The Ringer NFL Show - Can Sean Payton Save Russell Wilson?

Episode Date: July 7, 2023

Ben and Steven continue their offseason deep dive into some of the biggest questions around the league. This week, they look into what went wrong with Russell Wilson's first year in Denver, and discuss the differences between Wilson in Seattle’s offense compared to Denver’s offense (03:09). Then, they talk about Sean Payton’s system, how it functioned under Drew Brees, and whether that can be replicated in Denver (21:55). After, they try to figure out what would be considered a success for the Broncos to justify sticking with Wilson’s large contract (39:35). Hosts: Ben Solak and Steven Ruiz Producer: Eduardo Ocampo Additional Production Supervision: Arjuna Ramgopal and Conor Nevins Musical Elements: Devon Renaldo Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hi, I'm Missa Kwanga and I'm Ryan Hunt and we co-host Stadio, a football podcast on the Ring of Podcast Network. Twice a week, Musa and I talk about the goings on in men's and women's football around Europe and sometimes around the world. We like to zoom in, we like to zoom out, we like to make some silly references. So if you like soccer or football, make sure you search for Stadio, a football podcast on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. Think we got it? Yep, that's good. I'm Ben Solac and this is the Ringer NFL show. I'm joined today as always by the delightful Stephen Ruiz.

Stephen say hi to the people. Hi people. And today we are going to let Russ cook or more accurately we're going to consider whether or not Russ can cook. Russ cooking is up in the air and we're going to figure out if there's still a kitchen in which Russ can cook or if there's like a like a sous chef that will maximize Russ. Are we good with the cooking jokes? We get all of them in?

Yeah, yeah. Like he can use the microwave right now. We're giving him microwave permissions and by the end of the episode we might upgrade it to like an oven, maybe even the stove. Tom Brady's career longevity has nothing on the longevity of a let Russ Coke joke. Listen, last year, the Broncos traded for Russell Wilson. They traded a lot for him and it failed spectacularly. Now they have a new head coach, one of the league's best offensive minds of last two decades

in Sean Payton. Today on The Ringer NFL show, can Sean Payton save Russell Wilson? Stephen, I've said this to you before. I forget where you land on it. But when I think of like my career in covering the NFL and the, the players who shaped how I think about the game, there's probably no player who's impacted my understanding of the quarterback position more than Russ.

Just in terms of like the last like six, seven years of discourse on, on play action versus no play action, on short quarterbacks versus not short quarterbacks on, on deep passing, on run past balance. Like it feels like so many of the major movers, the, the big needles in offensive football, have circled around the Russell Wilson's sense. Seahawks era that I watched come up as a fan and then I watched as an analyst and came to understand. When I think about players who sculpted my understanding of the game, I will always think about Russell Wilson, which is crazy, but I will. Yeah, I think for me, it's not so much about

quarterback play and more so like play calling and on both sides of the ball, really. I think it's a it opened my eyes more about defensive play calling than I think it did about offensive play calling. And we're going to get into this, but I think like the 2020 season, which is when it was a big year for the let Russ Cook movement because it was the first year where Seattle like kind of gave into those demands and started letting them cook. And then that's when we saw sort of the beginning of the end for him in Seattle. Yeah. So I like, I, if you're sitting at home thinking, why is there a podcast on my feed in the first week of July about Russell Wilson? Just understand it's because I think you can understand all the football through Russell Wilson. and we are now, as we have been for like the last three summers,

at an interesting crossroad in Russell Wilson's career, where he is coming off a ludicrously bad season by his standards. Russell Wilson, every single year of his career in Seattle, when he was healthy, was quarterbacking a top 10 offense by DVOA. That did not happen in 2022, brother. They were not top 10. They're not top 20. This was as poor of an offensive performance as you'll see across the league,

especially from a team that is rostering a second contract quarterback, such from a team that traded multiple picks to go get that second contract, that big money quarterback. When the Broncos traded for Russell Wilson, this was last March, 2022, they sent Drew Locke, Noah fan, Shelby Harris, and then a 22-first, a 22-second, a 22-fifth, a 20-23 first, and a 22-round pick. All of this, like four seconds after the Packers extended, Aaron Rogers, which as the insiders hastened to tell us on the day of, was just a happy coincidence.

It just was, it just happened that the team that had just hired Aaron Rogers' offensive coordinator sent a huge trade package for a different elite quarterback four minutes after Aaron Rogers extension was announced. That was all total coincidence. Now, I bring up that moment because there was a ton of excitement in Denver. There was a ton of league interest in what was going to happen. and we hopped on this ringer NFL show with Nora and with Kevin Clark back when he was on this feed wasn't a sucker who loved to do his own stuff. And you and I both opened that conversation

of that podcast going, I don't know if this is going to work out as well for the Broncos offensively as a lot of people think, right? Like we both had our hesitations about this. You were much more hesitant about it than I was. I was like, I don't think Seattle got enough back. I think that this makes sense for Denver.

but there were questions about how this was going to work offensively, like on the field, how long it was going to take to onboard Russell Wilson into like the Nate Hackett style of the West Coast offense. You said that they weren't even going to do the Nate Hackett style of offense because all offenses become the Russ offense. All offenses end up pointing towards the same thing when Russell Wilson is the quarterback. So we had that framework back then, but I don't think either one of us could have anticipated what was going to happen next

in terms of just how poorly Russ play and it's how poorly the Broncos offense performed. So, Stephen, what happened? Before we get into what Chompuyang can do for Russ, we need to autopsy what happened to Russ. And when you think about the Denver offense with Russell Wilson coming off of those Seattle seasons, what did you expect?

And then what actually occurred that this ended in such a tragic dumpster disaster fire? As, like, correct as I was with my take last year. I was still, I still managed to find a way to be an idiot. And here, here's why. I underestimated how incompetent Nate Hackett was. I said every offense becomes the Russ offense. That's because it should become the Russ offense.

Guess what the Broncos didn't do? Run the Russ offense. And guess what happened? Those like league worst results. So I think that for me is the major takeaway. And it kind of confirmed our priors there because we finally saw Russ in this offense that wasn't catered to his needs. even if he didn't know it. Like,

I feel like that's one of the main takeaways from this whole ordeal is that it seems like Russ didn't know what was best for himself while he was in Seattle. Like he wanted to be known as this like field general quarterback. I feel like the Broncos

didn't even give him that, that leeway. They kind of just forced them into, and I feel like this term is, it's kind of lost meeting, but forced them into that like Shanahan style of offense where you're going to be under center a little bit more.

