On March 16, 2022, Broncos fans all across the world felt something that they hadn’t had since 2015: hope. They made the biggest splash of the offseason by trading a huge package for Seahawks quarterback Russell Wilson, the difference maker that Denver had been lacking for years. They might have had to give up a few valuable draft picks and players to get the man, but the Broncos were finally going to be back on the map. They had also hired a first-time head coach in Nathaniel Hackett, the offensive coordinator for Aaron Rodgers that won back-to-back MVPS in 2020 and 2021, the boy genius that could easily groom Wilson back into that elite tier according to some. One of the boldest statements that Wilson said at his introductory press conference was “Broncos Country, Let’s Ride”, and that became their entire mantra leading up to their first game of the season. No longer would they be stuck in this state of futility. The Broncos were ready to make their stamp on the league. Before we dive into how Russell Wilson played however, we need to go back in time to really understand the context of the whole situation.

We don’t need to talk about anything that hasn’t been said about what happened in 2015, besides it being Peyton Manning’s last ride and the defense carrying them to the top of the mountain. Instead, let’s start at 2016. The biggest issue that Denver had that year was that they had little to no contingency plan for life after Manning. They had already let Brock Osweiler walk away in free agency to sign one of the biggest albatross deals with the Houston Texans, so the only quarterbacks that were on the depth chart before the draft were seventh-round pick Trevor Siemian and the Butt Fumble known as Mark Sanchez. When April came around, they actually traded up to the twenty-sixth overall pick and gave up their first and third round picks that year to make the move. Many expected that the Broncos were going to select a quarterback, so general manager John Elway had an intriguing choice to make. With the twenty-sixth pick, they selected Memphis quarterback Paxton Lynch, who had a solid career with the program, but we didn’t know how well he could translate those talents into the NFL. 

Trevor Siemian ended up winning the starting job, since he was most familiar with head coach Gary Kubiak’s offense and got off to a pretty good beginning. They were 4-0 at one point, and before the bye week, the team was 7-3 in a very tight race for first place in the AFC West! The biggest reason for their success was the same as the year before, which was their defense. At the conclusion of the 2016 regular season, that unit had given up the fewest passing yards and the fourth fewest points, with Von Miller once again leading the way at 13.5 sacks. Before the bye week, Siemian only missed one start due to injury, but he wasn’t having a terrible season with a decent twelve touchdown passes and seven interceptions. Unfortunately, that offense ended up being the team’s downfall. After a crushing 30-27 overtime loss to the Kansas City Chiefs, the Broncos lost three out of their final games to close out the season, and they failed to score more than 25 points since. The offense was a below-average unit in almost every statistical category, and while Denver finished 9-7, we all knew that they were not going to come anywhere close to that record again if they didn’t upgrade their quarterback situation.

Gary Kubiak resigned at the end of the year due to health reasons. Wade Phillips had also left the team to take the defensive coordinator job for the Los Angeles Rams under Sean McVay, so the two huge coaches that were at the centerpiece of their championship were gone at the beginning of the 2017 season. The Broncos didn’t go for another offensive mind, but went for a questionable hire at the best: Vance Joseph. Not only did he not seem ready to take a head coaching job, but he was a one-time coordinator of the 2016 Miami Dolphins, which was ranked eighteenth in points allowed and twenty-ninth in yards allowed! Do you know who Denver could have hired instead? Kyle Shanahan, who is also the son of the long-time Broncos head coach Mike Shanahan, who helped win them two of their three Super Bowl championships! Could you imagine how much better the Broncos could have been if they hired one of the best offensive minds of the game? But instead, they brought in Mike McCoy to be the new offensive coordinator, who had recently just been fired from the San Diego Chargers as their head coach after a pathetic 5-11 season. Even more drastic was that they made literally zero changes with their quarterback situation. They kept Trevor Siemian on board and once again made him the starter, over a first-round pick in Paxton Lynch, so it was just really confusing to see what Denver saw in their team that we all couldn’t. But once again, they got off to a surprising strong start. Before an early bye week, the Broncos were 3-1 and didn’t look completely terrible, but that was when everything fell apart.

