughout the season:
| Bo Nix | Comp/Att (Comp %) | Yards (YPA) | TD-INT | Rating |
| First 9 games | 184/294 (62.6%) | 1753 (6.0) | 8-6 | 79.6 |
| Last 9 games | 205/295 (69.5%) | 2166 (7.3) | 22-6 | 107.0 |
Nix also had 92 rushes for 430 yards and 4 TDs. Those 430 yards were good for eighth among quarterbacks in 2024:
| QB | Rush | Yards | YPC | TD |
| Lamar Jackson | 139 | 915 | 6.6 | 4 |
| Jayden Daniels | 148 | 891 | 6.0 | 6 |
| Jalen Hurts | 150 | 630 | 4.2 | 14 |
| Kyler Murray | 78 | 572 | 7.3 | 5 |
| Josh Allen | 102 | 531 | 5.2 | 12 |
| Anthony Richardson | 86 | 499 | 5.8 | 6 |
| Caleb Williams | 81 | 489 | 6.0 | 0 |
| Bo Nix | 92 | 430 | 4.7 | 4 |
| Drake Maye | 54 | 421 | 7.8 | 2 |
| Baker Mayfield | 60 | 378 | 6.3 | 3 |
Nix’s running ability isn’t going to make defensive coordinators lose sleep in the same way Lamar Jackson’s does, but certainly he has some athleticism to escape the pocket and turn negative plays into positive ones, like Mayfield did against the Eagles Week 4.
Nix was named to the NFL’s silly Top 100 list, coming in at No. 64. Here’s what some teammates and opponents had to say about him:
In 2025, Nix is out to a slow start, at least based on expectations. He’s 90 of 137 (65.7%) for 861 yards (6.3 YPA), 7 TDs, and 4 INTs.
The Broncos have a good-not-great set of receivers in Courtland Sutton, Marvin Mims, and Troy Franklin, all players the Broncos drafted.
| Broncos WRs | Rec | Yards | YPC | TD |
| Courtland Sutton | 18 | 266 | 14.8 | 3 |
| Troy Franklin | 18 | 196 | 10.9 | 1 |
| Marvin Mims | 12 | 109 | 9.1 | 1 |
Sutton has been around a while, as this is his eighth season. He had 81 catches for 1081 yards and 8 TDs in Nix’s rookie season in 2024. Both Sutton (6’4, 214) and Franklin (6’3, 180) have some height. Mims (5’11, 182) is a smaller receiver with 4.38 speed.
2) The Broncos have bowling ball running backs
Sean Payton likes to run the ball, as Fangio noted:
“He’s an excellent play caller,” Fangio said of Payton. “There are very multiple on offense with multiple personnel groups, multiple schemes from the play standpoint, but yet still has a good bit of old school in him and they’ll run the ball. They like the power game and the run game. He’s really good. He’s tough to go against.”
The Broncos’ top two backs are short, squatty guys in J.K. Dobbins (5’10, 212) and RJ Harvey (5’8, 205). They have been effective this season, as both guys are averaging over 5 yards per carry:
| Broncos RBs | Rush | Yards | YPC | TD |
| J.K. Dobbins | 57 | 323 | 5.7 | 3 |
| RJ Harvey | 27 | 138 | 5.1 | 0 |
Dobbins is currently fourth in the NFL in rushing yards, behind only Jonathan Taylor, James Cook, and Travis Etienne. You have to earn tackles against him. He won’t go down easily:
The Eagles’ run defense struggled the first three weeks of the season, but I thought they were better Week 4 against a good Buccaneers offense.
3) Where might the Eagles go feastin’? 🍗
The Broncos’ offensive line looks like this:
| LT | LG | C | RG | RT |
| Garett Bolles | Ben Powers | Luke Wattenberg | Quinn Meinerz | Mike McGlinchey |
Meinerz was a First-Team All-Pro in 2024, and Bolles has had a terrific start to his season:
Broncos LT Garett Bolles has been flat out sensational through the first month of the campaign (164 pass pro snaps):
• 4 pressures
• 0 sacks
• 2.4 pressure % allowed 🔒~ 91.9 pass pro effectiveness grade (tops among all OL in football)
33-year old is playing at an All-Pro…
— Ryan Fowler (@_RyanFowler_) September 30, 2025
McGlinchey and Powers are veterans who have been solid starters throughout their careers. If there’s a spot where the Broncos are weak along their line it’s at center, but overall this is one of the best offensive lines in the NFL.
