The Decline and Fall of Russell Wilson

Having defeated Wilson in a duel for the heart and soul of the Denver Broncos, Sean Payton has carte blanche to rebuild the roster in his image, plus lots of built-in excuses if it doesn't work out.

NFL decision makers are believers in both the Great Man Theory of history and the quick fix. They all think there’s a plug ‘n’ play Albert Einstein or Alexander the Great out there waiting to solve all of their problems in exchange for a dump truck full of dough. When one Great Man fails, the only real solution is to replace him with an even greater Great Man.

The Broncos finalized their latest savior swap on Monday. Russell Wilson is out after two costly, bewildering years. Sean Payton is emphatically still in. Anyone who has ever seen an individual or company zigzag between business models, fad diets or pop philosophies can predict what’s next. Things may not get worse before they get better in Denver, but they are certain to get weirder.

Wilson started his career with the Seattle Seahawks as an outstanding young quarterback. He grew into a very good veteran quarterback. The next stage in that development is almost always “overpaid mediocre aging quarterback,” perhaps with the “flakier than a fresh croissant” mutation that has become less recessive in recent years.

The Seahawks, who watched Wilson grow flightier each year, knew what was happening. After a 7-10 season in 2021, they were open to any viable exit strategy.

The Broncos, meanwhile, spent several post-Peyton Manning years waiting for regional demigod John Elway to find a quarterback wrought in his divine image (Paxton Lynch), or at least some bronze statue (Joe Flacco, Case Keenum) tall and impressive enough to whip the team’s defense into a playoff-caliber frenzy. When those efforts failed, Elway retreated to Asgard to escape the Bowlen family ownership struggle, an ordeal which played out like a full season of Arrested Development, but with all the humor replaced by callous greed and rage. (In other words, like the fifth season of Arrested Development). The eventual purchasers of the team, the Walton-Penner Ownership Group, lacked an NFL-style Great Man; CEO Greg Penner is just a son-in-law in a suit.

The Broncos originally coveted Aaron Rodgers, not Wilson, so they hired Packers offensive coordinator Nathaniel Hackett as their head coach/bloodworm. Hackett operated in Green Bay as a cross between Rodgers’ therapy pet and C3PO-like protocol droid who could diplomatically translate Rodgers’ angry Jabba grunts into polite English and vice versa. Rodgers did not take the bait, so the Broncos traded two first-round picks, a second-rounder and several serviceable veterans to the Seahawks for Wilson and change, signing Wilson for five years and a reported $245 million to lubricate the deal.

Photo via Wikimedia Commons.

Wilson arrived with demands and quirks which came in three flavors: mild (lots of starting quarterbacks have their own office), hot-’n’-spicy (Wilson, like Tom Brady, wanted his personal coach on premises) and Ghost Pepper-’n’-Plutonium (visualization exercises, invisible high-fives, etc).

Wilson lacked the toxic overprotective boyfriend relationship Rodgers still shares with Hackett, who for his part arrived in Denver with the disciplinary chops of a substitute teacher who just ripped his pants. Hackett’s game plans were Rodgers-formulated mommy meals that Wilson found distasteful. So Wilson did whatever he wanted, on the field and off, and the loopy behavior that the Seahawks kept private for years became a national talking point.

The Broncos went 5-12. Hackett did not survive the 2022 season as a head coach. Wilson’s reputation did not fare so well, either.

Wilson was too expensive and weird to trade but too ineffective, expensive and weird to build a roster around. The Broncos’ solution, naturally, was to swallow the spider to catch the fly.

Sean Payton was undeniably successful as the head coach of the New Orleans Saints. His success was also intertwined with that of Drew Brees, which is not unusual: lots of great coaches are tied to great quarterbacks. What’s odd is how innocuous and semi-anonymous Payton’s public persona remained despite 15 years at the helm of one of the NFL’s most successful teams. New Orleans is a tiny media market, and Brees was an affable fellow, so Brees became the public face of the Saints.

Payton was dictatorial with the local press, groused about officiating like the angriest fan at the bar and allowed Gregg Williams to run the defense as if he were a Spider-Man villain, but even the BountyGate suspension did not stick to Payton’s reputation. Most fans consider Bill Belichick a joyless grouch, Mike McCarthy a credit-grabbing middle manager and Pete Carroll a Pop Warner coach/grandpa who drinks too much coffee. Payton left New Orleans as a cipher with a Super Bowl ring.

Payton coached one season without Brees in New Orleans and promptly nope’d out, something Belichick would have been shrewd to do in New England. He spent one year on a customary legendary-coach sabbatical, hiding from the public eye while his marketability compounded interest. A truly Great Man, as fans of Rambo know, must be coaxed from meditative seclusion to resume his quest.

