We’re only five weeks into the 2022 NFL season, but if anyone might be smashing the panic button right now, it would be the Denver Broncos. A 12-9 overtime loss to the Indianapolis Colts on Thursday night dropped the Broncos to 2-3 and further into a pit of misery. Is there any way the Broncos can turn their season around?
This was meant to be a time of hope and change for the Broncos. The team had a franchise quarterback under center for the first time since Peyton Manning as the front office traded a king’s ransom to acquire Russell Wilson from the Seattle Seahawks. They then gave Wilson a five-year, $245 million contract, locking themselves into the Russ experience for the next half-decade. With a strong roster, Wilson could surely help the Broncos make a deep postseason run.
Five weeks into the season, the Broncos aren’t out of the playoff picture, but things are looking bleak in year 1 of the Russell Wilson and Nathaniel Hackett experiment and it’s hard to see a light at the end of the tunnel. The offense slumped to just three field goals against the Colts on Thursday night and has scored just six touchdowns across 20 quarters of football. They’re 27th in EPA per play, per RBSDM, and are 31st in points per game.
The defense is performing at an elite level, but so much that could go wrong for the offense has gone wrong. But what are the issues; who is at fault and can it be fixed?
The Nathaniel Hackett Problem
Let’s start with the head coach. Nathaniel Hackett spent three years as the offensive coordinator of the Green Bay Packers, helping reinvigorate Aaron Rodgers’s career as he won back-to-back MVP awards and setting the scene for the Packers to have one of the best offenses in the NFL. Between 2019 and 2021, they were second in EPA per play on offense. He didn’t call the plays in Green Bay, but his fingerprints were all over their aerial attack.
Naturally, he was a top head coaching choice in the offseason. But there’s an argument to be made that a lot of his value as a potential candidate was tied to the career of Rodgers, who was contemplating a move himself after another postseason disappointment. Hackett and Rodgers had a lot of regular-season success together. If someone could lure Hackett to their vacancy, it could convince Rodgers to join.
That team was Denver. And then they waited, and waited, and waited some more. Until Rodgers decided to stay put in Green Bay. Almost immediately afterwards, Wilson to the Broncos was confirmed. Wilson was the backup plan, and it also meant that Hackett would have to rejig his offense to fit Wilson – a known shot-taker, but someone that doesn’t routinely work the middle of the field – but more on that later.
So far, Hackett looks wholly unprepared for the task at hand. His play calling tendencies, especially in the red zone, have been unacceptable – the Broncos have the worst red zone offense in the NFL – and his clock management has been that of a rookie head coach. Exactly what he is, but it’s still been frustrating. The results on the field have been unacceptable, but Hackett is clearly failing to put the team in a position to succeed.
He’s just five games into his head coaching career but Hackett has his work cut out for him. He’s already one of the favourites to be the next head coach fired, but it’s not all Hackett’s doing.
The Russell Wilson Problem
Five years. $245 million. The Broncos and Wilson are tied together, for better or worse, for the foreseeable future. Prior to the season, that could have been perceived as a good thing. Wilson, at his peak, was one of the four or five best quarterbacks in the NFL. His ability to create a play out of nothing, evading pressure in the pocket before launching, arguably, the prettiest deep ball in NFL history got the Seahawks out of a few jams over the years. And it was hoped that Wilson could lend his elite playmaking to the Broncos in 2022.
However, five games into the season, there’s a clear disconnect. Wilson is 25th out of 32 quarterbacks in expected points added (EPA) and completion percentage over expected (CPOE) composite. He’s completing a career-low 59 percent of his passes for 1254 yards, four touchdowns, and three interceptions. Everything, from the inaccuracy to the turnovers, to the generally bad decision-making, has been the antithesis of Wilson and has led to a serious question: is he just not good anymore?
It’s a loaded question and one with plenty of variables. We’ll try to at least dig in for an answer.
The Broncos’ offense has been poor. The numbers don’t lie, and Wilson is at the center of their issues. His downturn in play isn’t new, though. After a hot start to the 2021 season, Wilson went down with a finger injury and missed a few games. Upon returning, he just never looked quite right. Pre-injury, Wilson was top 10 in the EPA+CPOE composite, per RBSDM, and had a 10:1 touchdown to interception ratio.
Post-injury, Wilson was just not the same. That could have been due to the finger injury, but his problems have carried over into 2022. Much of it boils down to a systematic shift from NFL defenses. The amount of Cover 2 or two-deep safety looks defenses are showing has risen dramatically over the last season, and it’s fully intended to keep a roof on the opposing offenses’ heads by taking away their deep shots and forcing them to play more conservatively.
That’s been something that Wilson has struggled with throughout his career. He’s a backyard footballer. That’s where the magic lies. He’s at his best when he’s creating outside of the pocket, looking downfield, and sending a bomb. If that’s taken away, Wilson is left second-guessing and his decision-making fluctuates. And considering the increased rate of two-high safety defenses, Wilson is struggling more and more to move the ball, especially in the red zone. His inability to read KJ Hamler coming open on a backside dig route on the Broncos’ fourth down attempt against the Colts on Thursday was maddening. That’s a read that a good quarterback should make. It’s concerning that moments like these occur more often.
But also, Wilson is aging. He’s almost 34 years old and his style of play is conducive to that of a younger man. He’s not a true dual-threat quarterback, but he certainly relies on his ability to keep plays alive with his legs. Something that gets harder and harder the older a quarterback gets. It’s a natural ageing curve for an athletic quarterback. We’re blessed that quarterbacks like Tom Brady, Aaron Rodgers, and Drew Brees were able to fend off Father Time for so long, but it shouldn’t change how we view the position. Nothing lasts forever.
None of this makes Wilson a bad quarterback. He’s playing badly right now, and there’s every chance that this could be who he is moving forward, but it was also revealed that he played against the Colts with damage to his throwing shoulder. Not ideal. But whether that has hampered his tendency to play against certain coverages? Maybe not. It still opens the door to improvement, though.
It’s just unlikely to think that he could regress this far, this quickly, right?
-Thomas Valentine
Twitter: @tvalentinesport
Photo: Mike Morris. This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic license.