You're going to be running play action from under center, not a lot of gun. Right. So when you say, when you say Russ's needs, is that what you're referring to? You're referring to being under center, like no gun, play action. Like you said like this previous Seahawks offenses gave Russ what you needed and they didn't do that in Denver. What precisely did Russ need? Yeah, that's a good point.

I think the big thing is shotgun. I don't know if you guys know this, but Russell Wilson is on the shorter side for a quarterback. And shorter quarterbacks tend to have problems operating from under center. I think a lot of quarterbacks tend to have problems operating under center. being shorter makes it a little bit harder. And it certainly has been the case for Russ. We really haven't seen him operate under center before last year since, I would say his rookie year.

And that was before he probably had more ownership of the offense. I don't think, like he went into camp and Seattle didn't even know he was starting. They thought Matt Flynn would be the starter. So we really start to see the offense get molded around Russ in year two. And that's when you saw them go to shotgun. And I'm talking about Seattle, go to more shotgun concepts. But it's tough to run an offense. offense from shotgun when you want to get into some of these, I guess I'll just use the term

Cheeco. We talked about play action a couple weeks ago. It's hard to run play action from the gun if you're not fully invested in the run game. That was one of our major takeaways. And Seattle, to their credit, you can say what you want about Pete Carroll and his philosophy about running the ball and wanting to run the ball first. But he did understand that putting Russ in the gun and kind of creating a whole offense around. the gun is what you needed to do to get the most out of Russ. Now, I think Russ gets sent to Nate Hackett's offense. And I think the two of them lacked that awareness. I think Russ, it might, it might have been like an ego thing. I think it's just like he wants to win on his terms. He

wants to play football on his terms, which any quarterback wants to do. Like, I'm saying it about Russ. It applies to Aaron Rogers, applied to Ben Rothesberger, certainly. Applied to Tom Brady. But it's the job of the coach to kind of hone him in or like kind of rein him in. and still hone the offense to a skill set. I don't think Nate Hackett did that form. So if there is like a reason for some optimism, it's now we have an adult coach. And one that doesn't call touchdowns tug, tugeliciouses,

or whatever you call it. Yeah. The prevalence of Russ in a shotgun-based offense in terms of how they passed to the football in Seattle, I think is really important. Because they were still a play action team and they were still a deep shot team, but they were trying to prevent Russ

from being five yards back in the pocket off of a under center dropback because it'd be hard for him to see and hard from to operate. He was inherently and naturally because of his height and because of his play style, Russ loves to scramble, Russ loves to create. He was going to drop back seven yards. He was going to drop back nine yards. He was going to take these really deep dropbacks that were going to put his offensive tackles in dangerous positions.

They were going to soften the outside shoulder of the offensive tackles, make it easy for pass rushers to get up the field and get at Russ. So you say, okay, if he's going to do this no matter what, then we just have to line him up and gun. He's, we know, we know he's going to take these deep dropbacks. Our office alignment is going to expect that he's going to take these deep dropbacks. And then we'll ask him about to climb the pocket or he can run around and escape the pocket. But if, if we try to run like a basic standard offense with him, he's going to create problems

that we could just anticipate and bake into the style of the offense regardless. The magic was, like the, the unwritten and like incredibly impressive part of it was, you ask a coach like, hey, like, you're going to be stuck and, shotgun all the time. They're going to tell you, okay, we're not going to be able to run the ball very well because shotgun limits how well you can run the football. And the Seahawks, when you go and you read articles on the Seahawks offense, it's from like the 2010s, all everybody talked about, all their expansive running game, their multifaceted running game, their diverse running game, their successful running game, which they were doing under center stuff. Like they were,

they were getting it done. But still, they found a way to be successful running the football from the gun year over year in a way that a lot of teams struggle with. Like if that was easy, the Bengals would be doing it. The Bengals have been trying to run from gun for last like two seasons. it has not gone great for them, right, in terms of just like traditional handoffs. And so that, I think that an important place to start from is that that Seattle offense was a more delicate ecosystem, right? It was a, it was a finer balancing act than it ever looked for like the seasons under Pete Carroll and under Brian Schoenheimer and under Daryl Bevel. And when the Seahawks struggled on offense, when the Seahawks lost playoff, games, it was easy to point to that delicate balance and identify the places where it fell

and say, well, this is the problem right here. Like, this is the issue. And that's not wrong, right? People say, like, oh, like, they need to pass the football more on early downs. You're right, they probably do. But they're trying to juggle a quarterback play style in what Russell Wilson was doing for that offense. Again, like incredibly deep, incredible deep accuracy. So good throwing the football down the field.

Incredible second reaction stuff. Great scramble. Great at avoiding sacks. Like, Russ brought a lot. He absolutely did. But because of his idios, play style. They were playing a dangerous alchemy.

They were dealing with some explosive substances in terms of like finding that right balance on offense. It's hard now with like the benefit of hindsight to fault to fully fault like Pete Carroll for running the ball a little bit too much because he was juggling a lot in terms of trying to figure out how to make that offense work. Yeah, they were basically like baking an offensive souffle where you mess up one little thing, that whole thing collapses. We're keeping the cook metaphor going.

to do this? Do we want to do all-gall cooking metaphors for the next 60 minutes? But one thing I would add on about why it failed in Denver was there wasn't a commitment to the shotgun play action game. And it's understandable why because shotgun play action doesn't really work around the league. The only times it seems to work is when you have an option quarterback back there and you can do play action off of zone read stuff. Like we saw that in Washington back in 2012 with RG3. We saw it with Colin Kaepernick. We saw it with the Panthers and Cam Newton.

And we saw it with Seattle with Russ. I think that's why they were able to base their offense around the gun is because they figured out not only how to run, but also how to get that play action, that play action efficiency and still be in the gun. And in Denver, we didn't get any of that. When they went into the gun, you knew they were going to just pass the ball, like typical pass, no play action fake. when they went under center, then you were going to see like the outside zone runs or play action,

no dropback game because you don't really want Russ doing a straight drop back from under center. So we talked about, and I used this term a lot, and I really like it. Like the offense was really siloed. I think that was the case for the Broncos, but it was siloed in the worst way possible, given the skill set of the quarterback. Like this was a perfect storm to get the worst out of Russ. And I think this is a point in favor of us. who argue about how the importance of watching film and not just like going by the stats because quarterbacks get so much credit for their production.