Not only did Siemian become a turnover magnet, but Paxton Lynch proved that he was nowhere near ready to become an NFL starting quarterback, and the offense was so horrible that McCoy got fired in the middle of the season. After that 3-1 start, the Broncos lost ten out of their next twelve games and finished with a pathetic 5-11 record. They were the sixth worst scoring offense in the league, they had the second worst turnover differential, and neither quarterback could throw for more than 3,000 yards. They even brought Brock Osweiler back and he was just as horrible as Siemian and Lynch. What was even more disheartening was that the defense shockingly got worse under Joseph. The good news was that they were still third in total yards allowed, fourth in passing yards allowed, and fifth in rushing yards allowed. The bad was that they were ranked twenty-second in points given up. You could say that the offense was just that much of a dumpster fire, but this was also a defense that gave up more than forty points in back-to-back weeks at one point, and that had just thirty-three sacks for the year. 

In 2018, that quarterback room was completely purged. Most of the guys that were on that 2015 championship team were all but gone, except for Demaryius Thomas, Emmanuel Sanders, and Von Miller. Trevor Siemian was traded to Minnesota, and their first-round pick Paxton Lynch got cut after just four starts in two seasons. Let’s talk about him quickly before I move on. When Lynch took the field, his flaws were exposed very early on. He had no awareness in the pocket, he lacked arm strength, his reads were terrible, and the only two coaches that he had could see that he was nowhere near ready. This was the guy that Denver traded up to get in the draft. But do you know who they could have picked if they thought differently? Dak Prescott. He fell all the way to the fourth round and got drafted by the Dallas Cowboys, and he immediately got his shot once Tony Romo suffered a long-term back injury. The team went 13-3 with him as the starter, they clinched the number one seed in the NFC, and he won the Offensive Rookie of the Year award as a result. While Prescott ended up being a key cornerstone of the franchise, Paxton Lynch ended up being one of the biggest reaches and busts in NFL Draft history. The next quarterback for the Broncos was not somebody young that they could’ve taken, but they went for the veteran discount guy in Case Keenum. 

Don’t get me wrong, he was really successful with the Minnesota Vikings in 2017. Nobody thought that they were going to go 12-3 with him as the starter, or even the NFC Championship, but that team was so loaded on both sides of the ball! The Broncos ended up having the fifth overall pick in this year’s draft, which meant that they were in a perfect spot to maybe take a highly rated quarterback. They selected a tackle in the previous draft in Garrett Boles, so maybe Denver was slowly trying to build their offense up, but that was not the case at all. Instead, Denver took NC State defensive end Bradley Chubb. He ended up being a solid and productive player in his rookie season with twelve sacks, but after that, injuries set him back and he ended up getting traded in the middle of his fifth year. Chubb was not the biggest need of the franchise and he shouldn’t have been picked that high, because do you know who the Broncos could have taken instead? The guy that the Buffalo Bills drafted two picks later, Josh Allen. I know that he was a high-risk pick at the time, but it would have been a gamble that could have been worth it for Denver. Even better, maybe they could’ve taken Lamar Jackson, the guy that won two MVP’s with the Baltimore Ravens? 

The 2018 Broncos didn’t get any better than they were the year before. The offense was definitely better, but it was also the epitome of mediocrity, which is saying a lot considering that they didn’t have a real starting quarterback. But what ended up being their biggest downfall more than anything was their defense. Even though Von Miller and Bradley Chubb ended up being a successful pass rushing tandem, they ranked twenty-second in yards allowed and thirteenth in points, and Vance Joseph ended up getting fired at the end of the season. Who knew that hiring one-time coordinators with no proven success could backfire so easily? With all due respect, he was nowhere near ready to be a head coach and just found himself in the wrong spot at the wrong time. 

