Russell Wilson of the Denver Broncos walks off the field after a loss to the Carolina Panthers at Bank of America Stadium in Charlotte, N.C., on Nov. 27.Jared C. Tilton/Getty Images
There’s not a player in the NFL this year who has trended more on social media than Denver Broncos quarterback Russell Wilson.
In fact, he may be the most talked-about player in the league – and for all the wrong reasons.
As someone who got to witness Wilson up close in Seattle for 10 years, it’s hard to watch what is happening to him now. He leads the worst offence in the NFL. Actually, the worst offence in the NFL in 22 years.
His regular-season completion percentage is 58.9 per cent, which ranks him 31st among starting quarterbacks. His rating is a lowly 82.3, good for 29th among his peers. He’s thrown for only eight touchdowns and has five interceptions. Now, compare that with the person who was his backup in Seattle for three seasons, Geno Smith.
Since taking over the starting job for the Seahawks, Smith has had one of the highest completion percentages in the league. It now sits at 72.8 per cent, No. 1 in the league. He has a quarterback rating of 107.9, which is second. He has thrown for 19 touchdowns with five interceptions.
Smith will make US$3-million this year. Wilson will make US$57-million.
Last spring’s trade of Wilson has been an unmitigated disaster for Denver, and may go down as one of the worst in NFL history. The Broncos gave up two first-round picks, two seconds, a fifth, quarterback Drew Lock, defensive tackle Shelby Harris and tight end Noah Fant. The Seahawks gave up Wilson and a fourth.
Perhaps worst of all if you are a Broncos fan, before Wilson even played one game for the team, management signed him to a five-year, US$245-million extension, US$165-million of which is guaranteed.
The only way that trade was going to look good for Denver was if Wilson proved to be the missing piece of a championship team. Clearly, that’s not been the case. Frustration inside the Broncos locker room over the team’s dismal 3-8 season, played out in a much-discussed sideline incident on Sunday in Carolina. When Denver defensive player Mike Purcell came off the field after the team gave up more points to the Panthers, he went directly over to Wilson and started screaming in his face.
Wilson is now regularly booed by the fans in Denver. On Broncos sports shows there is earnest discussion about the need to bench him and possibly eat his contract and move on. Insanity.
I will say I’ve never seen Wilson play this poorly, ever. He’s missing routine throws to open receivers. He’s not seeing others who are in the clear, opting for someone who is covered instead. Because of his size, he’s never been a quarterback who passed over the middle of the field much. But he made up for it by being one of the purest deep-ball throwers in the league. But even that magic power seems to have abandoned him. In his best years, he was a whirling dervish with his legs, which got him out of multiple jams. At 34 he can’t rely on them any more.
People who have always felt Wilson was a fake who spoke in grating, facile clichés are having their moment. Kyle Brandt, a host on the NFL Network’s Good Morning Football, went off on Wilson a few weeks ago, calling him “the least authentic personality we have in the league. Russell Wilson is a poser.” He mentioned how Wilson, always in shades, and his singer wife, Ciara, behave as if they’re Jay-Z and Beyoncé.
While Wilson has been undeniably good with his time when it comes to visiting sick kids in hospitals, he makes sure you know about it. His propensity to post cringey, self-aggrandizing videos of himself, his wife and kids were long ago tiresome and often tone deaf. (Like videos of birthday parties for his kids that likely cost tens of thousands of dollars.)
While I never liked the 24-hour-a-day brand-building machine behind Wilson, I could tolerate it because of his quarterback skills. Those skills now appear to be in serious decline. Either that, or first-year head coach Nathaniel Hackett has not devised a system that best fits Wilson’s skill set.
And I don’t believe that is the case.
When Purcell got in Wilson’s face, I think he was upset by his quarterback’s lack of passion as much as anything. Players need to see their quarterback showing some anger, some fury amid all the losing. You know, like Tom Brady does when a set of downs don’t go right.
But that’s not Wilson, who has always fallen back on vacuous eye-rolling platitudes during tough patches before. Something tells me that’s not going to work any more.
Wilson is in uncharted territory now. And his career hangs in the balance.
Gary Mason