The Lead
With training camp now lower than two weeks away, NFL.com’s Adam Rank has finally come to the Broncos in his “State of the Franchise” series evaluating where each NFL team stands heading into the season.
Over the course of the article, Rank identifies key players to know, projects a team MVP for yr, takes a transient have a look at the schedule’s biggest games and tries to reply the team’s biggest questions.
Rank, who admits he’s a Russell Wilson fan and says “I’m unsure he gets the form of love he deserves,” doesn’t have any surprises in store for team MVP.
“Three out of the last 4 quarterbacks to vary teams after recording 250-plus touchdowns with their initial team have gone on to win the Super Bowl,” Rank writes. “The lone exception? Ex-Charger Philip Rivers, which must be super funny to Broncos fans. Should you’re wondering, Wilson threw 292 scoring strikes in Seattle.”
Wilson, in fact, joins a Broncos team that is loaded at receiver, and that makes Rank’s biggest query about whether or not they can feed each certainly one of them.
“Determining easy methods to feed multiple capable receivers — including studs [Courtland] Sutton and [Jerry] Jeudy, plus Tim Patrick, who logged 50-plus catches, 700-plus receiving yards and five-plus TD catches in each of the last two seasons but form of gets overshadowed sometimes — is a pleasant problem to have,” Rank writes. “And it is not a latest challenge for Wilson, who knew easy methods to distribute the ball to players like Doug Baldwin, Tyler Lockett and DK Metcalf in Seattle. Three of the past five Seahawks seasons featured multiple players scoring eight-plus receiving TDs: Metcalf and Lockett did it in 2021 and 2020, and Baldwin and Jimmy Graham did it in 2017. And it is not like Wilson was even asked to throw all that much.”
But the reply to the larger looming query — what would a successful 2022 season appear to be for Denver — shouldn’t be quite so complicated: “Reestablish themselves as real contenders.”
“Giving up multiple first-round picks and established players for somebody like Russell Wilson is a championship move, the form of thing one does to compete for the Lombardi Trophy, not only the division title,” Rank writes. “But for a Broncos team that has finished in the underside half of the AFC West five times since winning Super Bowl 50, returning to the postseason is a practical goal at this point. In any case, Peyton Manning didn’t win a Super Bowl in his first season in Denver. Wilson is (hopefully) going to be there for a very long time.”
