DisasteRuss Wilson: Worst Value to Best Value?
Introduction
It’s incredible to think that, not even two years ago, I found myself writing about the Denver Broncos coming to a trade deal with the Seattle Seahawks, for Russell Wilson, in this article:
At the time, I’d speculated that, given what the Broncos gave up, that they’d certainly have interest in more than just the two years remaining on Wilson’s contract and would certainly be coming up with a contract extension to keep him around:
Russell Wilson was traded from the Seattle Seahawks to the Denver Broncos with two years described as, “Team-friendly,” remaining on his contract. The Broncos have indicated that they plan to have Wilson for a long time, and he seems to plan to be there for a long time, but neither party seems to be in any great hurry to ink a new deal.
The way it works out, Wilson has 19M base salary coming up this season as well as 22M the next season, with 5M roster bonuses each season that adds to the cap hit. What I would expect to happen is for the two parties to work out a new contract next offseason.
Make no doubt that the Broncos are committed to Wilson. From this source, here’s what they traded away for him:
After landing Wilson via blockbuster trade — sending two first-round picks, two second-round choices, a fifth-rounder, QB Drew Lock, tight end Noah Fant, and defensive end Shelby Harris to the Seahawks — Denver initiated negotiations on a revised contract that aligns with the 33-year-old's stated goal of playing for another decade-plus in the NFL.
As impactful as Russell Wilson has the potential of being for the Broncos organization, that trade collateral has more than, “Two years,” written on it, so I expect Wilson to sign a long-term deal with the team no later than next offseason.
In that article, I’d also opined that the Broncos would need to shore up their offensive line, as Wilson could enjoy the greatest potential for success were he to head for the locker room in a relatively clean jersey.
And…that didn’t happen.
On the contrary, according to Pro Football Reference, Wilson would take the most sacks of his career, with 55, in the 2022 NFL Season. Of course, that was the same season that would see first year Head Coach, Nathaniel Hackett, unceremoniously dismissed from his duties after an absolute Christmas Day beatdown (51-14) at the hands of the Los Angeles Rams.
The offense improved slightly, in that regard, under Sean Payton, during the 2023 NFL Season. Wilson would take ten fewer sacks that year (45), which is about the middle of the road for his career. Of course, the offense was designed a bit differently with many of the plays designed to be passes behind the line of scrimmage, or just beyond.
It’s kind of funny how that worked out, from a production standpoint. Wilson spent most of the 2022 season running for his life, which led to him suffering the worst TD:INT ratio (18 TD’s and 11 Picks), as well as the worst QB rating, of his career.
2023 was a significant improvement from a statistical efficiency standpoint (though he had the second-fewest passing yards per game of his career) as he would improve to 26 touchdowns against eight interceptions. Of course, Wilson would also throw for the fewest yards/attempt, and second-fewest yards per game, in his career. It was also his second-worst season in terms of QBR, with much of his statistical production coming in garbage time of games already lost.
GREAT PLAYER, TERRIBLE VALUE
I was wrong about the team, and Wilson, not being in any hurry to come to contract terms as, on September 1st, 2022, the NFL would report that Wilson had agreed to a five-year, 245M, contract extension with the team.
In my opinion, and this is with hindsight, that was a longer extension that I was expecting…and with more guaranteed money. Certainly, the Broncos thought they knew what they were getting with Russell Wilson; after all, his career with Seattle was a large sample size and consisted of, what pundits are now referring to as a, ‘Hall of Fame trajectory.’
I don’t want to spend too much time discussing Wilson’s Hall of Fame prospects, but my opinion is that the trip to Canton is still his to lose; it’s not so much something that he has to rejustify.
When you look at the all-time NFL statistics, Wilson sits at 19th in all-time passing yards, so if he can do more than nothing during the remainder of his career, we would expect that ranking to improve. Obviously, he’s never catching TB12, but he’d only need to play a few more seasons to overtake John Elway; he could also potentially overtake Dan Marino just by playing five or six relatively healthy seasons.
Wilson is currently 13th in Career Passing Touchdowns, with only two active quarterbacks in the league ahead of him on the list. Even if he were to only play four or five more relatively healthy seasons, with performance somewhat below his career average, he should be able to overtake all but Tom Brady, Drew Brees, Peyton Manning, Brett Favre and Aaron Rodgers.
