Football is family.
Nope. Football is business. They say “football is family” because it’s good for business to say “football is family.”
In the aftermath of the benching of quarterback Russell Wilson by the Broncos, some have lost sight of the business realities that underpin every decision made by every team, almost every day. Each player on the roster is an eventual former player. The only question is whether he’ll be released, not re-signed, or traded before he can retire.
The Broncos made a business decision when they traded for Wilson. They made a business decision several months later, when they tore up his existing contract — which had two years left on it — and gave him a massive deal that paid out $119 million over the first two seasons. (He got another $5 million from the Seahawks.)
The Broncos made a business decision on Tuesday, sitting Wilson down ostensibly to spark the offense and, in so doing, setting the stage of Wilson to be released before another $37 million in injury guarantees become fully guaranteed for 2025, along with the $39 million in fully guaranteed compensation that the Broncos owe Wilson for 2024.
Another business decision was made after the Broncos beat the Chiefs on October 29. On the surface, it seems odd that the Broncos would approach Wilson about tweaking his contract in the aftermath of finally ending Kansas City’s 16-game stranglehold over their AFC West rivals. But it was also the start of Denver’s bye week. Before beating the Chiefs, the Broncos had been 2-5. The Broncos were thinking about 2024 and 2025. The Broncos wanted some flexibility regarding Wilson’s contract. The bye week was the obvious moment to implement the strategy.
Per a source with knowledge of the situation, Wilson wasn’t brought into a meeting and given a strong-armed ultimatum. Everything was reduced to writing and communicated to his agent, Mark Rodgers. And while the details are sufficiently sensitive to make it difficult to confirm the specifics of the proposal, common sense suggests that the Broncos wanted to shift the date on which the $37 million salary would convert from being guaranteed only for injury to being fully guaranteed. Presumably, the Broncos wanted to move the vesting date from March 2024 to March 2025.
That would have allowed the two sides to continue the relationship for another season, without the Broncos assuming the obligation to pay him another $37 million in 2025 if the decision were made after 2024 to move on.
Whatever its precise terms, the offer was rejected. The two sides moved forward. Threat or not, he continued to be the starter for seven more games.
If there was a threat to bench Wilson, it quite possibly was implied by the terms of the late-October request. Obviously, if the Broncos were concerned about the flipping of the $37 million injury guarantee for 2025 to a full guarantee on the fifth day of the 2024 league year (March 18), the Broncos have a clear incentive to ensure that Wilson emerges from the 2023 season without an injury that would prevent him from passing a physical before March 18.
That’s why the Raiders benched quarterback Derek Carr late in the 2022 season. He had a $40 million injury guarantee that would have become a full guarantee in the days after Super Bowl LVII. He was healthy at the time. The Raiders didn’t want to risk an injury that would tie their hands as to the $40 million, if Carr couldn’t have passed a physical by the middle of February 2023.
In Carr’s case, there was no dust up. In this case, the NFL Players Association did indeed get involved. To date, no formal grievance has been filed. Wilson and/or Rodgers, as best we can tell, reacted negatively to the bye-week proposal. Which isn’t a surprise; Rodgers is primarily a baseball agent. In baseball, the contracts are fully guaranteed. In baseball, issues like this don’t arise.
As to Wilson, there surely was a feeling that the rug was being pulled out from under the player. In reality, the structure of Wilson’s contract allowed the Broncos to make the business decision to remove Wilson from the starting lineup in order to preserve their ability to have all options available in the offseason.
That said, there’s only one option that currently makes sense. If coach Sean Payton doesn’t sufficiently believe in Wilson to allow him to finish the season as the starter, Payton doesn’t sufficiently believe in Wilson to allow another $37 million in 2025 salary to become fully guaranteed in March 2024.
So that’s the story. The Broncos made a business decision not to commit another $37 million to a quarterback who hasn’t been as good as they thought he’d be. Wilson made a business decision to refuse to alter his contract, setting the stage for the business decision that was his eventual benching and the business decision that will be his inevitable release.
That’s what it has all been, and what it will continue to be. A series of business decisions made by both sides. As business decisions made on a constant basis by NFL teams go, a business decision that ultimately results in the player receiving $158 million through 2024 is the kind of business decision that precious few players ever experience.
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