Photo by Sean M. Haffey/Getty Images
The Broncos are on the brink of a lost season, and their QB is a large reason why
I’m sure you’ve all seen this grouping of photos together:
Yes, these are all Russell Wilson, and yes, these are all from this year. To say that the Broncos experience for both Wilson and Denver has been bad is an understatement; the Broncos are dead last in points per game and Wilson’s composite expected points added (EPA/play) is in the region of Mitchell Trubisky and Cooper Rush—who are both backup QBs. Against the Chargers on Monday night, viewers were subjected to the Russell Wilson project in Denver.
Yeah, not a great look for Wilson this year.
I think it’s fair to examine the structure of the Broncos offense and how Wilson truly fits here. Earlier this season, I wrote about how the Broncos offense could look with Hackett and Wilson in concert, but to this point, it’s largely still been the Russell Wilson offense in the passing game. The goal was to make him more efficient against Cover Two and other two-high shells, but that simply hasn’t been the case through the first third of the season.
Through the first six games, he has an EPA of -0.175, which is an alarming number if you look at his trends. Teams played more snaps with two-high shells against Wilson in the back half of the 2020 season, as the “Let Russ Cook” campaign flew too close to the sun. Since teams began moving to two-high shells against Wilson, he’s averaged a negative EPA/attempt, with this year being his worst year. Pro Football Focus’ Seth Galina wrote that these coverages work because they force Wilson to work in areas where he wasn’t comfortable—the middle of the field.
However, the Broncos knew this coming in, and yet Wilson looks almost like a shell of himself, even on the easiest of concepts. Wilson has always held onto the ball for a long time—his 2.97 and 2.8 time to throw were in the top third of all passers in both 2020 and 2021, respectively. This year, his time to throw is at 2.86 seconds, which is right in between those numbers. However, his sack percentage is near the top of the league. What makes this worse is that his pressure percentage through six games is the lowest since the “Let Russ Cook” movement began. He’s not the same QB that he was in his prime, yet he’s continuing to hold on to the ball like he can escape these things and he can’t.
This play is a damning example of the confusion and overall lack of confidence Wilson has in this offense. This is a basic three man stick route, yet Wilson panics at the first semblance of pressure, making the pocket worse and throwing an incompletion. If it’s this bad that he’s not reading out the entire concept, this experiment might be over before any cooking happens.
Wilson has shown the lack of trust in consistently standing in the pocket and making these throws, and it’s largely because that’s how he’s always played. His game was never going to age the way others did at this age, but now it feels like he’s lost confidence in the simple aspects of playing QB. His efficiency is down and he’s out of the pocket less, where the traditional Wilson magic happens the most.
The Broncos could tweak some aspects of their offense to help Wilson out, perhaps. The first thing would be to up the RPO usage. If the Broncos are going to see as much two high shells as they do, they can leverage their success running out of shotgun into using more RPOs, to get defenses to bring a safety down. Against the Chargers, their EPA/attempt on runs out of the gun was -0.05, while under center it was -0.21. If they can use more RPOs to give Wilson easier targets to the flats and (maybe) over the middle, it would help make that offense run smoother.
Ultimately, none of this matters unless Wilson is confident. right now, he doesn’t look that way at all.
