DENVER — You snow it. I snow it. Anybody outside the chowder belt snows it, too. Bo Nix doesn’t just beat the Patriots Sunday. He beats them by two touchdowns.

Tell me with a straight face that Nix fumbles the ball away in a panic, the way Jarrett Stidham did, to set up the Patriots’ only TD of the day.

Tell me with a palm on The Good Book that the Broncos’ fourth-and-1 at the New England 14 with Nix behind center — or with Nix just falling forward — doesn’t amount to points.

Tell me with hand over heart that the Broncos’ final drive of the first half, before Mother Nature took over the game, gets more out of a third-and-4 at the Patriots’ 34 than Stidham deciding to run out of bounds for a 2-yard self-sack.

By my math, if Nix plays, it’s 13-0 Broncos at the break. Maybe more. Probably more.

Then the third quarter comes, that insane squall rolls in, and Drake Maye spends the second half throwing into the teeth of a Front Range blizzard.

“That’s, again, a ‘what-if,'” Broncos punter Jeremy Crawshaw told me after Denver’s incredible season ended with a 10-7 loss to the Pats, and Maye, in a chilly AFC Championship Game. “But we all had full trust in Stiddy to do the job today. And we wouldn’t have anybody else do that.”

No knock on Stiddy, either. His 52-yard pass to Marvin Mims Jr. on the Broncos’ second drive of the day was an absolute beauty. When it comes to pure deep shots, No. 8 might be the best option coach Sean Payton has in the QB room.

But when it comes to everything else, it’s advantage: Nix — a fact underscored once that winter hellscape rolled into Empower Field. It was always going to be a big ask of Stiddy to knock out the AFC’s No. 2 seed on short notice. But asking him to beat the snow, too, proved to be one ice-covered bridge too far.

“(The Broncos) will probably say it was all about what they didn’t do,” Pats left tackle Will Campbell told reporters after the game. “But our defense has been underrated all season.”

True, but that defense also had a little help. Injuries are a loser’s excuse, granted, yet the Broncos closed out a 15-4 campaign with some absolute doozies.

No Nix. No J.K. Dobbins. No Troy Franklin. No Brandon Jones. Denver faced New England without its QB1. Without its leading rusher during the regular season. Without its No. 2 wideout in terms of catches. When the football gods finally came for Payton, they didn’t miss.

Although Payton has no one to blame for Sunday but himself, in retrospect. That aforementioned fourth-and-1 at the 14, with the Broncos up 7-0? Saints alive. It’s one thing to have to draw up a winning game plan with Stidham in eight days. It’s another to try and get cute in the middle of a back-alley brawl.

“It just felt like we had momentum to get up 14. It felt like we had a good call,” the coach explained later.

Was it, though? Stidham is 6-foot-3. If you don’t trust him to wiggle forward 6 inches for a first down at your opponent’s doorstep, you probably deserve to lose some of the trust from your fan base.

From the fourth-down stop to Stidham’s backyard-pass fumble, the Broncos’ deepest wounds Sunday were self-inflicted. That fourth drive is going to sting for a while. You have to strike while the Stiddy is hot. Sure, the Broncos’ run game had slowed down once they’d crossed the Patriots’ 40. But they’d run it five consecutive plays with three different rushers — tailback RJ Harvey, fullback Adam Prentice and Stidham — for 21 yards to the Pats’ 14. Why give up the ghost?

Stiddy was admirable in a pinch, especially as the conditions worsened. But this was a game you should’ve led 10-0 or 13-0 and spent the second half handing off.

“I think the big thing was that first half, that first half momentum and field position didn’t yield what it needed to yield,” Payton said later. “We needed more than that, and (our reflections) start there.”

It was awfully hard to see much upside through all that snow. But if there was, it’s that this feels like the next phase in the Broncos’ revival under Nix and Payton — not the end.

Denver went into Week 1 with the eighth-fewest number of players among NFL rosters who were aged 29 or older. Nix is 25 and on a rookie contract through 2027. Russell Wilson’s dead money is off the books. CB Pat Surtain II, RT Mike McGlinchey, DL Zach Allen, WR Courtland Sutton, LT Garett Bolles, OLB Jonathon Cooper, OLB Nik Bonitto, S Talanoa Hufanga, DB Jahdae Barron, DL D.J. Jones, LB Dre Greenlaw, G Quinn Meinerz, DL Malcolm Roach, Harvey, Crawhsaw and K Wil Lutz are all signed through the end of the 2027 season. The window is still wide open here. Even if it’s freezing outside.

“As a young team, it’s only up from here,” cornerback Riley Moss told me. “Every guy’s confidence is up. Every guy’s goals are higher. And so, yes, it (stinks) to lose, but if there is probably a positive that would come from it, (it’s that) we were in this game. We know what the standard is now. And we know what to expect.”

We expect to see Nix vs. Maye in the postseason again — and in a fair fight, hopefully. If No. 10 plays on Sunday, the Broncos are planning for Santa Clara, Calif., right now. There’s snow doubt.

____

©2026 MediaNews Group, Inc. Visit at denverpost.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.