This is the stinking truth. But it also comes down to talent. You gotta have the talent. And one other element to your conversation there with Sean Payton, they got Jalen Waddell. Their big signature offseason move was training for Jalen Waddell, gave up their first-round pick, and there's a lot of hope. Quite honestly, I just kind of wonder if the hype surrounding Jalen Waddell is being built up to levels that are going to be hard to really match or deliver on. Well, I think this guy is an athlete that the Broncos didn't have. This guy is a missing piece on the offensive side of the ball that they just didn't have. And it's interesting because there's a lot of guys who run fast. And I've heard this from multiple coaches, but Sean said it again yesterday. Tons of guys run fast. That's not the key. How fast do you stop?
That's the key. How fast you get in and out of breaks. And can you get out of a break without losing speed? And so he told me the story of Jay Novacek. And if you remember Jay, I like Jay Novacek. So and I didn't even realize this. Jay Novacek originally, I think, was drafted by Arizona. He was a big, lanky kind of wide receiver who couldn't really run out of Wyoming. And so he had a really good camp, but he didn't make it. And Dallas picked him up and transitioned into a tight end.
But even at tight end, he could not run anybody. But what Janovich could do is stop on a dime and get back to the quarterback. And so his ability to get open was really his ability to be full speed, even though it wasn't fast, and then get out of a break and give the quarterback somebody to hit and to be able to stop on a dime. And so with Jalen Waddle, in and out of breaks, he doesn't lose speed. Right? It's like he's on, he is like a train on a monorail. When you watch him run, he gets out of the break. And, you know, I'm talking to Sean about it. I go, everybody thinks it's just lift the top of coverage, go deep. But where he makes the majority of his big-time plays is he's running 12-yard drift routes, in-cutting routes, catching the ball on the run, and just, whoom, taking off. And we're talking about it. I'm on the field. Like, I'm in the offensive huddle with Sean. Like, I'm listening. And sure enough, man, we talk about it. They break the huddle. We step back a little bit. Here goes Waddle across the formation from right to left. Boom, takes off. Hits a, you know, hits a crossing route. Hit him in stride and just freaking in stride.
whoom, across the football field all the way, beats the corner on the opposite side, whoom, down the sideline at 100 miles an hour. Like, when you watch him, that's what he's done, and that's what he'll bring. And I think when you talk about the Broncos' offense in general, it's, like, their explosive plays were, you know, a deep throw, 50-50 ball to Cortland Sutton or whatever, you know, to Troy Franklin. I guarantee you there weren't a ton of shallow or low crosses caught where all of a sudden that ball that was thrown at 12 yards becomes a 60-yard breakout. I do want to break some news before we leave, though, because I have breaking news. Ooh. All right. So a lot of concern here in Denver.
and if you're a fantasy football aficionado, about quarterback Bo Nix. A lot of talk out there about the ankle, the procedures, and all that stuff that went on. He broke his ankle in the divisional round of the playoffs against the Buffalo Bills, missed the AFC Championship. A lot of people here in Denver, a lot of people across the nation think that the Broncos would have gone to the Super Bowl and been a much better matchup for the Seattle Seahawks had Bo Nix been healthy. I happen to agree with them. They would have. Okay. So I asked Sean Pointblank about Bo's ankle. And so a couple of different things. One, you know, clean break, they fixed the break, all those things. He said that if the game, if there was a regular season game this weekend,
Even though Bo didn't compete in the – he competed in the minicamp in individuals and all those things. But when it came to team, he didn't because they don't want somebody to accidentally step on his foot, right? But if a game was this weekend in the NFL, Bo would start. He's that far along in his progression. The other thing is that he had bone spurs removed in April. And, you know, it's like –
I'm a big-time spelunker. I think everybody knows that I've done a lot of spelunking in my life, right? Do you know what spelunking is? It's when you go into caves. You know, you explore caves. Very good. Okay. Very good. And so there are these staggy, stalaggy things. Some hang from the ceiling. Some grow from the floor, right? What are those things called? Stalactites and stalagmites? Stalactites are stick tight to the ceiling. Boom, they come down. Stalagmites from the ground up. Okay. So in my day, a lot of elbow surgeries. I think I had six on this elbow alone. Six elbow surgeries.
One of them was to remove a bunch of bone spurs. And same thing. They had grown on my elbow into my joint. So I had about that much range of motion because it would stop there. Really painful things. And so what they do is they go in there and they grind those things out, take them out. One of the things they don't want you to do, though, is after you have it done, they want the joint to be calm because essentially they'll regrow if they're irritated again. And so that was the deal in April.
He is ready to go. I saw him at practice. He's moving around. He looked great. Did all those things. So that's what they had. That's what they scheduled to have done after the ankle healed from the broken ankle aspect. Okay, but you just said something there that this is the reason why there are still people worried about Knicks moving forward and whether or not this is going to be a chronic problem. Right. What did you just say? Six times you had bone spurs taken out of your elbow. Not six times. I had bone spurs taken out of my elbow one time. One time. But I had a form of, well, two things. They weren't bone spurs, but they were bone chips that became.
like literally the size, depending on where they were, the size of, I had one bone spur taken out, or not bone spur, but a chip that had grown in the back of my elbow that was about the size of my thumb. But I had a bunch that were about, do you ever get chocolate covered raisins? Yes. They're delicious. Or just raisins. I like raisins too. Sure. So I had a bunch of bone chips that were floating in that elbow joint that would get stuck in my elbow joint, which is incredibly painful. I bet. So I had those taken out as well multiple times where they take out two or three chips that had grown to the size of like raisins. My concern is, my point is though, is that once,
It happens once. Are you predisposed to them to keep coming back? It's crazy. You clean it out. It looks good. You're clean. You're healthy. Let's go. But then it was funny because mine happened over the course of like a probably two season period where I had multiple elbow surgeries because I just kept...
creating these bone chips like it was my elbow's job to create bone chips. It was just spitting them out. And they start as a little flake and they tumble around, they become big and then they impinge the joint. And so, yeah, there's always that chance. But then after a couple of years of spitting out or a couple of seasons of spitting out bone chips, it stopped. It didn't happen anymore. So I don't know the answer to that. Anytime you have repetitive use injuries.
You're going to have issues. My father-in-law gave me some advice when I was young, and I'm not going to share that advice with you, but if you have a joint and you play a professional sport and it has issues, you're probably going to have issues with it for the rest of your life. So, yeah, there's something to keep an eye on. Something to keep an eye on. But for right now, looks like Bo's in good shape. He's ready to go. Bronco fans, you can feel better. Fantasy football players, look to stack Bo Nix and Jalen Waddle on your fantasy team. There you go.