Russell Wilson joins the 'No One Wants Me' club

Photo by Andy Cross/The Denver Post

Tis’ the season to bench your quarterback. In a season that has seen numerous great quarterbacks go down with injuries, there have been numerous benching's across the league. From multi-million dollar starters to likely career backups, the league has seen multiple guys get benched towards the end of the season.

The most notable one is Russell Wilson. He was traded to the Broncos last season and was extended. He was extended for $245 million over five years. Immediately, it didn’t work as Nathaniel Hackett didn’t make it to the end of his first season as head coach. The duo was a failure, but they pivoted and traded for head coach Sean Payton. Payton was retired on TV, but accepted the job.

I thought the fit made sense as Payton had most of his career success with a short quarterback that excelled in dumping the ball off. I was very wrong as the Broncos struggled and hilariously lost to the Dolphins 70-20. Even with that, they managed to bounce back to be in the playoff mix, until a devastating loss against the god-awful Patriots this past Sunday.

The Broncos are now looking down the barrel of a ton of money with Wilson. He might not play another snap for the team. Along with Wilson, Sam Howell with the Commanders and Tommy Devito with the Giants were both benched.

Taking out injuries, 12 quarterbacks have been benched this season. There’s been a discussion of how the quarterback position has weakened over the years, especially compared to what we had in the mid-2000s to early 2010s. There’s some truth to this, but I don’t think it’s the quarterbacks getting worse. Patience and development is at an all-time low. 

Players will get thrown to the fire and sometimes they succeed, but way more often than not, they fail. Outside of the young guys, I think there’s far too many bad coaches that don’t keep it simple. In a league where the boy genius offensive guru has taken over, there’s been too many coaches that want to be that guy and over complicate the offense for their young quarterback. Bryce Young suffered from that. Jordan Love, early in the season, suffered from that. 

Young still has hope and Love has been much better since Lafleur adjusted to Love’s skillset. I don’t think the over-complicated part league is going away, but team’s have to realize that they have much more to do with a player’s failure than the player just being a straight-up failure. In a system of stability, a player can exceed. 

Jared Goff’s level of stability was a big part of the Rams success years ago and the Lions recent success. Although McVay is one of the best coaches in the league and Lions OC Ben Johnson is the hottest name on the head coaching market, Goff has executed each of their offenses to the best of his ability. He’s won a bunch of games in the NFL, despite the moniker that he’s a system QB. Although the system is in place, someone has to execute the system to its best efficiency. 

This leads me back to Russell Wilson. He’s running Sean Payton’s system, which has won a ton of regular season games. He’s not doing it to the best of his ability. He hasn’t emulated the consistent, steady play that Drew Brees showed with Payton. I’ve been anti-Rusell WIlson for years now, but this is a new-low for him. I do think he still gives Denver the best chance to win games this season, but it’s clear this is a move for the future. The Wilson-Broncos marriage is heading for a quick divorce.