Denver Broncos should bench Russell Wilson for rest of ’22
The Denver Broncos fell in week 12 to the Carolina Panthers, marking the absolute lowest point of the Russell Wilson era thus far. I do think that Wilson has largely played awful this year and some of that is on him, but some of the forces outside of his control are contributing to the overall bad offense.
At 3-8, the Broncos are firmly out of the playoff race and just might be the worst team in the NFL. The defense itself has shown signs of breaking and the offense is the worst in the league. Being that the season is long gone at this point, the team should simply shut their quarterback down.
It’s clear that the Broncos are going nowhere in 2022. Wilson was brought in for the long term, and one lost season should not continue at its current pace. The 11th-year quarterback missed a game earlier this year with a hamstring injury and had apparently gotten some sort of injection for a partially torn lat muscle.
At this point in the season, no one player is 100% healthy. That should hold true for Wilson, even though he has put intense time, money, and care into his body. He had never missed a game in his NFL career until last year on a freak finger injury.
To ensure that Russell Wilson enters 2023 as healthy as possible with a new coaching staff and new teammates, the Broncos should bench him for the rest of the year. This would allow Brett Rypien to see some significant game action.
I am low on Rypien, in general, do not think he is much of a QB2, and backup quarterbacks usually never play for an extended period of time during one season. However, this season is perhaps one of the worst in the history of the Denver Broncos, and I think the team needs to remove their $250 million quarterback from the starting lineup.
The play-calling is not doing Wilson any favors and the offensive line is not only horribly banged up but horribly coached as well. It seems that Russell Wilson is running for his life every single play, and with every sack he takes, I cringe a little bit.
It might not seem fair to throw Rypien into the figurative wolves, but Wilson is here for the next several seasons at least and it’s imperative that the team gets as much from him as they can, if he indeed is washed up.