Like we don't say, oh, the Broncos passing game ranked this in EPA per drop back. We say Russ did. But I don't think that's completely fair. I think Russ was dealt a bad hand. And I don't think he helped his hand out anybody. He didn't play his cards well, but he was dealt a bad hand. And you wrote a piece in season about that precise hand because there's there's like stats that have the Broncos that having like an extremely high open receiver rate, right?

Where they had like guys running open and like there were, Hackett was copy pasting play designs, which like isn't amazing. You'd rather be like creating new and incredible things. But he was copy pasting play designs at work. Like they had guys getting open and they had contested catch problems and they had downfield drops problems. So there was issues that were outside of Russell's control. Absolutely. What you wrote in season that, I think is also critical for understanding

like what happened to Russ last season was the fact that scramble rate was going down before 2022. Yard's first scramble was going down before 2022. EPA per play on pressure dropbacks was going down before 2022. Last season, his pressure to sack ratio by the end of the season was like 27%. Man, I mean, it was ludicrously high. So much of Russ's addition, Russ's contribution to that delicate but successful offensive ecosystem in Seattle is when something broke, things hit the fan. The play design didn't work.

Russ could just duck, dip, dodge, dive, pirouet, spin 15 yards behind the line of scrimmage, find an escape route and then launch that sucker 60 yards down the field and drop it in a bucket, right? Like the escapeability was unbelievable. fundamentally. Like take the trade to Denver out of it, take Nathaniel hack it out of it, take the injuries, Tim Patrick, Cortland's sign, like take it all out of it.

Guys is his mid-30s and can't play ball the way he did previously. And just in that small vacuum of a changing play style, you have to have, A, like humility, you have to be able to accept that,

that's your reality. And I'm not sure Russ accepted it, and I'm not sure he is going to accept it. Like, I've seen the workout videos. He looks a little bit thinner, looks a little bit lighter. Like, maybe it would be a little bit quicker, sure, but like, I don't know. So one, you like the humility aspect, you have to understand it. But then secondly, you have to have other tools to rely on.

Like, if you can't lean on your maneuverability and escapability the way that you used to, well, now you have to lean on, like, processing. And you have to lean on, like, accuracy and lean on, like, like release speed and lean on like other traits that I'm not entirely convinced Russell Wilson has. This is an extremely polar quarterback in terms of how he plays. He doesn't have, there are some guys who have games that can age, right? Like Tom Brady's game could age because the traits that he relied on weren't the sort of things that you lost over time. Payam Manning's game aged because even as he lost his physical traits because of his neck injury,

he had such paramount other traits. He had such paramount processing and recognition that he just, figured out different ways to win, right? We talked about like how Kurt Cousin and Jimmy Groplo and Jared Gough have like kind of gotten good now at football because they've just been playing for long enough that they've developed other traits. They found ways to win. When you watch Russ, like they're, this is a house of straw.

Like this is a house of cards in terms of how he, how he wins. There's not a lot of alternative options in his play style besides like run around, screw around, create something, launch the ball down the field. So again, like we're, we're about to transition in the more Sean Payton aspect of this conversation, but it's worth remarking, there's a chance the love child of Superman and who's a good coach. I can't think of a single good coach. Bill Walsh. Bill Walsh, he said it was an overrated last podcast. This is a chance of the love child of Superman and Bill Walsh could come down and coach this team ain't so the fact that Russ's legs are dead. And that's the other aspect of Russ's decline that

I think is important. Age in quarterbacking is always a cliff. We think it's going to be like a steady, measurable decline, but usually it's slight decline, slight decline, slight decline, cliff. And that cliff could come in year two, year five, year nine of that small decline. There's a big drop at some point, and it's tough to know when that rug gets pulled out from under you. I think that's why it's kind of hard to blame the decline on any one thing, because I think it's a mixture of both, and that's what makes this conversation so interesting.

It's partly because Russ has age, and it's partly because he was set up with one of the worst coaches we've ever seen in recent history. And I think he was coming from one of the better coaches we've seen in recent history. And I think, like, looking back on it, Pete deserves his flowers for, I don't think he was, like, responsible for Russell Wilson's success. Like, I think if he would have went to any smart coach, he would have turned out to be a great quarterback like he did, which is true for a lot of the quarterbacks around the league, like, a lot of the best quarterbacks in the league. But I think Pete really understood that delicate balance that we were talking about. This was a quote from after that Rams, that first Rams game in 2020.

And that was like the first time he went up against Brandon Staley. And Staley just ate Russ's lunch. It was like, it was embarrassed. Russ threw three picks in this game. So this was the game where Russ was trying to win MVP, right? Which is an important part of this conversation we haven't brought up. But Russ was basically like, I want to throw the ball more because I want to get more counting stats because I want to win an MVP or at least get some MVP votes, which is fair. Listen, me too.

Dude. Okay. If I was a Super Bowl winning quarterback. back and nobody had ever voted me for MVP, that would also be on my mind. I get it. And so they're throwing the ball around the yard a lot and they go to play the Rams. And the Rams giving them light boxes and too high. And Russ is like, I'm shooting this thing. I'm shooting it for four quarters. And it was hell on earth, brother. It was terrible. You didn't know what he was looking at. But like, that was the year when, when Brian Schottenheimer and Pete Carroll let Russ cook. And they were first

in early down pass rate, like by a wide margin over those first couple of, I, I, I, I, I, guess it was two months and it was working like russ was it was the best version of russ we did but we had ever seen he was first an MVP like the MVP race and everyone was like see they should have let rest cook but then we saw the damn break and once it broke like it was just an onslaid and then after that rams game though you could start to see the week before you could even see i think they played the bills and he turned it over a bunch and p carroll was starting to rethink the whole letting him cook thing but after that rams game this is what carroll said he said we have to get back to mixing our stuff and back to balance.

So we're not just relying on the throwing game where they can keep calling their stuff to get after you and cover you more aggressively because they don't have to respect the run as much. Like that's, he just, in like two sentences, he just did what we just covered for the last 20 minutes. I'm about to say, yeah, pause over. Get peed on the pot. But yeah, I think that just speaks to it.

They, they put Russ, like that setup where they were letting him just throw the ball at will on first and second down, allowed defenses to start playing the. third down coverages and third down fronts. And Russ didn't have it in him. He didn't have the processing. I'd like the patience in the pocket to really break down those plays like you really need to. And it's been downhill ever since. Yep.