Now we fast forward to 2019 and see who the Broncos hired as their new head coach. They went for defense again and hired respected coordinator Vic Fangio, who was a huge reason why the 2018 Chicago Bears had a resurgent defense led by Khalil Mack. Even though Bruce Arians was somebody that Denver could have hired, Fangio had enough credentials to become a head coach for the first time. He’s definitely better than Adam Gase, that’s for sure! But unfortunately, that offense was still stuck in the mud. 

They ended up trading for a quarterback before the draft. It just happened to be for Joe Flacco, who was completely past his prime and had been recently benched in the middle of the 2018 season for Lamar Jackson. But you know what? Maybe they just wanted a veteran that could groom whoever they draft. They had the tenth overall pick in the draft that season, and instead of holding on to that, they traded down with the Pittsburgh Steelers all the way to the twentieth spot to select tight end Noah Fant. Really? To be fair, it was a really weak quarterback draft and the Broncos ended up taking Missouri star Drew Lock with their second round pick, so it could have been a lot worse. However, that was quickly dismissed after a very fast 0-4 start. The offense with Joe Flacco was lifeless, there was no surprise there, but the fact that the defense couldn’t get a single sack until Week 4 was just a damn travesty. Flacco was 2-6 as the starter for the Broncos, until he unfortunately suffered a season-ending nick injury on the final play against the Indianapolis Colts. Fangio didn’t think that Drew Lock was quite ready, so Brandon Allen got his first start before the bye week and ended up winning an impressive one against the Cleveland Browns, until he lost his next two starts in humiliating fashion. Lock started for the rest of the season and finished with a very strong 4-1 record, throwing for over 1000 yards with seven touchdowns and just three interceptions. Maybe this was the quarterback that the Broncos had been searching for! He was comfortable in the pocket, he had a strong arm, and he knows how to read defenses! 

In the 2020 offseason, there was no reason to panic about their offense just yet. They spent the first three months of that period trying to upgrade that unit by giving him a solid supporting cast. They drafted the stud out of Alabama Jerry Jeudy with their first round pick, another potential star out of Penn State KJ Hamler, and they signed Pro Bowl running back Melvin Gordon in free agency! Courtland Sutton and Tim Patrick were already coming off of breakout seasons and the offensive line was starting to gel, so there was promise! Even though there were certainly better players that Denver could have drafted, the front office felt that they were going to get back into the playoffs with the current team that they assembled.

Little did we know that we got a repeat version of 2017. Only this time was that Von Miller didn’t even get to play that year because he tore his ACL in training camp. Drew Lock never panned out to be the rising star that Denver hoped that he would be, doing his best Trevor Siemian impression with high volume turnovers and inconsistent play. Once again, not one quarterback that started for the Broncos could even throw for 3,000 yards,  and they didn’t even have an active one on their roster before a game against the Saints due to all three of them being on the COVID-19 list. The emergency quarterback was undrafted rookie wide receiver Kendall Hinton and he only completed one pass as the team got annihilated 31-3. The Broncos finished 5-11, another quarterback crisis was at hand, and the head coach was on the hot seat… AGAIN!

Vic Fangio got one last shot in 2021, and even with John Elway stepping down from general manager duties, there were still no upgrades to the offense. Instead of taking a promising quarterback like Justin Fields or even Mac Jones, the Broncos went for another defensive player and took cornerback Patrick Surtain II. It doesn’t matter how well he’s panned out thus far in Denver because that didn’t solve the team’s bigger issues. Besides drafting a promising running back in the second round in Javonte Williams, the only real piece that they added was trading for Teddy Bridgewater, so let’s hope that he returns to his 2014 potential! I mean he’s good… well for the rare games that he’s healthy every season. What you got from this team was nothing different: an average defense at best with a pedestrian offense. As you would also expect, Bridgewater and Lock were never reliable full-time starters, and the team finished with a surprising 7-10 record. The only difference was that they were 3-0, then 6-5, and even 7-6 before they eventually lost four straight to close out the year. Fangio got fired, Bridgewater left as a free agent, and a new regime had to take over. 