The biggest statistic working in his favor is, arguably, passer rating. In the history of the NFL, few quarterbacks have played the game as efficiently as Russell Wilson; currently, his career passer rating is fourth (all-time) and the only players ranked above him (Aaron Rodgers, Patrick Mahomes and Deshaun Watson) are still active. Mahomes and Watson should have quite a few years left in the league, so what that means is that Russell Wilson will likely retire (after Rodgers does) and will have the second-highest QB Rating, of all-time, looking only at retired players.
More than that, Wilson has appeared in two Super Bowls (both with Seattle), winning one. Personally, I think that Super Bowl appearances/wins are sometimes given too much sway, when it comes to discussing Hall of Fame potential, as it takes a team to do that…but, the credentials are still there.
In my estimation, Wilson’s ticket to the Hall of Fame should be punched as long as he doesn’t have multiple terrible years (whilst still managing to start lots of games) to end his career. I believe that the credentials are solid enough to say that, if he was a Hall of Famer before, then he should still be a Hall of Famer. Wilson could have probably retired two years ago and would have made the Hall of Fame, though probably not first ballot.
Towards the end of the 2022 Season, I wrote an article about the teams getting the worst value for their starting quarterbacks, where I placed Russell Wilson in second, opining, in part:
In order to acquire Russell Wilson, however, the Broncos traded a large slate of players as well as, basically, their 2022 NFL Draft and their 2023 NFL Draft (the impactful picks, anyway) to the Seattle Seahawks. For all of this, the Denver Broncos currently sit at 3-9, dead last in the AFC West and are already mathematically eliminated from winning the division.
Of course, they almost certainly will not be finding a WildCard spot, either, as they cannot possibly finish the season with a winning record.
In terms of stats, Russell Wilson sits at 215-FOR-358 (60.1%), 2,558 Yards (7.1 Y/A), eight touchdowns and five interceptions for a career-low (thus far) QB RATE of 83.5.
That sort of QB RATE is something that you would hope, but not necessarily expect, from a decent journeyman backup quarterback.
With that, the Broncos traded the house for someone who has been performing at competent backup level caliber. That said, Wilson is playing in a new system, not that he knows it (one big hubbub came in a game that Wilson was calling Seahawks’ audibles) under a new head coach and, arguably, doesn’t have a ton around him to help him out.
I also foreshadowed the potential for me to refer to the Wilson Experiment as, ‘DisasteRuss’ at some point in the future.
As already discussed, Nathaniel Hackett would get his walking papers after the beatdown the Broncos took at the hands of the Los Angeles Rams; not only did it look like a one-sided middle school game (I see plenty of those!), but the defense just flat quit in that one.
IMPROVED PLAYER, BUT NOT IMPROVED VALUE?
Needing to make a major change, the Broncos would hire new Head Coach, Sean Payton; in order to acquire rights to Payton the Broncos would trade, you guessed it, more high value draft picks-this time to the New Orleans Saints. The Payton contract is a reported five years, so perhaps the plan was to keep Payton and Russell Wilson together for a long time; that certainly worked favorably with Payton and Drew Brees.
We’ve already discussed some of Wilson’s statistical improvements (between 2022 and 2023); while there were improvements, it’s not as if the Broncos’ offensive performance was night and day, with Wilson just lighting up the scoreboard. It was more a case of night and…let’s say late afternoon; compared to his performance of past years, Wilson’s 2023 season was still below average.
Looking at team stats, the 2022 Broncos ranked 19th in passing yards and 23rd in passing touchdowns; they produced the third-fewest points per drive. Once again, 2023 was an improvement, but not a Super Bowl caliber improvement; the Broncos would rank 24th in Passing Yards, 8th in Passing Touchdowns and 21st (well below average) in points per drive. They also went from 28th (2022) to 26th (2023) in terms of yards per drive.
In other words, Wilson’s efficiency markedly improved, but the offensive unit improved only moderately.
There have been some murmurings that Head Coach, Sean Payton, always intended to get rid of Russell Wilson and simply refused to even give the veteran QB an opportunity to implement an impactful offense. Others say that Payton (rightfully) determined that Wilson simply didn’t have the skill set to throw short and intermediate routes, beyond the line of scrimmage but underneath the coverage, which would implement the sort of offense that Payton ran, with QB Drew Brees, in New Orleans.
In terms of the drama behind all of that, I’m not really interested in any of it. My opinion is that most coaches, and NFL players, are going to implement the offense that they think is the most likely to enable winning football games. After all, given what the Broncos traded for Wilson (and for Payton!), combined with the contract extension that Wilson signed, one assumes that the plan was to compete for Super Bowls now.