If Pete were on this podcast and was doing what we did in the first 20 minutes in just two sentences, then we wouldn't have time for all these delightful ad breaks that pay for the food on our table and the clothes on our backs. So listen to these. Here we go. All right. So Pete's not the coach of Russ anymore. That title now belongs to Sean Payton.

Now, I cannot bring up the fact that Sean Payton is the Broncos head coach without first emphasizing that the Broncos head coaching cycle was a cluster. All right. This was a mess and a half. And for every Broncos fan who would like to convince yourself otherwise, go back and check your own tweets from after the Rust trade. all right and just acknowledge that sometimes the team does not do good things the broncos try to hire uh jim harbaugh away from the university of michigan that did not work and then they committed to sean payton even though they'd have to trade for him and then they weren't sure patent was going to take the job and so then they moved set their sights on demico ryan's

but then had a secret meeting with jim harbaw again which was like a month later after the first meeting they flew out to michigan like surprised him on his doorstep like hi you want to come coach the broncos and then they got peyton and they were going to trade for him and then they gave one one last call to Amico Ryan's, and then they traded a first round pick and a future second round pick for Sean Payton. Not the way you want your head coaching cycle to go. And a huge part of the issue was the fact that Russell Wilson is clearly going to be the quarterback and the number Broncos for at least 20, 23 and probably longer.

Whoever is taking this job was to a degree hitching their wagon to Russell Wilson, at least in the short term, right? Like there's very clearly a prevailing mindset given the size of the contract given to Sean Payton. there's no official numbers, but he's making like 20 million per year. And the trade capital sent for him that the Broncos are making a huge investment long-term in Sean Payton. And so if Payton decides to put his foot down on the ground after a season and says,

I don't want Russ here anymore and the Broncos are forced to choose, they're probably going to choose Sean Payton and move on from Russell Wilson. We'll talk more about Russell Wilson's cap issues a little bit later. But the reality is for at least 2023, it's Sean Payton's job to figure out what to do with Russ. and ideally make Russ work such that his team doesn't have to swallow enormous cap hits in future years and set their future back by moving on from this franchise quarterback. Now, when we think about the Sean Payton offense,

we inherently go to the Drew Brees offenses with the Saints. And again, I think just as we did with Russ and Seattle, I think the Drew Brees offenses with the Saints require a little bit of reminiscing hindsight and relitigation. The late stage breeze offenses are the ones that immediately come to mind, the most recent ones in our memories. These were short passing offenses, quick passing game offenses. Breeze regularly averaged under 2.4, 2.5 seconds to throw. He regularly averaged under seven air yards per target.

The early 2010 Breeze offenses, which we might call the Breeze offenses before his arm started to fall off offenses, were not that passive. They were not that meek. He was averaging over eight air yards per attempt in every single year from 2008 to 2015. In 2012, he averaged nine yards per attempt, which was above average in the league, right? Like, you still had guys shooting like 10 yards per attempt, nine yards per attempt, like the really high numbers. But Breeze was still aggressively pushing the ball down the field. These were your Lance Moore, you know, Devery Henderson, these are your, who is Meacham?

Robert Meacham, Robert Meacham, was it? Robert Meacham. He stills? Big fellow. Kenny Stills, these were your gun and offenses. When Breeze retired and Sean Payton had that one year of James Winston, everyone was flabbergasted to see like James pushing the ball down the field. It was classic flame.

This is all this vertical stuff. But it looked a lot like what Peyton previously had ran with Breeze when Breeze had the arm and the body for it. And so we've seen Peyton run different offenses for different quarterbacks, early stage breeze and late stage breeze. Same name, but different physical tools. And accordingly, I can say with some confidence, like he's going to change what he does for Russ. My question for you, Stephen, is what's he going to land on?

What is he going to do? Is this just going to be copy paste 2014 Brian Schoenheimer nonsense? Or because of the physical decline, is there something else that has to be done? Can he treat late stage Russ the same way he treated late stage breeze or is it going to look completely different? I'm going to say something that's going to sound really dumb. And if someone clips this, I'm going to sound like an idiot. because one of these players

is a borderline Hall of Famer. Another one is like a draft bus who can't get a job. Just make sure, make sure, make sure you take a long breath before you say it. That way it's easy to clip. There's just no, you know, you, yeah, you got to make sure the space.

Yeah, okay, good. Three, two, one. James Winston is a better quarterback than Russell Wilson. Okay. He's not a better football player. But I'm talking about like, please distinguish this for me.

Yeah. Okay, that was obviously hyperbole. He's a better pocket passer than Russell Wilson. Like, you can run an approximation of the Drew Breeze offense for James Winston, and it's going to look okay. It's not going to look like Drew Breeze, but he's a good drop. He's a good processor in the pocket. He's not afraid of the pocket.

He hangs in the pocket almost to a fault sometimes. True or false, true or false, true or false. James Winston is closer to Drew Breeze than Russell Wilson is. Say it. Say it. Say it. I've got you. Say it. Yes. I don't even think it's a crazy he hears. Drew is Russ's idol, short kings.

Yeah, about that. That's delusion. You play nothing like him. Your idols should, like you're in the Baker Mayfield genre of pocket passers. But no, I think Russ is a better quarterback.

But really what I think the offense lands on isn't what they did for James, what they did for Breeze, what they did for Teddy Bridgewater. I think it's what Peyton did for, Tayson Hill. Oh, my. I think that's the offense they land on.

No, that's not what I, I just mean how they pass the ball. And how they pass the ball with Taysam Hill, they weren't doing like the jubries, dink and dunk, quick game offense. They were doing, when we're letting Taysam Hill throw, we're going to do play action and we're going to throw that sucker downfield. Like, I think that's what you have to do to get the most out of rust because he's not going to be that down-to-down,

consistent quarterback that he once was just because he had the mobility to create, to create, to create, I think, reliable production in chaotic situations. He just doesn't have that anymore. So it's hard to just let him cook, so to speak, down to down without like getting a negative play somewhere along. He's going to take a bad sack eventually. I think Sean Payton, what he's proven with all these different quarterbacks at the end

of the Drew Breeze era is he's willing to shape his offense around his quarterback and to offer them schematic protection. The type of schematic protection that Russell, Wilson did not get in Denver last year. I think he's going to get that this year. So it's going to be, it might be to the point where Sean Payton is coddling him in the passing game. But I think that's what you have to do.

