Bo Nix explains how Senior Bowl QBs learn, grow collaboratively in Mobile

As the Senior Bowl takes place this week a handful of veteran players are being put through the paces in front of NFL scouts to see what they can handle. Oregon quarterback Bo Nix is one of them.

Nix is one of three quarterbacks for the National team, along with Washington‘s Michael Penix Jr. and Notre Dame‘s Sam Hartman. All three have worked together this week to get up to speed quickly, making sure the offense runs without a hitch.

“You start, you get the playbook at the beginning of the week and you go over it yourself,” Nix explained in an on-camera interview on the NFL Network. “You start learning some concepts and getting familiar with it. Then when I got here we met as quarterbacks and we started going over it and talking through it, ‘how would you read this? How would I read this?’ And we went through it together and we just kind of collaboratively went together and put some things, put our brains together.”

That’s a whole lot of production in one spot at the Senior Bowl. Penix and Nix were both Heisman Trophy finalists, while Hartman was one of the most statistically successful quarterbacks in NCAA history.

Each can likely learn something from the other two, if they’re willing to open up and share different techniques and concepts.

“All three of us have played a lot of football over time. All three of us have seen a lot of different things,” Nix said. “And most of the time we’ve run sort of these versions of the plays, and it translates to the coaches when you’re able to get around them and they’re able to really teach you and go through progressions.”

As the Senior Bowl week progresses, more and more concepts will be unlocked as the coaches push each quarterback to his limits to see what he can handle and what he can’t.

Nix and the others are simply doing their best to prepare in the meantime, soaking in every bit of knowledge they get, whether it’s in the down time between practices or in the practice reps themselves.

“And then when you’re out on the field they’re able to also teach from behind,” Nix said. “Once you get done with a rep they can say, ‘Hey, you’ve got Cover 2, you can work the other side.’ Things like that. It’s completely collaborative and it takes personally, collectively as a group you can learn from all sorts of people.”