Unfortunately for us here at Blind Owl Blogs, this NFL season has been a downer. None of us are doing particularly well in our weekly picks, (although Concet3Cowboy is doing better than last year) and the teams we call ourselves fans of are terrible.
As you may have read, BrendawnoftheDead wrote what amounted to a doctoral dissertation about how the New England Patriots season has become a comedy of errors. I can’t disagree with him there. If you’d like to spend nearly 20 minutes of your life reading his gripes, then here is the link: https://www.blindowlblogs.com/post/the-2022-new-england-patriots-a-comedy-of-errors
If you’re not into fans whining about teams? Well, you might want to skip this one.
As bad as the New England Patriots have been, it’s been even worse in Denver for my Broncos. I’m sure Pats fans will disagree because they’re spoiled by more than 20 years of success, but they’re just crazed.
What’s happened in Denver this year is on a whole other level.
As a Bronco fan, I thought we’d hit rock bottom the past few years. Horrendous coaching and putrid QB play had been the standard in Denver even since Manning’s Super Bowl year. So we have kind of grown to accept it. The Chiefs are going to be dominant for a long time and us Broncos guys will just be happy to have a decent enough team to put a scare into them twice a year.
Then came this year's offseason.
The organization went out and got a hot new coaching prospect in Nathaniel Hackett. An offensive minded guy who worked with a quality QB in Aaron Rodgers. In theory, he knows what it takes to be a top level offense in the NFL. But there have been some pretty big hyped coaches in Denver. Anyone remember the Josh McDaniels era? I’m sure Vegas fans have some thoughts there.
Anyway, it’s tough to get excited about a coach in the NFL when you have no real QB to throw to some quality receivers like Cameron Sutton and Jerry Jeudy. For this reason, there were rumors of Hackett bringing in Aaron Rodgers to take the helm in Denver. I even dove right into that theory and wrote a blog about it.
Clearly, that didn’t happen. But what could the next best thing be?
Ta Da! The Broncos traded a shit ton of stuff to the Seahawks to acquire Super Bowl winning, All-Pro caliber QB Russell Wilson.
Now, I had mixed feelings about the trade and subsequent ungodly contract the team gave Wilson. On one hand, there was no doubting how productive he had been in the past. He put up great numbers in Seattle and quite honestly should be a 2 time Super Bowl champion if it waren’t for Pete Carroll’s ineptitude. Wilson was one the “next generation” of great QBs in the NFL.
But there was a piece of me that will always fester in my guts that will never be able to look past a guy who played in Seattle during their dominance. There were possibly the most, annoying, front running, shit talking chumps when they were winning. These same guys crumbled to dust when they were losing. In fighting, bitter disputes and free agent departures became commonplace. One guy seemed to not be a part of this kind of thing. Russell Wilson was never heard bitching and moaning about his teammates. He just went out there and performed at a high level, even on some bad teams.
Then came last year. It was reported from many sources that Wilson did not want to be in Seattle any longer. And his play on the field made it undoubtedly clear. He had DK Metcalf and Tyler Lockett to throw the ball to, and he just looked like he didn’t care to succeed anymore. You’d see Wilson pouting on the sidelines, probably wishing he was at home with his wife Ciara and not losing games and missing the playoffs. Can you blame him? We’ve all been there. But it is something that is not uncommon in Seattle, so everyone, myself included, just figured he was forcing his way out of that dump of a city.
You can ask anyone I talk to regularly that I, more than a few times, relished in the fact that Wilson sucked and that he was a front runner who can’t win without a good defense. People called me crazy and that the guy was just phoning it in and wherever he went next, he would turn it back on.
Welp, the guy that I called into questions as now on the Broncos, so I had to hope I was wrong.
The season began with me picking the Broncos to win the hotly contested AFC West, and “experts” like Nate Burleson picking them to make it to the Super Bowl.
Things started slow but most people chalked it up to growing pains. These poor offensive performances kept happening and happening. I may be wrong, but growing pains are supposed to stop at some point. And yet, here we sit on the day after Christmas and the pains seem to have gotten worse.
Not only have the Broncos underperformed, they’ve been among the worst teams in the league. This assertion was proven yesterday when the Big Money QB Russell Wilson lost 51-14 to a Rams team without 3 of their best players and a two-time cast off QB Baker Mayfield.
That is just inexcusable.
Russell Wilson has looked like one of the worst signings in Denver history and his first season isn’t even over. I mean, I can see open receivers that he is just not even looking for. He is throwing balls into double, triple, even quadruple coverage. Incredibly talented receivers are looking back at a ball coming towards them thinking, “Is somebody else over here? There’s no way he’s throwing it to me.”
I gave up the Russell Wilson experiment faster than most. But I think we all can agree it’s over. There is no winning here. It may be my hatred of the Seahawks, but I was calling for his benching for a couple weeks. I get that money is the only reason Russell Wilson is starting right now. Imagine paying that kind of cash to a backup QB…
FInally, I got some allies in the media.
Dan Orlovsky, who like him or not, is an authority on mediocre QB play, is now calling for WIlson’s benching. Now, it is against my better instincts to take QB analysis from a guy who ran out the back of the endzone for a safety, but if anyone knows what dog shit QBs looks like more than a guy who was one for years? It also helps that he agrees with my assessment of Russell Wilson.
Like Orlovsky said on ESPN this morning, there is no winning here. By keeping WIlson in the starting spot, you are just damaging the team and the player himself. The other players have clearly given up on Wilson. They hate playing for him. I don’t care what they say publicly, they can’t stand him. Having him start the last few games of the season will just build resentment., thus hurting the team’s future.
It’s also shaking Wilson’s confidence, which is only high when he’s winning, even further to the core. His struggles just keep snowballing until it will eventually ruin him totally. Hackett needs to just pull the plug on this experiment and sit Wilson down, go back to the drawing board and tell him to do whatever he needs to do to improve his play. Sometimes, if you are in that big of a slump athletically, it’s smart to just walk away for some time, rather than try to work through it. The season is a lost cause anyway, so it can’t hurt at all to just call it a day. I’m not saying cut the guy. Just let him try and figure it out for next year. If he can’t, well then that’s on him.
The utter shock some people have displayed upon WIlson abysmal play is what interests me most. The media loves him, so they’ve been pretending like he went from All-Pro in Seattle one year, to dismal play in Denver the next. That’s just simply not the case. He sucked his last year in Seattle and blamed everyone but himself for it. Now he carried that loser attitude to Denver and guess what? He continued to suck. Now hindsight is 20/20 (even for me) but it can’t be ignored that a mediocre QB went to a mediocre team and they then proceeded to play mediocre football.
My high hopes are officially destroyed for the next decade. The only consolation prize I get is the fact that the Patriots are also atrocious. But at least the Patriots didn’t spend all their money to be a bad football team.
I’ll end this rant with a simple statement. I couldn’t stand Russell Wlson in Seattle. Now I dislike him more now that he’s on the Broncos. It usually goes the other way around but it’s the truth. You’ll get no homerish defense of the team from me. Russeell Wilson has destroyed the Broncos for many years to come and I will rejoice the day he packs up his R&B wife and takes his sorry ass out of the Mile High City.