I still think Russ has a good arm. I still think he's an accurate quarterback. I think he can still throw those moon balls. If you can get like a good early down offense where you have balance like Pete Carroll's talking about where the defense has to respect a run game, they have to play certain fronts, they have to play certain coverages. If not, Sean Payton is just going to run the ball on them all day long, which he did a lot in New Orleans. I don't think he gets enough credit for his run game.

Like New Orleans, towards the end was like a run first team, really. Like when you look at their personnel usage, their formation usage, those are run first offenses they were calling. I think we're going to see an adapted version of that in Denver. And I think like whatever's left of Russ, I think Sean Payton is going to get the best out of that. The question is what is left of Russ? Yeah. Okay, so I want to circle onto like the Russ Breeze connection because obviously like I made you say that James is closer to Breeze than Russ is because people think about Russ and Breeze the same because of the height. And I agree with you that I think Russ is a prototypical short quarterback in terms of how he behaves and how he plays.

Whereas Breeze is the exception that proves the rule of short quarterbacks. What Breeze was best at like quick underneath intermediate throwing is the thing that short quarterbacks are not supposed to be good at, right? He is the exception that proves the rule. For you, like, why can't Payton get Russ to do the Bree stuff? Is it just not in his DNA, just not available to him? I think it's the down-to-down consistency stuff because you can't take negative plays when you run an offense like that. Like, you can't go on 10-play drives and take a sack on second down or it kills the drive.

I think another thing is like with Russ, and this is something that we've harped on for a couple years now, like the middle of the field isn't so open. like it isn't so accessible. Even in Denver, like you could, because he was in Seattle that whole time, his whole career. So maybe there was a chance at the middle of the field thing was not really Russ. It was just a function of the offense and how they ran it. But he goes to Denver. He averaged 2.2 throws over the middle between the hashes from 10 yards to 20 air yards.

2.2. The only people ahead of them are behind him were basically part-time quarterbacks. Or guys that got benched and guys that didn't start the whole season. So he was like basically last in the league. He did decent enough when he threw him. He just didn't throw him enough. And that's always been the problem. I think that's where there's been a bit of a disconnect when like when we make that,

that point that Russ doesn't really use the middle of the field enough. Like if you look at the statute, you could be like, oh, but look at his password rating when he throws the middle, middle of the field. Look at the EPA he generates when he does it. Look at his completion percentage. That's not the issue. We're not saying he physically can't do it. He just doesn't do it enough to put together a functioning, NFL offense that looks like other NFL offenses.

So I think that's the challenge for Sean Payton is finding a way to access those areas of the field or finding a way to create production outside of that area, which is very hard to do in today's NFL. Yeah. So one of the, I was reading through, you and I have both written a lot about Russ, about Russ Hackett and that and then about Russ Payton. It was like newsy stuff that was happening. And so I was reading back through what you wrote in January when Peyton was a rumor for

the job. and Peyton gave this quote where he said, like, he was asked like, how are you going to help Wilson, you know, figure this all out? And he gave the example of like, today I'm going to ask for all of Russell Wilson's passes of like 30 plus yards. And I want to watch that cut up.

And what he's looking for is just like, all right, what are the common threads of the play is where Russ is creating an explosive? And this is going to sound dumb. But what he's going to find is he's going to find a bunch of deep shots, right? And okay, like obviously deep shots

to the 30 plus yard passing plays. Well, not true. Because if you watched a Jimmy cut up or if you watch a Tua cutup of that exact same thing, you find a lot of yards after the catch. You find a lot of targets to the middle of the field. You would say, okay, when this quarterback creates explosives, he's doing it targeting this area.

When you watch Russ, you're going to see the moonballs. You're going to see the design and shot byes. You're going to see the heavy personnel into those deep balls and say, okay, like, this is what's fundamentally working for him. By the same token, Peyton's going to ask, like, all the sacks. And when you watch all the sacks, you're going to see a lot of receivers running over the middle of the field.

I mean, you put on, put on Russ's Super Bowl season and say, give me all the sacks. Guess what you're going to say? You'll see a lot of receivers run over the middle of the field. He doesn't see the, he doesn't see the routes. He doesn't like to see him. He doesn't like to look for him. He doesn't want them to be open.

He doesn't throw him when they're open. He just doesn't see it. And so Payton's starting from that place, which like every coach would do this. It's not like Sean Payton's doing this since revolutionary. But Payton's going to start from that place. I'm like, all right, when did he create positives? When did he create negatives? And because he's got 20 plus years of offensive coaching experience,

and it doesn't look like he coached with a lot of quarterbacks because Drew Brees was there for so long. But really, the offense looked so dramatically different over the course of his time as the head coach of the Saints because he has that, that just wide menu of stuff, right? Like, Payton's coached offense about as long as Andy Reed's coached offense. If you ask the average fan, like, what does Andy do on offense?

I think they'd know a lot of this stuff. If you ask them what Payton does, they'd be like, throw it. You know, like, it's offensive identity is not like a clear communicated thing because he's quite the chameleon in terms of what he's done year over year with different receivers

and different body types, different running back types, different offensive line types. If there's anything you've seen that's been a consistent through line, it's they invest in the offensive line, they develop offensive line, and then they run the football behind them.

And that's going to jive nicely with Russ. Everything else on top is just, it's a collage, right? I mean, it's scrapbooking. It's Payton's ability, which I do believe in, to take ideas of what's worked well for us eight years ago

and what worked well for him last year, those few things that did and stuff that, you know, that Peyton liked that he did with James and Payton liked that he did for Bree's to help him with his height and to somehow kind of amalgam all of that together into some Frankenstein monster of a functional offense, which doesn't sound pretty,

it sounds like a hard, challenging thing to do. But if you made me list the guys who I think could do on the offensive side of the ball, I'm listening Payton really early. And I'm listing him earlier than guys like, like Shanahan McVeigh, like guys who are like, oh, offensive geniuses leading minds, just because I haven't seen them do that with the career longevity, with the

success that I've seen with Peyton. And so, like, it could be great. Like, it really, like, I don't believe it will be, but it could be great. Yeah, I, like, I think I was more optimistic before doing the research, because, like, I did a pot earlier in the week with Nora, where we previewed the AFC West, and I was very high on the- Good plug, well-plugged. The Broncos. And now I'm kind of, like, stepping back from that take I think they're going to be a little bit better. That is how you do it. You show up on one pot and you're like,

