Can Broncos QB Russell Wilson turn his season around?
Denver Broncos coach Sean Payton calls it a “glass half-full, upbeat” demeanor that reminds him of his 15-year run with Drew Brees in New Orleans.
But there are postgame moments amid the Broncos’ 1-5 start when Wilson simply sits, facing his locker, still wearing his grass-stained uniform. The weight of unfulfilled expectations and limited results of his tenure in Denver seem to appear on the quarterback’s slumped shoulders.
“Coulda, shoulda, woulda is not good enough,” Wilson said. ” … As we continue to go throughout the season, it’s a journey. There’s still a lot of good things ahead. We really believe that. We just can’t hurt ourselves. [The] games that we’ve lost, we’ve hurt ourselves in some form or fashion.”
Wilson and the Broncos head into Sunday’s game against the Green Bay Packers at Empower Field at Mile High (4:25 p.m. ET, FOX) in a historically bad spot. They lost two consecutive home games to open a season for the first time, surrendered 70 points in a game for the first time and Payton, in the loss to the Washington Commanders in Week 2, blew an 18-point lead for the first time in his coaching career.
Wilson, now in his second season with the Broncos since the March 2022 trade to acquire him, has both set an NFL milestone and played one of his worst career games in the span of a month. Against Washington, Wilson became the league’s first quarterback to pass for at least 40,000 yards and rush for at least 5,000 yards.
But in the 50-point loss the Miami Dolphins, he posted the first game of his 12-year career with fewer than passing 150 yards and two interceptions.
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His 95 yards passing against the Kansas City Chiefs in Week 6 was the third-worst total of any of the 179 NFL games he has played in his career and negated the best effort of the season from the Broncos’ beleaguered defense.
“We had a chance, we’ve got to play better, cleaner,” a subdued Wilson said after the 19-8 loss to the Chiefs, the 16th in a row to Kansas City for the Broncos. ” … I’ve got to play better. That starts with me.”
Payton has said when Wilson and the Broncos offense operates quickly — “tempo” — is when Wilson most often “throws well.” But Payton, like Nathaniel Hackett before him, has burned timeouts to get plays in with an offense that doesn’t convert third downs well; the Broncos went three-and-out on five consecutive possessions against the Jets alone.
So, Wilson has gone from among the league leaders early in the season in categories like yards per attempt and air yards per attempt — often indicators of a more downfield passing attacks — to middle of the pack or in the league’s bottom 10 in recent weeks.
He’s 25th in air yards per attempt (6.9), 16th in yards per dropback (6.16) and 16th in yards per attempt (7.1). He is now also under duress more than almost any other quarterback in the league.
“We all know what he’s about,” wide receiver Courtland Sutton said. “We know what he’s done in this league. He doesn’t let us waver. He keeps working, grinding.”
Despite tackle Mike McGlinchey and guard Ben Powers being the team’s two biggest free agent acquisitions, Wilson has been sacked four times in each of the last two games, at least four times in three of the last five games and been on the run more.
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The pressure has often taken a toll on Wilson’s footwork and the tempo erodes. He has 33 completions combined in the last two games — none longer than 29 yards — and the Broncos are now 26th in the league in sacks allowed per pass attempt at 10.3%.
“It’s just when we get momentum, continue that momentum and keep going with it,” Wilson said. “I think we’ve done a pretty good job of that for the most part, but I think we have to continue to try to catch fire with that … there are too many little mistakes that we have to clean up and fix those.”
In the end Payton has said he needs to be “more patient” at times as a playcaller, more cognizant of the Broncos’ running game (the Broncos are third in the league run-block win rate) to keep Wilson out of harm’s way and deal with what Payton has called the Broncos’ shrinking “margin for error” at the moment.
“I think we have to be more patient,” Payton said. “And better at running the ball.”