The Eagles as a team only have 5 sacks on the season, and they’ll be without Nolan Smith for at least three more games. Also, Fangio acknowledged that Jalen Carter is playing through an injury that is affecting his game.
“I think it’s something that every now and then will really sting him and we got to get him out for a little bit and then I think it calms down and he’s able to go,” Fangio said. “But yeah, there’s no doubt he’s fighting through an injury and I thought he played well the other day. In spite of that.”
Fangio doesn’t believe the pass rush has been bad.
“I don’t think our rush has been bad,” he said. “The ball’s been coming out pretty quick at times. I haven’t felt an epidemic during the games when I’m calling them that our rush isn’t good enough. So sacks are sacks.”
#FeastinMeter: 3/10 turkey legs 🍗🍗🍗
4) The Broncos have some very good edge rushers
The Broncos have two of the more underrated defenders in the NFL in Nik Bonitto and Jonathon Cooper.
Bonitto has at least 6 pressures in all four of the Broncos’ games this season, per NFL NextGen Stats, and he is tied for third in the NFL with 4.5 sacks. He is undersized, but his game is all about speed.
Cooper has developed into a consistently productive edge rusher after he was a seventh-round pick in 2021, when Fangio was the Broncos’ head coach. Cooper had 8.5 sacks in 2023, 10.5 sacks in 2024, and he has 2.5 so far in 2025.
Here are Bonitto (15) and Cooper (0) meeting at the quarterback against the Bengals. Bonitto’s get-off is ridiculous.
It’s not often we even bother writing about the Eagles’ opposing edge rushers, because they’re almost always going to be shut down by Jordan Mailata and Lane Johnson. But Bonitto and Cooper form one of the best edge tandems in the NFL, and the Eagles could be vulnerable there for a change.
Mailata is an All-Pro, but if there’s a pass rusher type that has given him problems in the past, it’s smaller speed guys like Bonitto. And on the other side of the line, Lane Johnson has come out of each of the last two games with injuries and did not return.
5) What is the Eagles’ identity on offense?
The Eagles’ offense has been extremely predictable so far this season, based on formation. Offensive coordinator Kevin Patullo has been asked about the offense’s predictable tendencies in past pressers.
“I went through this morning some of the self-scout stuff and we get all those numbers and you try to counteract those going in, and sometimes situationally the plays pop up where you’re just not able to do that,” Patullo said after the Eagles’ Week 2 win over the Chiefs. “But it is definitely on our minds as far as when you plan those things, you always want to make sure, ‘Oh, I have a tendency I can break.’ Definitely need to do that this week.”
They haven’t become less predictable.
But also, the Eagles don’t seem to know yet what their offensive identity is yet.
“I think similar to last year, early in seasons, you’re trying to figure it out,” Patullo said. “First, you’re trying to do what you have to do to win the game. We’ve played four teams. Arguably, if you looked at last year, you would say, okay, the Chiefs is a tough test for us, the Rams was a tough test twice last year, and then this past week. Obviously, throughout the history against Tampa, it’s not been easy down there. It’s been tough. We’ve had our moments against them.
“So, I think you’re trying to do everything you can independently within those game plans to win the game. When you’re doing that, you’re trying to feel your way through it. Okay, last week it was this, this week it was that. So, I think we’re starting to feel some things that we have going that’s kind of flowed through a few games now.
“I think it’s just building on that because each defense and each week presents something totally new and this week, we’re playing another really good defense. Top tier, really good front rushers, their secondary is good. So I think there’s some things we’ve learned that, okay, this is a little different than last year, or we’re kind of continuing on this path, so let’s push this a little bit.
“But I think you just got to look at each game independently, and then you start to see patterns as you start to build throughout the season. It’s great that it’s happening now and not later. We were playing these tough defenses now to kind of figure this out as we go.”
Maybe that’s the problem with the offense so far. The Eagles are adjusting too much to what opposing defenses are trying to do to them, and not realizing that they can do whatever they want to opposing defenses with the half dozen All-Pro caliber players they have on that side of the ball. They should be the tone-setters, not the other way around.
I guess we’ll see if it all looks boring and predictable for long stretches of a game once again.
Follow Jimmy & PhillyVoice on Twitter: @JimmyKempski | thePhillyVoice
Like us on Facebook: PhillyVoice Sports
Add Jimmy’s RSS feed to your feed reader
Source link