Broncos could be better than we think. You show up on a different pod, you're like Broncos are going to be worse than we think. And then no matter what, you've got the club. I always win. I always win. But some of the stuff that Russ

that you could count on, like the quick game out of the gun, he used to be pretty good at that. He was literally the worst quarterback in the NFL by a significant margin from the gun in quick game. And like if that goes, if Russ can't do that anymore

like he's I don't know what the reasoning was I need to watch more film on it maybe it was just like his short accuracy was off but if he can't do that like how do you make an offense so there's like the scene there's a scene and it's always sunny in Philadelphia where Dennis and Mac

try to like start this like currency system for the bar and like they just give the money away for free and then the people like no one spends the money back and they're like we don't have any product we don't have any money, but we can still make a business out of that. That's like trying to make an offense head of Russell Wilson. You can't do quick game.

You can't do under center. You can't throw it over the middle. There's only so many things you can do in football. Unless Sean Payton can devise a new play type that we haven't seen, then there's a ceiling to this. Paddy is dollars, I think they were called. Yes. Yeah.

So let me present an explanation for Russ being really bad from the quick game, quick game from the gun. because I think that Russ being bad escaping pressure is something that's easy to see on film because I think the athleticism is going down. I think Rust being bad thrown in the middle of the field is easy to see because of the height concerns.

Quick game from the gun, I think that Russ was terrified behind an injured offensive line. I don't personally rate the Broncos wide receiving core as highly as others do, especially when Tim Patrick goes down and Corton was down for a portion of the year.

And critically, I think that Russ was just in a terrible headspace where he knew like if I don't complete this four yard slant, I'm screwed. And accordingly, the four yard slant became like

way more than it was supposed to be for the offense, right? I would even actually like to a degree liken it to Aaron Rogers being bad at the quick game under the late age of Mike McCarthy, which like that's not to make like a hackett connection, but it's just to say that when you're living on the exact precision of a five-yard curl,

a five-yard curl actually becomes, way more challenging than it's supposed to be. Just from like a psychology perspective, I, independent of like, they can save Russ, they can save the offense, his contract can be worth it.

I think Russ is going to be better quick game from the gun next year because of noise, randomness, and the fact that he's a good quarterback and has played for a long time. Like, I'm not too worried about that aspect of things.

To me, that's a sinking tide, pulling all boats down when his quick game from the gun is that poor. Because otherwise, it's a reliable thing for him. Even though it's like,

snap to snap volatile, overall it's a reliable thing for him. Yeah, but that's my one concern is like we're starting to see, and this goes back to what you were saying about like the scrambling stuff, but we're starting to see what used to be Russ's strengths diminish.

And as long as he has that deep ball, I still think you can get a productive passing game out of it, but if that deep ball goes, then, I mean, what do you do then? I don't know. But we are starting to get some clues as to what the offense will look like just based on personnel.

I don't know if you've looked at Denver's Dependix chart recently, but a lot of tight ends. Yeah. A lot of tight ends. And if you thought last year they had a lot of tight ends, because they did, this year, baby, they got even more tight ends than they had previously. I want to bring up Denver's depth chart, but first, I want to endorse goods and services that you should purchase for me.

Okay, so yeah, the Denver football Broncos. Sean Payton has been explicit about the sort of offense he'd like to run. You've heard him say at the combine that they're going to have a commitment to the running game. He heard him saying as opening presser at owner's meetings. They're going to be a team that is excited about running the football. He's going to run the football well. His offensive line coach recently, it was Zach Streif, by the way. Zach Streif?

Since we're doing saints from the aughts in this spot, Zach Streeves is the office of line coach. He gave him spicy lines to the media where he was like, you know, to run the football well, you have to have to have a coach who's going to be committed to it, which we have. Just just Zach Street, just calling a shot. Love to see it. But in general, he's right to because the Broncos got Ben Powers and free agency, got Mike McGlensian free agency. As you brought up, added Chris Manhartes and Adam Troutman to a tight-in room already with

Greg Dolcich and Albert Oakway Bonom, who, who knows how they feel about Alberto at this point. That's a mess. But regardless, Giovante Williams, now the bell cow as Melvin Gordon leaves, Samagia Pirine, though, signed to be the second running back. And then, fullback, baby, Michael Burton. Out of Kansas City now, fullback on the Denver Broncos roster. This team intends to run the football and run it a lot.

There's no two ways about that. And I think that it's double counting to say, like, oh, they're doing it to help Russ. Like, yeah, of course they're doing it to help Russ. One, because it helps Russ because a running game has always helped Russ. Two, because Russ was bad. And the only other option is to invest in the running game, right? Like, there's a lot of like, oh, they don't trust Russ. Know who they don't trust Russ?

Like, the passing game was terrible last season. you have to invest in the running game, it's the only other way to move the football. So I think that it makes sense, I think it's intuitive. I don't want to read too much into it. What I do want to look at, though, is the Broncos' expectations overall.

Because last season, when the Broncos made this move, again, like, I was listening back to that show we did in the immediate wake of the trade, and there was a lot of, like, okay, well, the Broncos had to do this because the Broncos had been riding a bad quarterback cycle for a few seasons,

and they needed to push the chips in, and they needed to try to compete. They have such a talented young roster. They got Bradley Chub, and they got Draymond Jones, and they got Patrick Sartan, and they got Cortland Sutton, and they got Jerry Judy,

and they got this, that, and the other thing, right? Well, they trade for Russ, and it was kind of like sick, congratulations. You have the third best quarterback in the AFC West and, like, the sixth to seventh best quarterback in the AFC.

That was if things went, like, middle of the road. Things did not go in the middle of the road. Things went very, very, very poorly. Giovante Williams got hurt. Melvin Gordon got angry and then fumbled the ball and then started and then got cut. Jerry Judy underperformed,

Coral and Sutton got hurt. Tim Patrick got hurt for the entire season. defensively, they were awesome. Jiro Evereaux was saving this team, but then they traded Bradley Chub at the deadline because they have no picks because they traded them all for Russell Wilson. They led Jemont Jones walking free agency,

and Jiro Ebro is out of the building. It's Vance Joseph now. And so this team dramatically underperformed offensively and then defensively lost a few of their pole players. Now, they still have Randy Gregory and Baron Browning and Patrick Catton and Quaun Williams. They got their guys. They're still going to be a good defense, I think.