The Broncos lured the not-very-reluctant Payton out of not-really-retirement for $18 million per year. George Paton remained the nominal general manager, and he probably gets to select seventh-round picks, but Payton was given the sheriff’s star and a mandate to run the Wilson Gang out of town.

Have you ever seen Clint Eastwood’s High Plains Drifter? Eastwood’s Stranger, who holds a deeper grudge against the townspeople he is hired to save than the outlaws he’s supposed to stop, begins f**king with just about everyone around him to put them in their place. Payton began acting like Eastwood’s Stranger almost immediately, more as a way of establishing dominance than enacting karmic frontier justice.

Payton filled his coaching staff with cronies, plus former Broncos head coach Vance Joseph as defensive coordinator in an I don’t care what anyone thinks of this exercise of power. He wasn’t shy about filling the bottom of the roster with former Saints. He gave rambling, almost stream-of-consciousness press conferences, sounding like an old movie director on the press junket who doesn’t care if you buy a ticket to see his five-hour masterpiece about dirt farmers or not.

At the start of training camp last year, Payton ripped Hackett in an interview that was custom-tailored to go viral, surely knowing that stray fire would ricochet back at Wilson; Rodgers and the Jets, on cue, poured gasoline on the story by posing and flexing in defense of Rodgers’ favorite comfort pillow.

Payton then installed a Brees-worthy scheme and watched Wilson chafe against it. The Broncos started the 2023 season 1-5, but Payton remained patient. Wilson rallied to lead some midseason upsets, and Payton could not bench a relatively hot Wilson, nor could he risk giving Jarrett Stidham too many innings of long relief.

Stories of the injury clause in Wilson’s contract began circulating in October, preparing fans for the likelihood that Wilson would get benched the moment the Broncos were out of playoff contention. Such stories often circulate with the help of some priming from within the organization. The Broncos’ hotstreak cooled, and Payton’s displeasure became more public.

Payton finally tired of waiting for teams like the Colts and Jaguars to figure their s**t out and clinch playoff berths. He yanked Wilson for Stidham before Week 17, with the Broncos still mathematically alive, claiming he was looking for a “spark.” The move tipped Payton’s hand, as if there was any doubt. He had spent the season waiting for an excuse to bench Wilson. When a good one failed to materialize at the right time, he made one up.

Wilson fumed in the carefully-modulated Russ-speak that tricked outsiders into thinking he was totally normal when he was in Seattle. But if Wilson retained a shred of self awareness, he must have known not only that his Broncos career was over the moment Payton made the switch, but his future as an NFL starter was in jeopardy.

Which brings us to Monday. As I wrote for FTN Network last week, Payton stopped just short of hiring a skywriter to scrawl “Russ Sucks and Imma Cut Him” across the skies above Indianapolis during his scouting combine press conference. Everyone knew Wilson’s release was coming soon.

No one can predict the next stage of Wilson’s journey: he’s no longer effective enough to be a starter and too much of a wackadoodle to serve as a mentor or backup. He’s likely to sit out free agency and wait to see if a starting opportunity comes in the form of a training camp injury.

As for the Broncos, Payton now enjoys both unchecked power and enough excuses to keep him unaccountable for the team’s fortunes for several years. Wilson’s $85-million cap hit over two years alone will keep expectations low, and the Broncos are in no position to acquire any surefire quarterback solutions. Everything bad that happens for the foreseeable future can be blamed on Wilson.

We’re about to learn whether Payton is committed to serious franchise building or sees the Broncos as a lucrative vanity project/retirement job. Or maybe we won’t learn, because a Great Man like Payton rarely sees any distinction between vanity and brilliance.

What’s certain is that Payton has carte blanche to draft a quarterback this season or not, fiddle with Stidham or pursue some discount free-agent, continue the cronification of the coaching staff (Pete Carmichael has rejoined the band), gut the roster to the core, sign every bargain-bin former Saint who is not nailed down or do some combination of all of these things. He will not be questioned for any of these decisions, even if they fail miserably. And any flicker of success – a 9-8 Wild Card season with a Bailey Zappe/Spencer Rattler quarterback platoon, perhaps – will buy Payton another year of unassailable job security.

Eventually, either Payton will succeed in building the Broncos into a Super Bowl contender or the Walton-Penners will swallow a bird to catch the spider. My money’s on the latter, but we won’t know the results for a few years.

In the meantime, Payton gets to be the only Great Man on campus. It’s far too late to worry about whether it will go to his head.