The Denver Broncos thought that they were a team ready to take the next step. Despite going 7-10 last season, they finished 2021 with a positive point differential for the first time since 2016. They felt that the missing piece to bring everything together was an upgrade at the quarterback position, so they made a blockbuster trade with the Seattle Seahawks to acquire Russell Wilson.
Wilson has been one of the better quarterbacks in the NFL for the last 10 seasons with the Seahawks. Adding him to an offense that had a dynamic running back pairing of Javonte Williams and Melvin Gordon with a deep group of pass catchers in Jerry Jeudy, Courtland Sutton, Tim Patrick and KJ Hamler seemed like a slam dunk; alas, it has been anything but that.
An excellent performance from the defense is going to waste as they are third in points and yardage allowed this season. Denver is the lowest-scoring team in the NFL and they are currently ranked 26th in yardage gained as Wilson is putting together the worst season of his professional career.
Wilson has completed 58.9 percent of his pass attempts for 2,369 yards, throwing only eight touchdowns compared to five interceptions in 10 games. As shared by NFL on CBS on Twitter, an argument could be made that Wilson is actually the worst starting quarterback in the NFL this season.
Out of the 35 qualified quarterbacks, Wilson is 29th in winning percentage, 28th in touchdown passes, 29th in passer rating, 31st in completion percentage, 27th in passing touchdown to interception ratio and 33rd in passing touchdowns per attempt.
That is certainly not the kind of production that the Broncos were counting on when they traded five draft picks and three players to Seattle in exchange for him and a fourth-round pick. Not only did Denver surrender all of those assets in the trade package, but they also signed him to an extension worth $245 million.
That commitment puts them in a tough spot as there is no easy way to get out from under that contract unless they want to have historic amounts of dead money on their cap space. For the time being, Denver and Russell Wilson are stuck together with their only course of action being the hope that he can eventually turn things around.