Second-year general manager George Paton made the ultimate splash in March of 2022 by trading for legendary Seahawks quarterback Russell Wilson, the best quarterback that the team signed since Peyton Manning retired. In the package, the Broncos traded away two first round picks, a couple second round picks, and a fifth-round pick. They also sent away Drew Lock, Noah Fant, and Shelby Harris as compensation players to a team that was supposedly tanking in the 2022 season. When you look at this offense on paper, you see real potential. Jerry Jeudy had a chance to bounce back from an injury-riddled season and show his first-round pedigree. Javonte Williams totaled 1,000 yards from scrimmage and was hoping to be the team’s lead power back. Courtland Sutton was an incredibly talented wide receiver with awesome physical strength and an exceptional catching radius. With Nathaniel Hackett as the offensive coordinator and team play-caller, who knows how well the Broncos offense took off? But once we saw this team play in Week 1, that was when all our hopes started going down the drain.

Their first matchup of the season was one with all of the headlines you could ask for because Russell Wilson was heading back to Seattle to take on the Seahawks. When you look at what their opponent did this offseason, you would think that they’d be tanking. They traded away the face of the franchise so that they could start either Geno Smith or Drew Lock. They released Bobby Wagner, the heart and soul of their defense, and they let him sign with a division rival. We all thought Denver had won the trade in a slam dunk, but we were all proven very wrong over the next few months. Geno Smith started that matchup and surprised the world with his performance, throwing for a healthy 195 yards and a couple of touchdown passes against a Broncos defense that was supposed to be stacked on all three levels. Wilson didn’t have a terrible game; he threw for 340 yards, but the team only scored 16 points. That was because they fumbled the ball at the goal-line twice, they only scored three points in the second half, and Nathaniel Hackett thought it was a good idea to have a guy that never made a kick longer than 60 yards try to win the game from 64, and the kick predictably was no good. 

But you know what? It’s Week 1. Crazier things have happened right? I mean, look they’re 2-2 and they beat the 49ers at home! But then they had one of the worst and ugliest performances against the Colts on Thursday Night Football and lost 12-9. Then they lost to the Chargers in overtime on Monday Night Football 19-16. Do you know what the common denominator is with all of these performances? They only scored more than 20 points once through the first seven weeks. They at least got a win in London against the Jaguars before the bye, but the team was 3-5! The defense was playing out of their minds and doing everything that they could to keep this team in their games, but the offense was once again a trainwreck. Normally during bye weeks, you would think that the Broncos would heal up properly and return with a different type of energy? Well, they responded alright. Just not the way anybody wants.

Denver ended up losing five straight games the same way: incredible defense that gasses out because the offense fails to even show a pulse. It didn’t matter that they nearly came back from a huge 20+ point deficit against the Chiefs at home, the Broncos were trash and the offense was the biggest reason for it again! Fans were calling for Nathaniel Hackett to be gone and Russell Wilson just looked completely washed up. But all of it came crashing down on Christmas against the Los Angeles Rams. The Broncos didn’t just lose, they got destroyed 51-14 on the field and the game was so bad that players were fighting with each other on the sidelines. Wilson was asked to cook and the food was just completely burnt to a crisp. Hackett got fired 24 hours after the game, the team finished the year 5-12, and their quarterback couldn’t even throw twenty touchdown passes. But let’s see how the Seahawks did just for fun!

Geno Smith ended up winning Comeback Player of the Year for a magical renaissance of a season that he put together, leading the league in completion percentage and throwing thirty touchdown passes! The Seahawks that were supposed to tank ended up backing into the playoffs as the seventh seed at 9-8. The veterans that Seattle acquired didn’t have too much of an impact and it’s still early to determine how well they did with their draft picks, but the bottom line was that Seattle shockingly got better and Denver dramatically got worse with that move. Heading into this next offseason, it was the team’s last shot and if it busted once again, the Broncos were going to be stuck for a long time. 

