AFC West top 8 quarterbacks ranked worst to best in 2023

3. Russell Wilson, Denver Broncos

Here in 2023, we find Russell Wilson at the most critical juncture of his NFL career. He won the starting job in Seattle as a rookie over Matt Flynn and never looked back. In Denver, Wilson was expected to be the next version of 2012 Peyton Manning, and he failed in that role miserably.

We don't need another post-mortem of Russell Wilson's 2022 campaign. It was bad. We all get it at this point.

I will say what I have said a million times at this point, however: Russell Wilson simply cannot be as bad as we saw last year. I refuse to believe that's just who he is now. We've all seen Wilson reshaping his body, looking great physically this offseason, looking leaner, and obviously working really hard. He always works hard. That's not the question. The question is -- was last year really mostly on Nathaniel Hackett? Is Sean Payton going to come in like some kind of wizard and tell Russell Wilson to "fly, you fool," and it's all of a sudden just going to happen?

It's more than fair to be skeptical of Russell Wilson heading into the 2023 NFL season. Even with that being said, I think he is comfortably ahead of Jimmy Garoppolo among AFC West quarterbacks. If you're giving me the option to go into a Sunday afternoon with either Russ or Jimmy G., I'm taking Russ 100 times out of 100.

But he's got to fix whatever was going on last year.