This was not supposed to be the outcome of the Russell Wilson experiment. You don’t trade two first round picks, and more, for a player who can’t beat the shambling zombie husk of the Las Vegas Raiders. You certainly don’t give him a five-year contract extension that pays him an average of $49 million annually.
And yet, this is where the Denver Broncos sit. In the basement of the AFC West. with their only victories coming against the Houston Texans, Jacksonville Jaguars and, amazingly, the San Francisco 49ers.
The Broncos are paying dearly for embarrassments like the one they suffered in Week 11. That’s where, for the second time in 2022, they lost to a Raiders team whose season will be better known for blowing multiple different 17-0 leads (three so far!) and putting a first year head coach (Josh McDaniels) on the hot seat than anything positive.
Las Vegas has come by 67 percent of its wins thanks to the Broncos (like Denver, the Raiders also beat a Texans team with no interest in winning games unless the Jaguars are in town). While the failure here is shared by a defense that allowed Derek Carr to complete three passes and cover 67 yards in a single overtime touchdown drive, that doesn’t erase the fact Wilson had multiple opportunities to close this game out in the final 16 minutes and failed to deliver.
Here’s the first. Wilson is facing third-and-six at the Vegas 26-yard line in what turned out to be the final play of the third quarter in a 10-10 game. He’s got an open man on a shallow cross, but a four-man rush led by Maxx Crosby proves to be too much and he takes a sack that turns Brandon McManus’ impending field goal attempt into a 52-yarder.
The kick was good, and one three-and-out later the Broncos had a chance to make it a two-possession game early in the fourth quarter. Instead, Wilson climbs the pocket as pressure comes on third-and-five (good), tucks the ball and doubles back rather than making a throw downfield (OK), and then gets sacked when Melvin Gordon’s blown block leaves him high and dry for a loss of 11 (very bad).
That loss is notable; the Raiders took the ensuing drive and tied the game at 13-all with a 57-yard Daniel Carlson field goal. Still, Wilson was efficient enough to put his team in position to retake the lead as the fourth quarter wound down. With 3:39 left in regulation he stepped up on third-and-four in Vegas territory and … once again couldn’t fight through pressure to keep his drive alive.
That left him with one more chance to win this game in regulation. The Broncos led 16-13 at the two minute warning when they faced third-and-10. A conversion, paired with the Raiders’ lack of timeouts, would have ended the game. Wilson was once again flushed despite not a relatively underwhelming amount of pressure and … missed everyone as the ball fluttered, untouched, to the turf.
The Raiders scored on the ensuing drive, the Broncos failed to cover any meaningful ground after getting the ball back with 16 seconds and one timeout left, and Las Vegas scored a touchdown in overtime to win. Converting any of those third downs would have upped Denver’s win probability against an inferior opponent. Instead, Wilson flinched in the face of pressure, failed to make the throws on the run that helped define his “very good”-ness in Seattle, and ultimately went 0-4 on third down over his final four drives.
This was the difference between winning and losing. That’s not uncommon for the Broncos, a team whose 28.5 percent third down conversion rate ranked 31st in the league before Sunday’s 3-12 performance. Wilson, for comparison’s sake, guided the Seahawks to a 40 percent conversion rate in 2020 (Geno Smith’s 2022 Seahawks, meanwhile, rank ninth in the league at 43.1 percent. Just sayin’.)
That’s a glaring weakness whose tendrils have wrapped around the rest of this offense and slowly suffocated it. Last week, a stat appeared on Twitter that stated the Broncos would be 8-1 after Week 10 if they had just scored 18 points in regulation in every one of their games. Week 11 made it 9-1. Wilson, in true Russell Wilson fashion, is trying to talk his way around it without saying much of anything in the process.
Russell Wilson: "We're on the learning end of the experience of how to get to winning. Sometimes it's a journey, an ugly one, a tough one. What hurts more than anything else is these games are close. We have to be able to find ways to win them."
— Nick Kosmider (@NickKosmider) November 21, 2022
It’s hard to see what will change here. Wilson’s offensive line allowed him to be sacked three times and hit 10 more, which is a problem, but he also proved too quick to escape the pocket under minimal duress with the game on the line and no clear plan downfield. The veteran had, statistically, his third-best game as a Bronco and still lost because he couldn’t make the plays that mattered most. Not coincidentally, he also lost the other two games in which he posted a higher passer rating (Week 1 vs. Seattle, Week 4 vs. these Raiders).
What can fix that? There isn’t anything that will do it in 2022 — and with Denver in 14th place in a 16-team AFC, that’s probably OK. The Broncos will have to try in 2023 and beyond because Wilson’s contract is unescapable through basically 2025, when he’ll be 37 years old. They’ll have a little spending room to address their problems in free agency, but next year’s first round pick, currently slated to be a top five selection, and second round pick are headed to Seattle to square off the trade debt (… wow).
The most likely solution will be predicated on blocking help since Wilson’s sack rate in 2022 is higher than it was in all but two of his seasons behind the Seahawks’ embattled offensive line. Getting a healthy Javonte Williams back and more development from young pass catchers like Jerry Jeudy, Greg Dulcich and KJ Hamler will help as well. Jeudy and Hamler missed Sunday’s game and, well, it’s not hard to see how either could have helped.
Ultimately, the key to Wilson playing at the level Denver envisioned when it traded for him will mean getting more from a player who simply isn’t making the plays he used to. Wilson is only 34 years old but his deep ball success rate has dropped and, as Week 11 showed, he’s no longer the kind of on-the-run threat that had defensive coordinators chewing their fingernails down to nubs.
It’s too late for the Broncos to make a playoff run. It’s not too late for Wilson to regain his form and give Denver something to believe in. Unfortunately for fans in Colorado, Week 11’s fourth quarter failings suggest he’s still got a long way to go before he gets there, even if his stat sheet looks pretty good.
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