On July 1, 1969, Nixon was signed as a scout for the Cleveland Browns, spending his first season looking only at teams in the American Football League. The strategy was for Nixon to gauge the strengths and weaknesses of the teams that would be facing the Browns after they changed leagues because the AFL–NFL merger. In subsequent years, Nixon would focus on college scouting, becoming the team's director of college scouting on February 20, 1974. He would keep that role until his retirement in the early 1980s.