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Broncos head coach Sean Payton talked a lot about the Broncos trading up to address the quarterback position leading up to the draft, but the Broncos didn’t wind up making a move before adding a player at the position.

The Broncos stayed put and took former Oregon quarterback Bo Nix at No. 12. It was a match that popped in several mock drafts because of projections of how Nix would fit in Denver‘s scheme and Payton said on Thursday night that he’d say “can you be quiet” whenever he’d see links between his team and Nix.

Payton said the team “did our best to talk about other players and directions,” but that Nix stood out to them “early into the process” on several fronts.

“You pay close attention to all the film study,” Payton said, via the team’s website. “Obviously, he’s played a lot of football, but [he stood out in] sack differential, turnover differential, accuracy, third-down passing. [He was] first, first, first, first in this class. First in end-of-half, first in end-of-game, two-minute situations, second in red zone. Then let’s do another passing statistic and remove a lot of the short, underneath throws. Obviously, that’s part of what they do offensively, and you remove that, and you come back with the analytics and it’s still first. I would say his arm strength — we saw it at the Pro Day, but even in the private workout — was very good.”

The Broncos have Jarrett Stidham and Zach Wilson on the roster, but the fit that people saw between Nix and Payton leading up to the draft would suggest there’s a pretty good chance Nix is the man in Week One for Denver.