But in general, the roster that we were able to talk ourselves into as like, oh, well, they should make this Russell Wilson move because they're a contender. We were able to talk ourselves into that last year. This year, I think that's a lot more challenging. I don't know about you. I can't look at this, this, this, this, this Jep chart now with like, when I know about Sutton's Health, when I know about Judy's play, and when I know about the defensive changes and like the investment and like Zach Allen and stuff like this. Like I can't look at this roster and say, oh, yeah, AFC contender. I mean, do you disagree?

It depends on your definition of contender. I think they can be a wild card contender in a vacuum. Like I think they're that good if they were in the NFC. I think they would be fringe wildcard. In the NFC, it's tougher just because there's more competition. I think one big concern, and it's a name we haven't brought up yet, is that Vance Joseph is coordinating the defense. I said Vance Joseph.

I said it, like twice. Oh, I wasn't listening. Sorry. Be a better listener. Be a better friend, Stephen. That's on me. That's on me. But I wasn't a big fan of Vance's work in Arizona.

I will say that last year. I didn't think he acquitted himself well. I'll say that. So I do. I think there might be some regression on the defensive side, which might offset whatever positive regression we get from Sean Payton's offense. So that's my one concern. But if Vance can get the defense like operating at a league average rate,

which I don't think is out of the realm of possibility, and Peyton somehow like resurrects Russ's deep ball. I think you could see a team that finished. That is at least feisty. That is a threat to win every week that win seven, eight games, maybe even nine games if they get some positive luck, some luck in their direction.

I'm not, I'm more optimistic about this team than I am about last team. And it's mostly because of the coach. I think head coaching is a big deal. And Sean Payton is one of the best coaches we've ever seen. And he's replacing one of the worst. coaches we've ever seen. That's a big deal. I hear you on that.

You said it depends on how you define contender, like they might contend for the wildcard. You know that's not what contender means, all right? That's contending for a different thing. That's just using contending as a verb. But that's such a ridiculous question. That's such a ridiculous question. The obvious answer is no. You think the Texans can contend?

No, of course not. The Broncos aren't going to contend. It's a necessary question because of this fact. Let's list the quarterbacks right now by average annual value per year of their contract. Leading league, $52 million, Lamar Jackson. Are the Ravens contending

for a Super Bowl? Yes or no? Yes. 51 million. Jalen Hertz, Eagles. Are they contending for a Super Bowl? Yes.

Okay. Aaron Rogers, 50.2 of the Jets. Are they contending? No. Right, but they're trying to. This is they think they are the Broncos

from a year ago trying to make this move. Fourth on that list is Russell Wilson and the Broncos in 49 million. Is this team contended for a Super Bowl? No. And that's the issue, right? When you go down the list, you hit Kyler and you hit, you hit Kyler, which is like, that's a terrible one.

But then you hit Deshawn, you hit Mahomes, you hit Josh Allen. You get Daniel Jones, then Dak Prescott and Matt Stafford. Like, when we go by ATY, if you're spending 40, $40 million on a quarterback, most of those teams like, yeah, that team might win the Super Bowl this year. It's only two or three teams that's like, yeah, there's no shot. And one of them are these Russell Wilson Broncos. So I think it's important to say that neither you or I have any realistic expectation for this team to contend for an AFC title, Super Bowl birth and Super Bowl championship. So let's move the

goal posts. Okay, let's do it. Let's say that the goal this year is to fix Russ. It's to save Russ as we posited at the top of this show, right? Well, saving Russ is a good goal because Russ's contract is enormous, right? Russ, it represents in 2023, only a $22 million cap it. In 2024, it's only a $35.4 million dollar cap it. But after that, 55.4, 58,000. 53.4 and 54.4, which, by the way, are in his age 37, 38, 39, and 40 seasons. So the backloadedness of this contract is a scary misappropriation of resources. From a cuts perspective, if Russell Wilson were to be cut after the 2023 season, right? He's terrible next year. We have to get rid of him. We have no shot with him on the roster. He represents a $35.4 million dead

cap hit in 2024, and then a $49.6 million dead cap hit in 2025. This man is an $85 million dead cap spread over two years, which is like double the Matt Ryan dead cap hit of one year that is currently the record, right? So this is an enormous, enormous cap hit. So saving Russ is a huge, huge success. If those are our goalposts, if the successful season is just like, we fix Russ, it's a huge benefit to the Broncos. It massively changes their outlook for two to three years. It makes it easier to move on from Russ on their own timeline. It's to handle the cap and to not get just totally submarineed by cutting Russ.

How good, Stephen, do the Broncos need to be to clear that bar for you? What would you need to see? I don't need like a record or DVOA listing. But what would you need to see from the Broncos and from Russell Wilson to say, Denver can carry this quarterback into 2024 and 2025 and feel like they're on a reasonable timeline to contending football. Tough one. I mean, he has to be old Russ.

They have to win 11 games for that because, like you said, those cap hits aren't going away. And their cap health is not in a good spot. Brad Spielberger from PFF just did like the three-year cap outlook for every team. Broncos ranked 24th. So the next three years, it's not just Russ, although Russ is a big part of that. like they don't have a good cap situation. There's not a lot of margin for error for building this roster. I think we need to see Sean Payton pull off miracles, which isn't like we've seen

them do it in the past. We've seen him produce top five offenses with like nothing around Drew Breeze. So I think if they win nine games, I'm going to set the bar there. If they win nine games, I would feel more positive about the Broncos going forward for me to feel good about them and feel good about their chances of contending eventually and Over the next three years, they would have to win 11 games and we would have to see old Russ. Yeah. Give me a descriptive perspective on the offense you would want to see around Russ, right?

Like if, because to me, like, when I think about it, the thing that would give me the most optimism that would make the projections the most rosy would be seeing an offense that is familiar to those previous Russell offenses. I think they're going to run the football quite a bit. And I think that they're going to be heavy personnel. I think they're going to take their shots. But I would hope and be heartened by seeing the offense have more under center, have more traditional play action, have more traditional concepts to it, and see Russ change his play style a little bit. And again, this goes back to like the DNA question.