That didn’t happen.
Again, assuming that Sean Payton was running the offense most likely to win football games, and I really don’t know why he wouldn’t, Payton decided that Wilson should stick mostly to safe dump off passes, behind the line of scrimmage, and hope for receivers to get some yards after the catch.
There has been some commentary that Wilson’s height (in and of itself) was a problem in running the ideal type of offense that Payton would want, similar to what Brees ran in New Orleans. I have trouble believing any such claims as Drew Brees, at 6’0”, wasn’t exactly Tom Brady’s height (but played a VERY similar style of game)...and is only one inch taller than Russell Wilson.
Maybe the receivers just aren’t there to run a Sean Payton style of offense, even if Wilson could, in theory, pull off that offense with the right guys. There’s really not too much to be done there when one considers that the Broncos have basically traded the impactful picks (between Wilson and Payton) of three entire drafts and are stretched thin on the salary cap, again, no thanks to what they are paying Wilson.
No matter how you cut it—with an extremely experienced and historically excellent quarterback, and a coach that you could say the same for, the result was a sub-mediocre offense on a team that doesn’t have the wiggle room (salary cap, draft capital) to improve any time in the near future. The deal with Russell Wilson was one designed to make the Broncos a perpetual AFC Championship (if not Super Bowl) contender…not to maybe squeak into the Playoffs.
BACK TO THE EXTENSION
Again, with the benefit of hindsight, given that the Broncos opened the 2022 season with a first-year Head Coach, maybe they could have seen what a full year with Wilson would look like before discussing a contract extension?
If nothing else, after the 2022 debacle, I think the Broncos could have gotten Wilson to agree to an extension at a much cheaper price. Say whatever you want about why that season was a disaster, but Wilson still had one of the worst QB Ratings in the league, no matter how you slice it. Even if he were somehow elevating the 2022 Broncos’ offensive unit, 2022 demonstrated that he can’t elevate it very much on his own; that unit was putrid.
At some point, there was a discussion about Wilson amending one of his contract terms vis-a-vis injury guarantee so that he could finish the season as the starter. Reports have indicated that this discussion happened early in the season (during a winning streak, no less) and the team threatened to bench Wilson were he to refuse to come to new terms.
Wilson did not come to new terms and the team did not bench him…yet.
Of course, with a record of 7-8 and two weeks to go, the Broncos found themselves in a very unlikely position to make the Playoffs; they weren’t technically eliminated, but they were all but eliminated. At that time, the issue of Wilson’s injury guarantee would again come up and, evidently, Wilson was (once again) not willing to change anything about his contract.
With that, the Broncos would start backup, Jarrett Stidham, who would come in and defeat the Los Angeles Chargers. This was a fairly average performance, but would end up being a meaningless victory as the Broncos found themselves (at 8-8) eliminated from the Playoffs anyway, due to other teams getting wins.
It definitely seems like the Broncos made the right decision to bench Wilson, thereby protecting him from injury (it might even have turned out to be a great decision, for Wilson, but I guess we’ll never know; he most likely wouldn’t have been injured).
In any event, at that point in the season, it would turn out that benching Wilson would change the Broncos’ playoff prospects exactly not at all; they were done.
The problem with Wilson’s injury guarantee is that the 37M he had coming to him for the 2025 season would become fully guaranteed should Wilson suffer a serious injury.
Not that any other teams would want Wilson under his contract extension (because he has been less than stellar and the extension is terrible), but there was always that small chance that some team would want to trade for him and, in the process, absorb some of Denver’s cap hit and, potentially, offer something of value.
I also believe that it wasn’t unreasonable to think that Wilson might stay with the team, despite the team benching him and Wilson being benched. The Broncos were not only protecting their investment, but more than that, had Wilson been injured in a meaningless (in terms of Playoffs) game, and knocked out for the 2024 season, then the Broncos would be paying massive money for an injured player who takes no snaps (in 2024) as well as having an uncertain return in terms of Wilson’s production (which wasn’t top-tier anyway) after a year off injured.
As mentioned in the first DisasteRuss article, I’m not exactly inclined to cry a river for an underperforming rich dude who only got benched because he didn’t want to amend an obscenely player-friendly term in his contract:
The only reason that the Denver Broncos, who can still conceivably make the Playoffs, would be sitting Russell Wilson the last two weeks is because of an extremely player-friendly term that Wilson, one assumes, wanted in the contract in the first place. If you’re the Denver Broncos and this term is not in the contract, then you absolutely want Wilson to start because he gives you the best chance to win the next two games…and that’s what you need to do to even sniff the Playoffs.
