There was a stat I mentioned in the magazine a couple of times. It seemed like a really telling one at the time. Instead, the exact opposite has been true. It’s been one of those reverse barometer jobs.
Seattle’s offense in the 2019-21 seasons generated 149 touchdowns versus only 75 field goal attempts, about the best ratio in the league. Denver’s offense in the same time period produced fewer touchdowns (99) than field goal attempts (100), about the worst ratio in the league.
Conclusion: with Russell Wilson going to Denver (and with those receivers in place) the Broncos are going to be scoring a lot more touchdowns. This is now going to be a top-10 offense.
Or so I thought.
After over a month, the Broncos have arguably the league’s most disappointing offense. They’ve scored only 6 touchdowns in five games, and half of them came in a one-sided loss at Las Vegas. They’ve instead attempted 14 field goals.
Inside the red zone, they’ve scored touchdowns on only 3 of 14 possessions. They’ve been a disaster.
Wilson has not looked like the quarterback he was a few years back. He’s not improvising into those killer plays like he has in the past. I think that’s caused by him not being the off-the-charts athlete that he was a few years ago – he can’t run like he used to – combined with him not be as willing to attempt as many of those plays. I think he still have above-average mobility (he’s taken off for an effective run the last two weeks) but that’s not a big part of his game now.
When he’s moving less, having to operate more from the pocket, I think his height limitations become more of a problem.
I expect he’ll salvage things somewhat, but his days as a top-10 quarterback are gone.
Below see his red-zone numbers, and they’re pretty awful.
| RUSSELL WILSON INSIDE THE 20 | |||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Year | Team | G | Com | Att | Yards | TD | Rushing |
| 2012 | Seattle | 16 | 34 | 59 | 252 | 18 | 11-51-2 |
| 2013 | Seattle | 16 | 27 | 53 | 215 | 18 | 16-69-1 |
| 2014 | Seattle | 16 | 28 | 57 | 212 | 13 | 19-87-5 |
| 2015 | Seattle | 16 | 29 | 53 | 240 | 16 | 10-57-1 |
| 2016 | Seattle | 16 | 30 | 69 | 243 | 15 | 6-11-1 |
| 2017 | Seattle | 16 | 38 | 68 | 258 | 22 | 6-12-2 |
| 2018 | Seattle | 16 | 35 | 62 | 271 | 23 | 8-13-0 |
| 2019 | Seattle | 16 | 44 | 89 | 360 | 25 | 12-59-3 |
| 2020 | Seattle | 16 | 52 | 82 | 341 | 29 | 5-5-2 |
| 2021 | Seattle | 14 | 24 | 45 | 175 | 15 | 7-41-2 |
| 2022 | Denver | 5 | 13 | 28 | 64 | 1 | 1-3-1 |
—Ian Allan