Does he have it in him? This goes back to the fragile build question. Can Russ change his stripes? Does he have other things to rely on? Because even if I get like a Renaissance year from Russ where he looks like his old self, and Sean Payne somehow conjured that back into being, I'm still going to doubt it. I'm still going to say,

okay, but we saw how easily this falls apart in Seattle, let alone in Denver when he ended up with Hackett, and we, I think, now better understand that those Seattle offenses were a lot more fragile than they seemed. It was a lot more tricky of a calculation of a chemistry than it first appeared. And so I almost don't want to see them succeed in resurrecting Russ. I want them to reincarnate Russ.

I want Russ to come back looking a little bit different to show me that, okay, maybe this guy can actually put together reliable consistent seasons, even if they're not like top 10, they're top 15 seasons in his late 30s. Because if it's just like, oh, this is the old Russ, I don't think the old Russ is going to last. Yeah, that's a good point. What I want to see out of the offense, I want to see,

like, I want to see some middle ground between what you're saying, you want to see this evolution and between like going back to the old Russ offense. I think the most realistic thing is a middle ground. We saw Sean Payton go from under center to more shotgun when Taysom Hill came in. Like they were top 10 in shotgun rate with Taysom Hill. They were not that with another quarterback. So I want to see a lot of shotgun. The trick is kind of recreating New Orleans passing game and run game and how they

kind of worked hand in hand in the gun, in this new structure. So I just want to see more creativity in terms of like, concepts that get the quarterback involved in the run game a little bit more. Because I think that's kind of what you have to do to have a good gun run game. And it doesn't have to be zone read because at this point, I don't think Wilson has it in them to be a really good zone read quarterback. But you can sprinkle that in every so often. I think you saw it at the end of last year.

They did a little zone read at the end when after Hackett got fired. So I want to see that. I want to see more RPO, which is another thing that Sean Payton really turned the dial up on when Tayson came in. They were running no RPO for Jubez, understandably. But when Taysen came in, they started running RPS. I want to see that. And then I just want to see a high A dot.

I want to see him throwing the ball downfield. And then on top of that, I do want to see him, Sean Payne, be able to unlock the middle of the field for him. I don't know how that looks. I don't know how you do it. It's because I'm not, it's the reason why I'm podcasting. I'm not getting paid millions of dollars by the Broncos. But I think of any coach in the NFL has the ability to do it.

I think Sean Payton is near the top of that list. And if he does, like if we see this evolved version of Russ that you're kind of clamoring for, put Sean Payton in the Hall of Fame right now. Right. Put him in the Hall of Fame. Give him a Super Bowl trophy. Like if Rush completes a dig,

a backside dig over 15 yards. The Lombardi just comes down from the rafters, just lands on Sean. Yeah. The offense that came to mind when you were talking about it was like the Brian Dable, Josh Allen offenses, right?

Yes. They're in the gun, but they're spread, but they're getting a quarterback involved in the running game. They're finding aggressive shots down the field. They're finding eye. Isolation shots.

They're still working backside stuff. Yeah. No. A little little H-back action. Who do they got to be H-back? Greg Dols to J-No H-back. They can play Burton there? Chris Mannerts?

They got a... Bannards. Put Mannards. Yeah, yeah. Just put Mannards in a George Kiddily roll. You're not going to get anything out of him after the catch, but it'll be fun regardless. The problem with that is,

Alan's got a hose in terms of velocity. And Russ has a hose in terms of distance. And that's where he gets tricky, right? Is Alan can just stand their pat, stand their pat, stand their pads, be six foot four, take a glancing blow, and then rocket that thing 25 yards on a line. And that just isn't Russ, right? Like, Alan's going to stand tall, keep his eyes up, shoot and deliver. Russ is going to drop his eyes and turn around.

So it's going to look different. But like that Daible Allen era of the offense was the first thing I started thinking about in terms of get the quarterback involved with the run, but still being spread, not necessarily being read option, but letting him just like use his power, uses bulk. It makes some sense. Like I was thinking about Cam Newton offenses a little bit too, but these are such tall guys. You don't want to run like the Baker offense for Russ because then he's going to be

booting left and boot and right. You're going to be cut in the field and half and you're going to be selling out for outside zone. Like that's not going to help you as much. No, yeah. I don't think the cam offense would work at all. That was a middle of the field, deep dig offense. That does not work.

I think your point about Josh Allen is another good one. I think like formationally, structurally, It should look a lot like table's offense. Play call-wise, it should be different. I wouldn't be surprised if Payton went back to Russ's Wisconsin tape and watched Paul Chris's offense. That's a pro-style offense. We saw him form the offense around Russell Wilson.

He got really good production out of him. That could be a good resource to look back at for Peyton. I think there are answers. It's just hard to find them. And I think they have the right guy to be searching for the answers in Sean Payton. I feel good about it. I feel excited about it. I don't actually feel good about it.

I'm just excited to see it. I should clarify that. I feel good about it from an enjoyment perspective from my takes perspective. I don't feel good about it from a Broncos winning games perspective. But again, like, I said it at the top, and I'll say it at the end. In terms of learning stuff about football,

Ross Wilson's a god said, man, because we're going to understand so much about Sean Payton, we're going to understand so much about offense, and we're going to understand so much about quarterback aging by whatever this Broncos' offense ends up looking like in 2023. Will Sean Payton save Russ? 55 minutes in?

We don't know slash think probably not. That's been us. And that's been our episode as we do every single Friday in the summer of tackling. One of the league's big questions. Thank you, is always to Stephen, and our producer, Eduardo Ocampo,

as well as the production supervision provided by Arjuna Ramgapol and Connor Nevins. Thank you to everybody who reviewed. The most recent review came from my sister, who said at the end of last pod, I said, thanks, fellas. And she didn't like that because she, was listening to the pod. She's also in the process of buying, like, baby clothes for her,

she's having her first kid. And all of the Steelers here for like babies is all like, I watch Steelers football with my dad. And she's furious. She is irate. She cannot find one good. Like, just, I'm watching Steelers football and there's no like exclusively through the dad thing going on. She's struggling with that. So no more fellows from me at the end of the show. Thank you for the feedback. Next week, as is tradition, we have not discussed what we're doing. Do you Do we know what we're doing? Do we want to leave it? We want to wildcard this one?

And you should not tell them? Do you have an opinion? Yeah, let's not tell them. Yeah, that's right, listeners. You don't get to know these things anymore. We've been codling you the first month of the pod. Now, in the dark, you'll never know what's coming next. But it'll be on Friday, and I hope you enjoy.