Furthermore, it occurs to me that nobody disputes that the trade for Wilson is one of the worst trades ever executed in NFL History. It’s a laughably bad trade; the only arguably worse trade was the Browns’ for Deshaun Watson. It also occurs to me that almost everyone agrees that Russell Wilson’s contract is bad.
Basically, the Denver Broncos cannot put Russell Wilson in a meaningfully better position because they traded the equivalent of two drafts to get him; team improvement is further limited by the fact that they are already upside-down on next season’s salary cap due, largely, to how much they are paying Russell Wilson.
Both parties voluntarily entered into this contract and its terms. It’s technically not even this contract; it’s a contract extension that technically hasn’t even gone into effect yet! There’s nothing happening, in this situation, that’s unfair to anybody. Does it suck for Russell Wilson? Sure. It also sucks for the Denver Broncos.
With that, I could understand where the Broncos would want Wilson to waive that injury guarantee and I could understand why Wilson, even with his reputation as a team guy (I think he’s kind of a phony, but that’s just my opinion) would absolutely not want to do that.
In any event, as unlikely as the Broncos finding a trade partner was (even more unlikely than Wilson sustaining a serious injury the last two games), it became very important to prioritize his health when it became evident that they’d probably not have made the Playoffs (and now we know they wouldn’t have) even had they won the last two games.
THE WORST TRADE EVER?
I’ve seen many people call the Broncos trade for Russell Wilson the worst trade ever. I definitely don’t believe that Wilson has played to the level of the collateral that the Broncos gave up, particularly the draft picks, to get him…but I’m still not sure it’s the worst trade of all time.
The reason that I think the jury is out is twofold:
1.) The trade, in conjunction with the contract extension, is the real problem
The first thing that one must recognize is that the trade and contract extension should be treated as separate matters; sure, you can’t make an Odds Bet (at Craps) without first making a Pass Line bet, but as I have opined, the length, terms and compensation of the extension were all ridiculous when you consider that Wilson had yet to take a snap for the Broncos.
When we look at the value of the extension, here is Russell Wilson’s Broncos’ production for the entire period of the extension:
| Games | Attempts | Completions | TD’s | INT’sYards | QB Rate | Money |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | $85M |
That’s right; under his extension, Russell Wilson will not play one snap for the Denver Broncos; the team will also be taking 85M in dead cap hit (the largest in history by more than double) for the privilege of watching him play for the Pittsburgh Steelers. I guess it could be worse…could you imagine if he’d went to the Raiders, and beat the Broncos twice, with one of those games being in Denver?
For the Broncos part, they’ll be paying Wilson 39M in cash this season, less the 1.21M (veteran minimum) one year contract that Wilson signed with the Pittsburgh Steelers, as reported by spottrac.
With that, since all of the pundits seem to be looking at trade and extension as a single item, I think the jury is out and the Browns’ trade (to the Texans) for Deshaun Watson could end up being even worse.
2.) Deshaun Watson is an unknown
I would say that nobody really knows how the Browns’ trade for Deshaun Watson will be looked at, in retrospect, because we haven’t seen the final outcome yet. However, what we have seen isn’t particularly promising and, in some ways, the trade is already (arguably) worse.
For one thing, the Broncos are releasing Russell Wilson, and taking the bulk of the 85M total cap hit upfront, because they were able to release Russell Wilson; that’s not something the Browns can say about Watson.
Deshaun Watson’s contract with the Browns was for five years, and $230M, fully guaranteed. In effect, the Browns have literally no incentive to release him; Watson could come out next season, start three games, throw seventeen total interceptions against zero touchdowns…and releasing Watson would do exactly nothing for them.
In the Broncos case, it would seem that the team who traded for Russell Wilson, as well as offered a contract extension that had, ‘Super Bowl’ written on it, will now be focusing the next two years on trying to rebuild…as well as find a quarterback.
In his last two seasons, Watson has started in a total of six games per. He missed the bulk of the 2022 season due to suspension; he missed the bulk of the 2023 season due to injury. In the six games he started in 2023, while the Browns did enjoy a 5-1 record, Watson played to about a C-tier starting quarterback level…maybe D-tier.
