Bo Nix begins his third season in the NFL on Monday Night Football in Arrowhead Stadium. The 26-year-old enters the season with significant individual and team expectations after helping lead the Denver Broncos to a 14-3 record and AFC Championship appearance in 2025. He also enters the season as a new dad after his daughter was born in the spring.

But this isn’t a story about Nix. At least, it’s not all about Nix.

It’s about AIRO.

AIRO, which 247Sports’ fifth-ranked high school quarterback in the country, Kentucky commitment Jake Nawrot, called “honestly the best quarterback camp I’ve been to all summer,” isn’t partnered with Under Armour or Elite 11, the established brand names in the high school quarterback camp circuit. It doesn’t wish to be, either.

AIRO, which means “to lift up and elevate” in Greek, was started a decade ago by Patrick Nix, Bo’s father and former Auburn quarterback in the early 1990s, and it exists “to impact the most influential athlete on each football team for the cause of Jesus Christ.”

Nix explained to 247Sports one of the most transformative developments in his life. And he wants to pass the wisdom he's learned to others in similar positions.

"I understand what these young guys go through on a yearly basis as a high school quarterback," Nix said. When I truly put my identity in the Lord and not on the football field, my life changed.

"I'm grateful we have the platform to share the gospel and speak life into these guys on their faith journey. AIRO is just getting started."

AIRO holds offseason camps that offer elite-level quarterback instruction for high school players, while also pouring into them with God-breathed, biblical truths and encouragement that will deeply influence not only how they live out this unique chapter of their lives, but the many more to come.

More recently, AIRO also started holding retreats that have attracted college and NFL players across all positions. No on-field instruction is had at these retreats. Instead, players gather to read Scripture and enjoy like-minded community, fellowship, and mentorship.

In addition to Nix, players involved with AIRO include fellow Broncos quarterbacks Sam Ehlinger and Jarrett Stidham, Jaguars quarterback Carter Bradley, and Buccaneers wide receiver Tez Johnson (Patrick’s adopted son) in the NFL, plus college players Texas wide receiver Cam Coleman and Notre Dame quarterback Noah Grubbs.

The high school participants range from potential future first-round NFL draft picks and football royalty, like high school freshman Marshall Manning, Peyton Manning’s son, to quarterbacks that won’t take another snap after their senior high school season concludes.

AIRO’s selection process for high school quarterbacks is unique.

247Sports recently spoke with Patrick over the phone about how AIRO got started and how it continues to evolve. Earlier this year, Patrick stepped down from his head coaching role at Central Phenix City in Alabama for reasons notably related to freeing up space in his calendar to allow for richer involvement with AIRO.

“We don’t want it to get bigger than 16 (players),” Patrick said. “We want smaller numbers for discipleship purposes. We want to get to know these guys. We want to go deep. We want players that are willing to be discipled because that’s how you can reach them. We do our research during the selection process. God has blessed us with really neat and fun guys.”

AIRO accepts donations. And AIRO held its first annual golf tournament this past July and all proceeds went to the ministry.

But the camp participant pays nothing.

“That’s very important to us,” Patrick said. “We want to give to them and never take. All they have to do is get here, and then we take care of the rest the entire weekend.”

When the weekend wraps up, it’s not goodbye forever. In fact, it’s the opposite.

“Where we have evolved the most in the past three years is we want to have a discipleship mindset, not just camp and leave and never hear from us again,” Patrick said. “We want it to be ongoing. We want to stay in their lives as they grow as men, husbands, and fathers. We want yearly, weekly, even daily relationships. We want community.

“We want them to know they can have a personal relationship with the creator of the universe. We also want to walk with them through some of the struggles they go through. We want them to be able to give us a phone call, and we can talk through it and give them Scripture to combat whatever it is, whether it’s injuries or transfers or anything. We want to talk to a mom or dad questioning the recruiting process, because we’ve been there and done that with some of those things.”

AIRO started back when Bo was on his way to being a four-star high school recruit and 247Sports’ No. 2 dual-threat quarterback for his class.

“A decade ago, we had just moved to Pinson Valley, Ala., and Bo was in the 10th grade,” Patrick said. “He was doing Elite 11s and Future 50s and kind of getting into all of that— a chasing mode of football. And as his dad, I recognized quickly that didn’t want my boys thinking football and the (recruiting) process was the most important thing in their lives. I wanted to make sure that Jesus Christ was the most important thing and football was what we did and not who we are.

“So I thought, we can do something different.”

Patrick teamed up with Bill Gray, who was the director of Fellowship of Christian Athletes in Birmingham at the time and had previously coached alongside Patrick at Samford University, to lift AIRO off the ground.

