Ex-NFL GM: Broncos QB Russell Wilson is 'Fighting For His Job'

Russell Wilson's margin for error under Sean Payton might be razor-thin.

While NFL historians agonize over whether Russell Wilson will be able to repair his legacy this year, the quarterback's focus is on the present and his place with the Denver Broncos. As it stands, the Broncos are financially committed to Wilson, not just by virtue of his $22 million salary-cap hit this season, but also the tens of millions of dollars in dead-cap charges hanging over the team's head like an albatross in 2024 and beyond. 

The bottom line is, if Wilson fails to launch under new head coach Sean Payton in 2023, the Broncos could move on from him, although it would cost upwards of $85M in dead-cap over the next five years, and that's if he were to be designated a post-June 1 cut. It could cost more. The pressure to salvage the quarter-billion-dollar contract extension the Broncos gave the veteran QB is on not only Wilson, but Payton, too, which is why the team's new owners made the coaching hire they did. 

Former NFL GM Mike Tannenbaum, now an ESPN analyst, has something of a shared history with Payton. Both Tannenbaum and Payton spring off the Bill Parcells coaching tree (though at different times and with different teams), and a philosophy the venerated former NFL head coach espoused to his acolytes was one of the simplest: the best players will play. 

With the stage set thusly, Tannenbaum put Wilson's situation into perspective. 

"Russell Wilson isn't fighting for his legacy; he's fighting for his job," Tannenbaum said on a recent Get Up segment on ESPN. The former front-office guru did his level best to get into Payton's head and portray how the Broncos' new head coach likely views the Wilson situation. 

"He couldn't care about a salary-cap charge, dead money—the best players will play," Tannenbaum said of Payton. "They will draft [Wilson's] replacement if he doesn't do everything he says from day one. If you go back to his press conference, Sean Payton talked about 'there will be no outside coaches, mentors in the building.' He is the new sheriff in town, and he is beholden to no one, including Russell Wilson's guaranteed money."

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Payton was, no doubt, as alarmed by Wilson's regression last year as anyone, but we know that he was also encouraged by the QB's marked improvement in the last two games of the season after the cloud of coaching incompetence was blown out of the Mile High City along with the failed Nathaniel Hackett. 

Wilson's improvement under Denver's then-interim head coach Jerry Rosburg, and the new play-calling arrangement put in place with then-offensive coordinator Justin Outten, showed that the vintage Wilson of old can still be extracted. I like Payton's odds of getting that out of Wilson, but the head coach hedged against it by hand-selecting his own quarterback to serve as the backup.

READ: Here's Why the Russell Wilson Doubters Are Wrong

Speaking of late-season performances, Payton was highly impressed by Jarrett Stidham's showing in Week 16 against the San Francisco 49ers' No. 1 defense, where he passed for 365 yards and three touchdowns, while being picked off twice. Payton saw in Stidham an NFL starting-caliber QB with the requisite attributes to run his offense. 

Payton has said as much publicly, and you can believe that Wilson heard it. If Wilson bombs in 2023, it won't take Payton long to pull the plug and supplant him with Stidham. After all, the Broncos haven't won squat since 2015. 

If it comes to that, Tannenbaum's take would then become a prophecy, and the Broncos would not only have to bite the bullet of eating all that dead money on Wilson's contract for the next half-decade but organize all resources to identify and secure the team's franchise QB of the future in the NFL draft. 

Tannenbaum knows what he's talking about relative to Payton's Parcellian outlook on playing the best player. And how the monetary considerations would take a back seat to the demands of playing the best QB. 

But knowing what I do about Wilson and Payton, I highly doubt it'll come to that. In the NFL, though, stranger things have happened. 

"I worked for Coach Parcells in 1997 with the New York Jets," Tannenbaum said. "Sean Payton worked for Bill Parcells. Here's exactly what Parcells said. 'Fellas, I go by what I see. The best players will play.'" 

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