Watson absolutely sucked in his six starts in 2022; I don’t know how people are forgetting how poorly Watson has played, overall. He’s averaging barely one passing touchdown per game, his completion percentage has gone in the toilet, his average yards per attempt is not particularly good and nor is his average yards per game. His QB rating was 5.2 points better, in 2023, but a full 2.5 points of that was from throwing one fewer pick…yes, that’s how small his sample size is.
Even smaller when you consider he deliberately sat, in 2021, rather than play for the Texans, which, in addition to other stuff, makes me wonder why you’d even want this dude on your team! The Browns also had Baker Mayfield, who took the Browns to their first Playoff appearance in basically forever…and who has absolutely proven himself in his phenomenal 2023 season with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers.
Perhaps the greatest indictment is the fact that now-journeyman backup, Joe Flacco, in his sixteenth year in the league, would lead the Browns to a 4-1 record to end the season and secure the team a Playoff spot; he did all of that while, statistically, massively outplaying Deshaun Watson. I think the only reason that the Browns wouldn’t keep Flacco around to compete with Watson, for the 2024 starting gig, is because of how humiliating it would be for Watson to lose…with the Browns still unable to get out of Watson’s contract.
Deshaun Watson has averaged four games, per season, over the last three years and has done precisely nothing to improve the Cleveland Browns as an organization.
In the meantime, the Browns punted away Baker Mayfield, who just last season not only helped the Buccaneers get into the Playoffs, but also, statistically outperformed (compared to 2022) th greatest quarterback of all-time, Tom Brady, on virtually the same team; Mayfield also led the Buccaneers to a playoff win, which Brady failed to do, in 2022.
In fact, Mayfield was phenomenal in the Playoff win against the Eagles and played fairly well in the Divisional Round’s one score loss to the Lions.
It seems to me that the Browns would have been okay just to stick with Mayfield. I wonder what aging veteran’s career will be resurrected when Deshaun Watson gets hurt this year? Maybe Jay Cutler will come out of retirement; that would be fun.
GREAT VALUE?
The one thing that I know is that Russell Wilson could end up playing just as many snaps with the Steelers, in 2024, as he will with the Broncos (which is zero) and Wilson would still not be a bad value for the team. The Steelers ended up starting three quarterbacks last year (Kenny Pickett, Mason Rudolph and Mitch Trubisky); all but Rudolph made more than Wilson stands to make this season. Furthermore, Kenny Pickett will also be making more; most likely, to ride the bench.
In addition to the addition of Russell Wilson, there are other shakeups in the Steelers’ quarterback room as we prepare for 2024; both Rudolph and Mitch Trubisky are gone. Trubisky has returned to Buffalo (almost certainly to backup Josh Allen) on a two-year contract, with 2.71M guaranteed, that Buffalo can get out of next season, if they wish.
Evidently, the Bills have decided that Trubisky did well enough in Pittsburgh, and has enough value on the bench, in practice and in the locker room, to justify that sort of contract; I tend to agree; besides, it’s not a ton of money in the grand scheme of things.
For his part, Mason Rudolph has signed a one year contract, with 2.7M guaranteed, with the Tennessee Titans. Rudolph has had a very up-and-down career in his six years with the Pittsburgh Steelers with some fans, and pundits, opining that he hasn’t gotten the opportunities that he deserved. Mason saw the most playing time in his second year in the league (2019); he started eight games and played to the level of a reasonably competent backup.
After Ben Roethlisberger’s retirement, Rudolph might have thought of himself as the heir-apparent, but the Steelers would first sign Mitch Trubisky in free agency and then draft Kenny Pickett, in the first round of the 2022 NFL Draft. Far from being poised to take over the starting job, Rudolph would have to beat two guys in a QB competition.
In the interim years, Rudolph would start one game in each of the 2020 and 2021 seasons; the first game was a middling, but respectable, performance; he didn’t look very good in his 2021 outing.
Despite an injury to Kenny Pickett during his 2022 rookie season, the Steelers would go with Mitch Trubisky (who was second on the depth chart) to fill in. In statistical terms, Trubisky would outplay Rudolph (and looked really good coming in relief against Tampa Bay, leading the Steelers to a win over Tom Brady and the Buccaneers), but the overall offense was, and continued to be (until he was terminated in the middle of 2023) awful, under Offensive Coordinator, Matt Canada.
In 2023, while there is some question as to the degree to which it’s his fault, Kenny Pickett was positively useless. In twelve starts, Pickett managed to throw an absolutely pathetic six touchdown passes; that’s right, he averaged one TD pass every two games.
