Denver Broncos' QB Russell Wilson has been put under a microscope ever since his disastrous 2022 season, and people across the NFL landscape are taking the criticism of the QB too far. I think there are certain aspects of professional athletes that are just out of bounds when it comes to criticizing them.
NFL fans are some of the most passionate people you'll ever meet, and we all want to see our favorite teams win, and when they don't calls for things like players to be benched or people to be fired are loud and clear. Criticizing the performance of players is fair game. That happens all the time in every professional sport in the world. And guess what? Sometimes those underperforming players get replaced at some point.
Russell Wilson's play came under fire in 2022. The entire Broncos' team was a total disaster, but obviously a QB as high-profile as Wilson got the brunt of the criticism. Some people even looped his apparent cringey, corny personality into it. Wilson seemed to have become one of the most hated people in the NFL, and I think it was Kyle Brandt of Good Morning Football who went on a childish tirade about Wilson, even bringing up his wife, Ciara.
That to me was horridly out of bounds. Well, it seems like someone has found a new thing to bash Wilson for. Josh Cohen, who has CBS Sports in his X (Twitter) bio, bashed Wilson for, of all things, pointing to the sky after breaking the huddle during the Broncos' first preseason game against the Arizona Cardinals:
Of all things to bash Russell Wilson for, Cohen picks his religious tendencies. To me, that is amazingly out of bounds and uncalled for. Guess what, if you're a religious person, that's great! If you are not a religious person, that's also great! However, I think it's common knowledge to stay away from certain topics like politics and religion. It's no secret that Russell Wilson is vocal about his own faith.
That's fine. Many NFL players are religious and we constantly see large prayer circles before and after games. Being a faithful person is perfectly fine, and not being a faithful, religious person is also fine as well. However, when you go as far as to use someone's religious beliefs as a form of criticism, I think a line is crossed, professionally speaking.
Again, there really is a lot to bash Wilson for. His play on the field over the last year is quite poor, and I can definitely see how his personality can rub people the wrong way. But attacking someone in this way is pathetic, in my opinion, no matter which direction it comes from.