5 Broncos players that shined in the crushing loss to the Seahawks

Nobody likes it when their team loses in Week 1 of the NFL season. Denver Broncos fans, after waiting all weekend for their team to finally play and start the Russell Wilson era, unfortunately, were the last ones to leave Week 1 totally disappointed. The Broncos’ new era was completely upstaged by the Seattle Seahawks, who were resilient and opportunistic in a 17-16 victory. There are no moral victories in the NFL, but luckily for the Denver Broncos, this is just Week 1.

There’s a lot of season left, and there were plenty of good, positive takeaways from this game that are more than just silver linings. The Broncos moved the ball almost at will all game, getting into scoring range on all but one drive the entire game (Corliss Waitman punted just one time). The defense, after a rough first half, was absolutely dominant in the second half, holding the Seahawks scoreless and forcing a turnover.

Let’s take a dive into some of the positive player performances from this crushing loss to the Seahawks, takeaways that can be meaningful moving forward.

Russell Wilson shined in Denver Broncos debut

Great news, Broncos fans — Russell Wilson is very good.

He completed 69 percent of his 42 passes against the Seattle Seahawks for 340 yards and a touchdown. Some of the incomplete passes he threw included a near-touchdown to Eric Saubert, a tough play but a ball that should be caught on an absolute dime from Wilson. Again, that play goes into the stat sheet as an incompletion and knocks Wilson’s completion rate lower, but at the same time, you can’t place the ball any better than he did.

Something similar happened when Wilson was able to hit Eric Tomlinson in stride in the end zone for what appeared to be a touchdown as the game was happening live, but upon further discussion, the officials correctly decided that Tomlinson had one toenail on the chalk. Another incomplete pass on a perfectly thrown ball that, with some better footwork from Tomlinson is a potential game-winning touchdown.

Wilson was on time and on target almost the entire game. Even with a couple of misfires, it’s clear that the Broncos have a star quarterback. The offense was humming all game. The Seahawks really had no answers for the Broncos throughout, even though they were able to get some pressure and make some nice plays defensively.

It was a great first performance as a Bronco from Wilson, whose accuracy and playmaking abilities were on display. He got everyone involved throughout the course of the game, did a great job of setting up screen plays, and looked like he’d been orchestrating this offense for years. Other than the timing of some of the play calls coming in resulting in delay of game penalties, I have zero complaints over Wilson in this game.