It's Russ. People hate to hear it but his advanced stats were actually pretty good last year. He was near best in the league in the red zone, passer rating was good, TD/INT ration was super good he just couldn't run the offense Payton likes to run. Tomlin's historically ran an offense that fits Russ much better. Big Ben played a lot like Russ in many ways. I think Russ has another solid year and people go crazy because of it.
Wilson's advanced stats were most definitely
not good last year, and it's difficult to imagine a lens under which they could possibly look good.
As usual, Wilson had a good completion percentage, a good number of TD passes, and few interceptions. Those are the things that go into passer rating, so he ends up with a good passer rating, and that tells you exactly nothing that completion percentage, TD percentage, and interception percentage don't.
None of this is advanced stats, by the way.
As usual, Wilson had one of the highest sack percentages in the league and one of the highest pressure percentages, despite being gifted one of the highest times before pressure in the league. That is, the Broncos' offensive line actually did a decent job at preventing pressure for what would be long enough for a good NFL quarterback capable of running a modern NFL offense on time, but was nowhere near enough time for Wilson. Wilson was given the seventh-most time before pressure in 2023, but still managed to be among the league "leaders" in sack percentage.
Because measures like DVOA, QBR, and ANY/A take into account things like game situation (sometimes via success percentage) and sacks, Wilson fares much worse in those (bottom half of the league among starters in all). The difference tells us that Wilson's 2023 completion percentage was "empty calories," because low successs percentage despite high completion percentage means that many of the completions were short of what would be considered success on the play, which includes not getting first downs on third-and-reasonable, which is why both Seahawks fans and Broncos fans have three-and-out PTSD from Wilson's years playing for those teams. That all fits prettty well with what we saw from Wilson the Stealer in the preseason: sacks that a pocket-aware QB could avoid, sacks that a QB who can go through his reads quickly could avoid, and throws that frequently weren't just short of ths sticks, but also short of the line of scrimmage.
Wilson was 25th in the league in intended air yards per pass attempt in 2023, and 28th in the league in completed air yards per completion. That tells us that even though he's historically had a pretty good completion percentage, in 2023 his completion percentage was inflated by keeping his passes very short. This was part of Payton's strategy for minimizing the damage Wilson could do to the team. What should be scary for the Russellettes hoping their hero has only
appeared to have feet of clay these last few seasons is that even though Payton pushed Wilson to shorter passes and therefore faster-developing plays, Wilson
still ended up among the league "leaders" in sack percentage. That means that if Smith and Tomlin don't confine Wilson to shorter passes like Payton did, Wilson could end up setting some league sack-percentage records for as long as Smith and Tomlin are willing to let that go on.
I have to admit I kinda love the idea that people here keep suggesting about Wilson eventually ending up on the Raiders. Here's hoping it happens. Imagine how wonderful: after having ruined the still-loathed Broncos and the on-the-rise team they had before the worst trade and worst contract extension in the organization's history (and, at $85M, well over double the second-worst figure, by far the biggest dead-money hit any team has ever been willing to take to get away from a player), Wilson could then go and ruin the loathed-for-XL Stealers, then the still-loathed-from-the-'70s-and-'80s Raiders. The only way I can imagine that getting any better at all is if Wilson ends up on the Patriots too before finally being laughed out of the league. The down side, of course, is that a team is virtually guaranteed good draft position after a season of Wilson.
There's a reason two teams in a row have concluded that Wilson was not part of what they needed to win titles and only one team was desperate enough in the 2024 offseason to pay even the vet minimum for Wilson, even though every team in the league knew he could be signed for the minimum, because the Broncos were on the hook for paying him $39M this season, minus whatever he managed to get in his new contract. Because Wilson's 2024 compensation is already set at $39M, it doesn't matter to him how much of it comes from the Broncos and how much comes from the Steelers, except that the less of it that comes from his new team means the more that team has to spend on making the team around him better, but importantly, without him having to reduce his own compensation.
The reason is because NFL front offices have figured out that Wilson won't get them closer to a Super Bowl title. At this point, I suspect the Russellettes won't
ever figure that out.
