The Russell Wilson trade may have been one of the worst in NFL history, but did the Denver Broncos actually win the trade?
Just over three years ago, the Denver Broncos swung a trade for who they thought was an elite QB in Russell Wilson, sending multiple players and draft picks to the Seattle Seahawks for the future Hall of Famer.
And to say the move immediately blew up in the Broncos faces would be a massive understatement. The 2022 NFL Season may have been among the worst in team history, but it did force GM George Paton to actually make substantive changes. Swinging a trade for Sean Payton the following offseason was a bold but much-needed move, and that's when things really started to change.
Did the Broncos win the Russell Wilson trade?
Russell Wilson and the Broncos were a much better team in 2023 than they were in 2022. Wilson's passer rating was a 98, and the Broncos ended up winning eight games despite a brutal 1-5 start. However, Payton correctly recognized that he wasn't going to sustain success with Russell Wilson, so he made the bold move to part ways and take on an NFL-record $85 million in dead cap.
This move forced Denver to find a QB in the 2024 NFL Draft, and the early returns would have us believe that they did indeed find one. The Russell Wilson trade blowing up in the Broncos faces truly forced them to rebuild the team the correct way, and now they've got a future Hall of Fame head coach working with an already borderline top-10 QB in Bo Nix.
And as for the Seattle Seahawks, did they actually come out of this trade a better team? They thought they had something with Geno Smith, but after his breakout year in 2022, he regressed the following two seasons and got shipped to the Las Vegas Raiders for a mid-round pick.
The Seahawks really have nothing of note in their QB room, as they signed Sam Darnold and drafted one of the shakier QB prospects in 2025 in Jalen Milroe. Pete Carroll is also no longer their head coach, and the roster itself is just... average.
When you look at the fallout of the trade three years later, the Denver Broncos are clearly in a better position than the Seattle Seahawks.
So you can absolutely argue that the team won the trade, somehow, some way.