“We wanted high-level football instruction and to be able to dive into the Bible and talk about Jesus Christ,” Patrick said. “It happened that a board member of FCA had a farm south of Birmingham and that’s where we held our first weekend camp.

“We had 16 quarterbacks from the Birmingham area the first year because we had 16 bunks at the time. Then COVID-19 threw us a curveball and Bo and I missed a couple of years because he went out to Oregon, but it continued to run each year and high school quarterbacks from coast to coast started attending. Then all of a sudden, college quarterbacks are coming back to help lead it.”

Oklahoma quarterback commitment Jamison Roberts echoed what Nawrot said about AIRO, even though they were interviewed separately about the topic.

“It was the best camp I’ve ever been to,” Roberts said. “It was different from other camps.”

What’s different about it?

There’s a football workout in the morning and another one in the afternoon. Outside of that, you won’t find many parallels to the other quarterback camps across the country. For starters, Roberts said campers give up their phones upon arrival and don’t get them back until the weekend is over. Roberts said going phone-less for a couple of days was one of his favorite parts of the entire AIRO experience. Undoubtedly, it was others’ too.

Fishing, grilling, riding horses, and various other off-field experiences are also part of the weekend.

“Always a huge thing with athletes is you’re the big man on campus, quarterback especially,” Roberts said. “So it’s even more important how you live out your life as a Christian— as a student, son, boyfriend, and then eventually one day as a husband and father. I think it’s important to have hobbies outside of football. I picked up golf this summer. I fish and play pickleball. I’m not just Jamison the quarterback.”

As AIRO works to expand locations, and will even hold camps in Colorado and Oregon this offseason for the first time and perhaps one day in Texas where Ehlinger is originally from, settings might vary. But so far, they’ve been in Alabama and near nature and far from the noise.

“As a dad with two sons in the NFL and one in college, we have to be careful not to place our identity in proving ourselves,” Patrick said. “Jesus loves us no matter what and nothing can separate us from that. We set a foundation for these guys that their identity is not in football but in Jesus Christ.”

That messaging is quite the contrast from the one that our recruiting industry hammers home to promising high school quarterbacks these days— the one that tends to communicate their worth is directly tied to the number of zeroes in their NIL deals. And that football is the rock on which they should stand.

AIRO changes course.

“Everybody sees these guys in college and the NFL and thinks they’ve got it made all the time,” Patrick said. “That’s not always true. They might have a lot of material things, but these guys struggle, and we all do, and the way we can help them is to show them their rock is Jesus.”

247Sports spoke with various senior and junior high school quarterbacks about their AIRO camp experiences.

“Football will end one day. That’s a big realization, so it’s all about serving God and loving God through it and serving others and your teammates… it’s about bringing attention to God through a sport that so many people love. Ultimately, we become better quarterbacks by serving our teammates. Jesus was the greatest servant. That’s how we are to play the position of quarterback… lifting up others.“ - Bobby Coleman, Georgia State commitment

“I had never met some of the guys there in my life, and now we are good friends. We were greeted with such kindness and hospitality. … We prayed, learned new coverages, Bo broke down some NFL film, and we got to fish. I left there better than when I came. I’m better spiritually, especially with all this recruiting stuff. I know God’s plan is already there for me. Quarterbacks get the most love and the most hate. You can get high and low, and everyone is going to look at you and see your every move. Your walk with Jesus becomes so important.” - Sam Sollie, Auburn commitment

“Bo went over his experiences in the NFL and throughout college. It definitely helped me in how I think about facing adversity and what’s coming in the future. Football can’t be my identity. You have to have a foundation elsewhere that will help keep you going. I’m still learning a lot about Christianity, but doing something like this helps a lot.” - Nawrot

“One of my favorite parts was Bradley and Ehlinger talking to us about sanctification and helping us learn how we can live more holy lives.” - Roberts

Nix suffered a season-ending ankle injury in the Broncos’ divisional win over Buffalo last January. He was one win away from a Super Bowl berth.

Patrick summed up what his son’s walk with the Lord has done for and in his life.

“I think there are two prongs to it. One, Bo has been through enough adversity to know football will hurt you, and if you don’t have your identity in something else, you are in trouble,” Patrick said.

“At the same time, he’s also experienced enough highs to realize those highs are just not satisfying and you’re always left longing for more no matter how many wins. It’s never good enough.

“So I think it goes both ways. He’s gone through enough of the rough things to know his identity must be in Christ and a lot of the good to think, man is this it? If this is all it is, there is not much meaning to life. Only Christ can fulfill me.

“What sets us apart is not that we can catch, throw, or tackle. It’s that Jesus Christ gives us our peace, our security, and our salvation.”

That’s the message of AIRO.

STORY ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED ON 247SPORTS

AIRO

oh, mama, don’t you cry