It took a while in the search but the Broncos found their head coach that was going to change the culture of this team: Super Bowl winning head coach Sean Payton. He might have taken a year off from coaching but he has all of the credentials that you want in a head coach, and the right attitude that is going to resharpen the discipline around the building. Russell Wilson was expected to have a redemption year, the defense was going to stay consistently strong, and the offense would get better over time. The team still didn’t have their first round pick due to the trade made with Seattle, but this season couldn’t be worse than the year before. Well, it didn’t look that way to start!

Hackett at least got them off to a 2-1 start, but the Broncos began their first three games of the 2023 season 0-3, capping it off with their defense giving up exactly 70 points to the Miami Dolphins. That was not a mistake. The defense, now coordinated by their former head coach Vance Joseph mind you, gave up 70 points in a football game in 2023! They literally picked up where they left off last year and Sean Payton was definitely one of the biggest cruxes of that issue. After two consecutive losses to the Jets and Chiefs, the Broncos were now 1-5 and there was once again little to no shot of this team ever even sniffing the playoffs. Until all out of a sudden, the team flipped on a switch that made them one of the biggest surprise stories in the league. The defense was playing out of its mind, forcing key takeaways in big moments, not giving up more than 25 points in five straight victories that gave Denver a winning record! Most importantly, Russell Wilson was starting to regain his stride and will his team to game-winning drives in the fourth quarter, finishing with a healthy twenty-six touchdown passes and just eight picks! The offense was by no means elite, but they were far from the punching bags that they were last year. By early December, the team was 7-6 and there was a real chance that they could back into the playoffs as a Wild Card team! Unfortunately, the Broncos lost two gut-wrenching games against the Lions and Patriots that forced them to fall back one under 500, but they were technically not eliminated. Until Sean Payton made this bold decision.

With two games left in the season, Russell Wilson got benched as the starting quarterback. It wasn’t for performance issues, really. But if he gets injured, it would trigger an injury clause in his contract that would kick in $35 million guaranteed for 2025. So they start Jarrett Stidham for the final two games and completely low-ball Wilson with the odds still in their favor to make a postseason spot. Two months later, the team outright released Russell Wilson and his albatross of a contract, forcing the team to take on $85 million in dead money. 

So you might be asking “Why Collin? Why did you waste your time ranting about this organization that just does nothing but pick stuff out of a sky and expect things to work?” That is simple. Ever since Peyton Manning retired, the Denver Broncos have been one of the most quiet clownshows that doesn’t get talked about enough. The terrible head coaching hires, the awful drafting decisions, and most importantly the horrible quarterbacks that started for this organization over the years. Since then, a hockey team and a basketball team have won a championship in their respective leagues, while the Broncos have been the definition of insanity. 

Trading for Russell Wilson was supposed to make things 1000% better. It ended up being the complete opposite. Remember those reports about him receiving preferential treatment in his first year in Denver? The exclusive parking spaces, the “office” that he had in the building? Even if they might not be totally accurate, these last two years have proven that some of the rumors were true. This will literally go down as one of the worst deals in NFL History. Wilson was given all of the money to change the direction of this franchise and make them a contender. But in his best, he was an average game-manager, and a washed up wannabe at his worst. Hiring Sean Payton did nothing to fix that, in fact I don’t even know if Payton even wanted him in the first place, but he had no choice because of that awful deal. The Broncos are officially now in football hell and the stench starts at the top. They’ve already had to release their all-pro safety Justin Simmons to save a few bucks, and more players might be on their way as well. This ride was supposed to be billed as one of the best that we’ve ever seen, and it turned out to be nothing but a trap and a mirage.