by Hollywood Sports
Thursday, Nov 30, 2023The Denver Broncos have picked themselves off the mat from a humiliating 70-20 loss early in the season to win five games in a row and get back into the AFC playoff hunt race with a 6-5 record. The formula for success for head coach Sean Payton has been running the football, burning time off the clock with an opportunistic defense that has forced 15 turnovers in their last four games. The Denver defense is playing better when not being asked to be on the field as long — they are allowing only 16.5 Points-Per-Game in their last six games.
Payton is being credited for “fixing” Russell Wilson who “was never, ever washed” according to his many defenders in the national media. From this view, Wilson’s problem was last year’s head coach Nathaniel Hackett who apparently forced-fed him a box of donuts every morning while the former Seattle quarterback was giving him the playbook that would finally “Let Russ Cook”.
Sarcasm aside, credit goes to Payton for getting this team to play much better than their 50-point loss to Miami earlier this season. Let’s leave it as simply ironic that the recipe to get Russ Cooking again came from the old Seahawks playbook under the much-maligned offensive coordinator Brian Schottenheimer who was accused of holding Wilson back.
A big question in the offseason was whether Payton could use his old blueprints that were successful with his quarterback in New Orleans — but who would have guessed that those game plans were initially designed for Taysom Hill rather than Drew Brees? And that’s my point: Wilson is playing better because he is not being asked to do much. He had less than 30 pass attempts in four straight games and five of his last six games after Denver’s 29-12 win against Cleveland when Wilson only attempted 22 passes.
The last time Wilson did not pass the ball at least 30 times was early in the 2018-19 campaign after he endured six sacks in the opening two games of the season (and it was later in the year when the “Let Russ Cook” mantra was born criticizing Schottenheimer for not drawing up more passing plays). Wilson did throw 35 passes in the Broncos’ victory against Minnesota on November 19th, but he needed the final drive to get into the 30s with his pass attempts with the game script forcing Payton to rely almost exclusively on Wilson’s arm.
Admittedly, Wilson has been very effective in engineering two game-winning drives during this recent winning streak. And he has an outstanding 20:4 touchdown-to-interception ratio. But Denver did not sign him for $161 million in guaranteed money along with a $50 million signing bonus for a quarterback averaging only 26 pass attempts per game.
The Taysom Hill comparison is apt. In Payton’s last season with New Orleans in 2021-22 in the year after Drew Brees retired, Hill started four games in the second half of the season where he was the exclusive quarterback and did not share playing time with Trevor Siemian. Hill averaged 29.3 pass attempts per game while only attempting more than 28 passes in a game once when he threw the ball 41 times in a 10-point loss to Dallas. For comparison’s sakes, Payton had Brees average 34.3 pass attempts in his final regular season in 2020 in games where he was knocked out because of injury — he attempted 30 or more passes in nine of the 11 regular season games in which he did not get injured.
Perhaps Payton has pushed the right buttons to get Wilson back to the version of himself that he was in Seattle — the problem is that that is the version that was widely criticized as being too conservative and holding back his talents. The entire fever dream of Wilson getting liberated from Pete Carroll’s defensive philosophies was that he would be that he could finally COOK working with an offensive head coach. Nathaniel Hackett demonstrated things were more complicated than simply inserting an offensive mentality. And if Payton has let Wilson into the kitchen, the recipe book is the same one he used with Taysom Hill — a “quarterback” who cannot displace a guy making only $37.5 million per yard in Derek Carr in New Orleans.
If you think Wilson is “fixed”, then you are moving the goalposts.
Best of luck — Frank.
Payton is being credited for “fixing” Russell Wilson who “was never, ever washed” according to his many defenders in the national media. From this view, Wilson’s problem was last year’s head coach Nathaniel Hackett who apparently forced-fed him a box of donuts every morning while the former Seattle quarterback was giving him the playbook that would finally “Let Russ Cook”.
Sarcasm aside, credit goes to Payton for getting this team to play much better than their 50-point loss to Miami earlier this season. Let’s leave it as simply ironic that the recipe to get Russ Cooking again came from the old Seahawks playbook under the much-maligned offensive coordinator Brian Schottenheimer who was accused of holding Wilson back.
A big question in the offseason was whether Payton could use his old blueprints that were successful with his quarterback in New Orleans — but who would have guessed that those game plans were initially designed for Taysom Hill rather than Drew Brees? And that’s my point: Wilson is playing better because he is not being asked to do much. He had less than 30 pass attempts in four straight games and five of his last six games after Denver’s 29-12 win against Cleveland when Wilson only attempted 22 passes.
The last time Wilson did not pass the ball at least 30 times was early in the 2018-19 campaign after he endured six sacks in the opening two games of the season (and it was later in the year when the “Let Russ Cook” mantra was born criticizing Schottenheimer for not drawing up more passing plays). Wilson did throw 35 passes in the Broncos’ victory against Minnesota on November 19th, but he needed the final drive to get into the 30s with his pass attempts with the game script forcing Payton to rely almost exclusively on Wilson’s arm.
Admittedly, Wilson has been very effective in engineering two game-winning drives during this recent winning streak. And he has an outstanding 20:4 touchdown-to-interception ratio. But Denver did not sign him for $161 million in guaranteed money along with a $50 million signing bonus for a quarterback averaging only 26 pass attempts per game.
The Taysom Hill comparison is apt. In Payton’s last season with New Orleans in 2021-22 in the year after Drew Brees retired, Hill started four games in the second half of the season where he was the exclusive quarterback and did not share playing time with Trevor Siemian. Hill averaged 29.3 pass attempts per game while only attempting more than 28 passes in a game once when he threw the ball 41 times in a 10-point loss to Dallas. For comparison’s sakes, Payton had Brees average 34.3 pass attempts in his final regular season in 2020 in games where he was knocked out because of injury — he attempted 30 or more passes in nine of the 11 regular season games in which he did not get injured.
Perhaps Payton has pushed the right buttons to get Wilson back to the version of himself that he was in Seattle — the problem is that that is the version that was widely criticized as being too conservative and holding back his talents. The entire fever dream of Wilson getting liberated from Pete Carroll’s defensive philosophies was that he would be that he could finally COOK working with an offensive head coach. Nathaniel Hackett demonstrated things were more complicated than simply inserting an offensive mentality. And if Payton has let Wilson into the kitchen, the recipe book is the same one he used with Taysom Hill — a “quarterback” who cannot displace a guy making only $37.5 million per yard in Derek Carr in New Orleans.
If you think Wilson is “fixed”, then you are moving the goalposts.
Best of luck — Frank.
