When Nathaniel Hackett stepped up to the podium back in March to officially introduce prized quarterback Russell Wilson, the first-year coach could hardly contain his excitement.
“Come on, y’all, Russell Wilson… holy s***,” Hackett said at the time.
“Somebody asked me when we were at the Combine what do you look for in a quarterback,” he continued.
“I said, ‘Tough, smart, accurate, athletic’, go into the dictionary and you’ll see Russell Wilson there smiling, because that’s who he is. It took everybody in this building. This is very exciting for the coaching staff, the players, the team, for all of us.”
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At first it looked like the Denver Broncos had finally solved the biggest problem that had haunted the franchise since they lifted the Lombardi Trophy six years ago.
Instead, now they have an even bigger problem and that smile Wilson has is gone, as is the 33-year-old’s trademark ‘Let’s Ride’ catchphrase, which he desperately used trying to give the fanbase any reason for hope.
But hope is a dangerous thing and there was already a sense of disappointment when the Broncos missed out on first-choice quarterback Aaron Rodgers.
And as good as Wilson had been in Seattle, it already looked like Denver had lost the trade given the $245 million ($A392m) and raft of assets they gave up to get him, including two first-round picks.
Now, with every loss and incomplete pass, that trade only continues to go from bad to worse.
When Wilson faced the media for his first official press conference as Broncos quarterback, he spoke glowingly about Hackett, who had come over as Green Bay’s offensive coordinator.
He spoke about his plan to play for another “10 or 12 more players”, to win “hopefully three or four more Super Bowls”, to be the answer to the void left behind by Peyton Manning.
“That’s why I came here, to hopefully be able to finish my career here, and to finish on top as a champion and do it multiple times,” Wilson said.
“I was excited because I saw the same philosophy. The philosophy winning. Winning is everything and it’s the only thing for me. When we get to the end zone, we celebrate. So we plan on getting in the end zone quite often.”
But they aren’t winning. They aren’t getting in the end zone. In fact, Denver rates 32nd in the league for points per game and red zone percentage while ranking 30th in third down percentage.
It is not just the talking heads that are concerned though. Even some of Wilson’s former teammates are not liking what they are seeing from the struggling quarterback.
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“Defensively they are strong but offensively it is very, very bad,” former Seattle tight-end and ex-teammate Luke Wilson said on TSN Sports.
“I mean we saw that again for what seems like every week on primetime. When you have an offense that is this limited and this poor, it doesn’t matter how good your defense is.”
And this defense is really good, allowing fewer than 20 points per game five times this season, which is tied with Dallas and San Francisco for the most in the NFL.
With last week’s loss to the Chargers, the Broncos also became the first team since the 2019 Titans to allow fewer than 17 points per game and have a losing record through six weeks of a season.
“You’re not going to win games in this league, especially with how they’ve rigged it for the offense to score points with roughing the passer and passing interference,” Luke Wilson added.
“You have to score in this league now. This offense is horrible. I did see some flashes of what he used to do in Seattle at times but the reality is, the way he is reading and playing right now, he is very limited.”
There were flashes of Wilson’s best in that 19-16 overtime loss to the Chargers, with the veteran quarterback completing his first 10 passes for 116 yards and a touchdown.
It all went downhill from there though, with Wilson managing only 15 yards on 3-of-11 passing.
Hackett deserves his fair share of the blame, with poor play-calling and game management exposing just how unprepared he was for the pressure that comes with being an NFL coach.
But Luke Wilson said that Hackett is somewhat restricted in his play-calling when you consider the simple passes Russell Wilson is not making, pointing toward a 3rd-and-2 on Denver’s opening drive when he missed wide-open tight end Greg Dulcich.
“I look at this play,” he said.
“You look at Jerry Jeudy, he’s going to come in motion and because you see the DB not running with him, that’s how you know it’s zone. They tell him that it’s zone coverage. His first read should be the tight end right in the middle of the field. This is ‘Football 101’.
“As soon as you see the two linebackers split, you’ve got a sit route over the ball, take the first down and you’re almost in the red zone. If you don’t have a foundation where you can just make simple throws and read simple defenses, you can’t rely on this.
“If you’re calling plays and you’re Nathaniel Hackett and all the pressure is on you and then it’s all of a sudden like, ‘I’ve got a quarterback in here that isn’t executing simple concepts’… how can he comfortably call something more complex? That’s when you see the offense hand the ball off, hand the ball off, try a quick game throw and third down.”
It is not just on the field where some of Wilson’s former teammates are worried, with Michael Robinson suggesting more drama in the locker room if things don’t improve.
“This is what hits home with me,” Robinson said NFL Network’s ‘Total Access’.
“When you call him a robot. How can you stand up there, you know the offense looks like this, you know all these questions around here about you and the offense, and you just say, ‘We need to execute better, let’s ride.’
“If you’re a teammate in that locker room, you’re like, ‘Be human, please. Call someone out. Be upset about something. Don’t just act like this is just business as usual.”
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It is a point echoed by former NFL quarterback Chris Simms, who warned Wilson could start losing the support of teammates if he continued to shy away from how bad things are. actually are.
“He’s got to start being real with the situation a little bit,” Simms said ProFootballTalk.
“He can’t just spin it as, ‘I’m oblivious to the world, the glass is half-full’. The guys in the locker room will be like, ‘Is this dude delusional? It’s not sunny and the glass is not half-full. S*** out here is dark and there’s not a drop of water left in the glass’.
“The offense, I just don’t see signs of it turning around.”
To be fair to Wilson, he did change his tune after the loss against the Chargers, more willing to accept that this may not be the easy fix he was initially trying to make it out to be.
But even still, as someone who has been in the locker room with Wilson before, Robinson ominously predicted that “mutiny is afoot” if Denver does not get more real about the situation.
“I think it’s on the horizon for this team,” he said.
“I hope it’s not but I think it’s on the horizon: Mutiny is afoot. The guys in that locker room are gonna turn around and say, ‘Russell got his money. New head coach, he got his money, he’s all good. But what about us? What about the guys in the locker room?’”
For the time being Wilson denied that there is any division in the locker room, telling reporters after the Chargers loss that “everybody was playing for each other”.
“It didn’t work out, but everyone is still together, and we still believe in everything we can do,” he said.
Hackett, meanwhile, described the overtime defeat as “very disappointing” while calling for
“a lot more urgency across the board”.
“It starts with me as a coach, going to all the other coaches and then the players,” he added.
“Players need to be just more urgent. We had some opportunities there, and we’ve got to execute at a higher level. We’ve got to come up with some better plays.”
But really it all starts with Hackett and Wilson.
Sure, Hackett had a strong reputation coming from a Green Bay offense and had the full backing of quarterback Rodgers, which is one of the main reasons why Denver hired him.
Wilson though is different. Before last year, all he knew was winning and even still, it just looked like his final season with Pete Carroll was an anomaly.
It is what makes Wilson’s downfall “so stunning” according to NFL analyst Mike Florio.
“Ten years of good to great to excellent for the entire team and Russell Wilson,” he said ProFootballTalk.
“We had never, ever been in the situation where it’s like, ‘This guy just isn’t very good’. With franchise quarterbacks, once we know they’re great, they’re great. Having a guy fall off like this doesn’t happen.
“It’s why there’s limited risk in signing a guy to a massive contract. They’re stuck with Russell Wilson. This is stunning, it’s unprecedented in the salary cap age.”
Unfortunately for Wilson and the Broncos, there is no easy way to hop off this ride.
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