Pickett would get injured and miss the back half of the season with Trubisky, again, replacing him. Trubisky would start two games (not looking particularly good in either) and would be benched in favor of Mason Rudolph.
This was Rudolph’s opportunity to shine. There had always been some murmurings that he wanted out of Pittsburgh, particularly leading into the 2023 season, and felt he has what it takes to be an NFL starter (even though he’d yet to demonstrate that in any actual regular season games), but he couldn’t find anyone who wanted him and would sign another one year contract (this time for league minimum) with the Pittsburgh Steelers.
Rudolph’s story might have a happy ending as he played with remarkable efficiency in his three starts. Despite not netting a ton of aerial yardage, Rudolph would complete three touchdown passes (all of them of 50+ yards) against zero interceptions and finish the season with a QB Rating of 118.0.
Rudolph may have thought that he had done enough to go into the 2024 season—finally—as the presumptive starter for the Black & Gold, but it wasn’t to be. All indications were that, should the Steelers not pick up a new quarterback in the draft or free agency, that Rudolph, at best, would be competing with Kenny Pickett for the starting job.
Of course, even that would go out the window with the Steelers’ signing of Russell Wilson; while Rudolph may have beaten Pickett for the job, there’s almost no question that he wouldn’t beat Wilson in a contest for the starting job. I’d certainly call Wilson the Steelers’ presumptive 2023 starter, but certainly, Head Coach Mike Tomlin would be willing to go with Pickett if Kenny looks remarkably better in practice and preseason.
Still, Wilson is going to be a good value even if he doesn’t take a single snap for the Steelers; he’s practically free. The best case scenario, for both parties, is that Wilson has a lights-out year playing for the price of basically free (similar to someone like Baker Mayfield, in 2023, with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers) and end up with a multiple year contract, worth up to $115M ($50M guaranteed), to stay with the team, again, as Mayfield has.
CONCLUSION
While Russell Wilson will certainly go down as one of the worst values of all-time, for the Denver Broncos, he’s certainly going to be a great value in the 2024 season, for the Pittsburgh Steelers.
Given the way the Steelers offense has performed the last few years, combined with the fact that Diontae Johnson is no longer with the team, the most likely result is that Russell Wilson becomes the starter for the team and performs somewhere in the range of just below mediocre, to mediocre, from a statistical standpoint. The Steelers will be virtually the same team they have been the past few seasons, will have a winning record by anywhere from 1-3 games, then lose in the Wildcard round.
The upside for Russell Wilson, who the Steelers are practically getting for free, is that everything just clicks with the receiving group, as well as the offensive coordinator, and Wilson gets to spend the season just balling out. Unlike the Denver Broncos (obviously), the Steelers could legitimately be a Russell Wilson away from being a legitimate Super Bowl contender; unlike the Broncos, they have one year, with a virtual zero-cost basis, to find out.
Keep in mind, predating Wilson’s arrival, the Broncos had suffered five (now seven) consecutive losing seasons. That they believed they were only a Russell Wilson away from winning the big one might have been pure delusion.
Whilst there were four 8-8 years in the interim, you’d actually have to go all the way back to the 2003 NFL Season to find a losing season for the Pittsburgh Steelers; basically, they’re a team that’s always, at worst, competitive-even as the AFC North has improved compared to the early part of the century; for his part, Head Coach, Mike Tomlin, has never coached a losing team.
Even more importantly, the black and gold have made the Playoffs three out of the last four years; this is despite either not having a legitimate starting quarterback, or trotting the fossilized remains of Ben Roethlisberger out there for quite a few years running.
In other words, the Steelers are a competitive team with basically nobody at quarterback. While the Steelers haven’t won a Playoff game since the 2016 season, they legitimately could be a Russell Wilson away from making a deep run, as opposed to the boundlessly optimistic (relative to 2022 offseason) Denver Broncos.
The worst case scenario is either that Kenny Pickett actually beats DangeRuss for the starting job (incredibly unlikely) or that Wilson comes out and just flat sucks. Even if Wilson did come out and flat sucked, at least he’d be sucking courtesy of the money that the Denver Broncos are paying him; I also don’t think, after what we have seen, that anyone expects Kenny Pickett to do any better.
With that, most QB’s getting the money that the Steelers will be paying Wilson this year don’t even see the field in a regular season game, so Russell Wilson’s value to them, this season, has a range from good to phenomenal.
