Tracy Wolfson noticed something was off with Bo Nix the moment he came to the sideline after Denver’s overtime win against Buffalo. The problem was that she had no idea just how off.
“I saw Bo kind of come over to the sideline, and he was wincing in pain,” Wolfson told Front Office Sports. “And I did communicate that, but there’s so much happening at the end of the game… I thought it was a knee. He was like holding his knee.”
Wolfson had just finished covering one of the wildest playoff games in recent memory. The Broncos had knocked off the Bills 33-30 in overtime, pulling off an upset that sent Denver to the AFC Championship Game. Nix completed 26 of 46 passes for 279 yards and three touchdowns, leading his sixth game-winning drive of the season. The second-year quarterback became just the second QB in his second season to reach a conference title game since Patrick Mahomes.
But minutes before their on-camera interview, Wolfson noticed Bo Nix favoring something. She asked him about it.
“I had a chance right before our interview with him because of the replays to say, ‘You OK?’ And he’s like, ‘Yeah, yeah, I’m good.’ I’m like, ‘Why aren’t you smiling? Come on, you just won.’ And he’s like, ‘It was such a stressful game.'”
So Wolfson led the interview the way any good reporter would, acknowledging what Nix had just told her. She prefaced it by noting the stress of the moment. Nix praised the Bills, talked about his team’s resilience, and never mentioned being hurt. The interview aired, CBS wrapped, and Wolfson went to dinner with colleagues.
That’s when she found out Bo Nix had fractured his right ankle and would need surgery, ending his playoff run.
“I was sitting at dinner with some colleagues when we found out,” she said. “Once we do the interview, we’re done. We’re off the air. It’s not like you’re following up; you’re not doing postgame locker room or anything like that. And so we were just as caught off guard.”
The injury happened on the second-to-last play of overtime, according to coach Sean Payton, who returned to the media room roughly an hour after his initial press conference to deliver the news. Nix had taken a designed run, gotten tackled, and his ankle twisted awkwardly. He got up, jogged a bit, and handled the kneel-down that set up Wil Lutz’s game-winning field goal. Then he did a postgame interview without mentioning it.
“To be honest, as a reporter, you’re not going to all of a sudden mention an injury that no one saw, and no one had an idea,” Wolfson explained. “And especially in that moment when they just won, right? You’re trying to capture that moment and that enthusiasm and that joy, which he didn’t really have.”
Wolfson’s instinct was correct. Something was wrong. She saw him wincing, thought it was his knee, asked him about it, and got told he was fine. Without confirmation from team personnel or obvious visible signs of serious injury, there was nothing to report on air in that moment. The interview was about capturing what had just happened, not speculating about something Nix himself had downplayed.
“We just talked, and he categorized it as a ‘stressful game,’ and so it was that moment and then of course everything transpired afterwards,” she said.
About Sam Neumann
Since the beginning of 2023, Sam has been a staff writer for Awful Announcing and The Comeback. A 2021 graduate of Temple University, Sam is a Charlotte native, who currently calls Greenville, South Carolina his home. He also has a love/hate relationship with the New York Mets and Jets.