The Russell Wilson decision could age very badly for the Broncos
Mar 4, 2024, 4:07 PM | Updated: 4:11 pm
It’s official. The Denver Broncos are moving on from Russell Wilson.
In one of the least-surprising announcements in recent memory, the team made it official on Monday. When the new league year starts on March 13, the Broncos will be releasing their quarterback.
This comes less than two years after the blockbuster deal that brought Wilson to Denver. The franchise will have given up two first-round picks, two-second-round picks and three players (Noah Fant, Shelby Harris and Drew Lock) for a quarterback who started 30 games in orange and blue, posting an 11-19 record along the way. They also inked him to a five-year, $245-million extension before he ever played a game in a Broncos uniform. That deal doesn’t kick in until 2024, meaning Wilson won’t play a single game under that contract.
It’s a colossal miss by the team. It’s one of the worst trades in NFL history. It’s one of the worst contracts in sports history.
The Broncos could’ve tried to save face. They could’ve kept forging ahead with Wilson, hoping things would turn around. But ultimately, they decided to cut their losses.
And they’re going to be big ones. Denver will pay $37 million this season for Wilson not to play for them; that’ll drop to roughly $35.8 million if another franchise signs him to a veteran-minimum deal, which is expected. The Broncos will also absorb a league-record $85 million in dead cap, which will be spread out over the next two seasons.
It’s brutal. It’s ugly. It’s painful.
But is it the right move? Or are the Broncos making a huge mistake?
The answer will unfold across the next few seasons. But the signs will start to appear soon.
If Denver is able to draft a QB of the future in late April, that’ll be some evidence that moving on was the right move. They had to clear the decks for a new quarterback.
If that player performs well as a rookie, that’ll provide some reason for optimism. If he’s a better fit with Sean Payton, then the future will look bright.
Neither of those things are a foregone conclusion, however. The Broncos will probably have to settle for the fourth, fifth or sixth QB off the board if they stand at No. 12 in the draft. And without a ton of offensive talent around him, it’ll be tough for a rookie quarterback to excel this season in Denver.
There are a lot of ways that his blows up on the Broncos, though. The decision could age very, very poorly.
If Wilson signs with another team and plays well, Denver will look bad. If he leads that team – say the Steelers, as an example – to the playoffs, while the Broncos miss the postseason for a ninth-straight year, that’ll be bad.
If the rookie QB doesn’t play well, which is more likely than not, that will also be a less-than-ideal look. With a mediocre batch of receivers, an anemic tight end room and a ho-hum batch of running backs, that’s more likely than not.
It’s much more probably that Wilson leads a decent team to the playoffs in ’24 than J.J. McCarthy proves to be the answer in Denver. At least for a year, that’s the probable outcome.
And the Broncos will look bad if that happens. They’ll have paid Wilson nearly $36 million to lead another team to the postseason, while they miss out of the dance once again. If the quarterback puts up good numbers in the process, it’ll appear as though it was a coaching issue in Denver, from Nathaniel Hackett to Sean Payton, much more than a talent problem.
The smart money is on Wilson, a quarterback who was in the HOV lane to Canton before arriving in Denver, landing on his feet and finding success. If that happens, Payton had better be able to turn a young signal caller into a star. Otherwise, the head coach is going to have a lot of explaining to do.
