Sliding NFL Doors: Denver Broncos
What if the Broncos had acquired Aaron Rodgers?
This is the third installment of a extremely stupid series I’m calling Sliding NFL Doors, with the prior ones looking at decisions the New York Giants and San Francisco 49ers made, and what might have happened if things went a different way.
This time we’re looking back to a fairly recent set of decisions made by the Denver Broncos by trying to fill their quarterback position.
It’s worth noting that the franchise who has won multiple Super Bowls with John Elway and Peyton Manning under center was on the struggle bus at the most important position in sports. After Manning retired, the starting quarterbacks for the Broncos were:
Trevor Siemian
Brock Osweiler
Paxton Lynch
Case Keenum
Joe Flacco
Drew Lock
Teddy Bridgewater
Guys, that’s not a good list. It’s a very, very bad list in fact. So, you can understand why the Broncos were so eager to find a solution. After the 2021 season, when the team limped to a 7-10 record, they fired coach Vic Fangio, and looked for someone to lead them into the future.
Meanwhile, up in Wisconsin … QB Aaron Rodgers had just won his second consecutive and fourth overall MVP. (Sidenote: it’s truly remarkable he’s only won one Super Bowl.) And it was very clear he was torn about what to do for the following season despite being under contract with Green Bay after a similar petulant holdout the prior off-season. Green Bay had drafted Jordan Love two years prior but were publicly supportive of Rodgers returning (and how could they not be after two straight MVP seasons?), but were at the mercy of his often quixotic reasoning.
The Broncos blinked first, hiring former Packers OC Nathaniel Hackett as their head coach - this seemed to be the first chess move in what would be an eventual trade for Rodgers. Surely, the team wouldn’t have done this without some type of assurance that Rodgers wanted this to happen - and perhaps they got that assurance. But … it didn’t happen. Rodgers stayed with Green Bay for 2022, and Denver was left at the altar.
Until … they weren’t. In a shocking trade, they acquired Seattle QB Russell Wilson and a 4th round pick for two 1st round picks, two 2nd round picks, a 5th round picks and veterans Drew Lock, Shelby Harris and Noah Fant.
Seattle has converted those draft picks into OT Charles Cross, CB Devin Witherspoon, Edge Boye Mafe, Edge Derick Hall and LB Tyreke Smith. There’s absolutely no getting around it, Denver gave up way too much for - spoiler alert - a quarterback they traded away just two years later.
Things immediately went poorly for Wilson in Denver. In his first home game, he was booed LOUDLY by the fans. He looked absolutely washed and the offense seemed predictable and out of sorts - and on brand for Russ, he did not appear to be a huge leader in the locker room.
And look, this wasn’t very long ago. My memory of that season was that Russell Wilson was horrible and Aaron Rodgers was more than fine - fine enough that the Jets were positively geeked to trade for him in the following off-season. It’s another way that statistics are misleading because this is actually each of their stats for the 2022 NFL season:
Yes, Rodgers was better but … neither of them were really special in any way. In two extra games and with 53 extra completions, Rodgers only threw for 171 extra yards, to cherry-pick just one statistic. But it is clear that Rodgers was better than Wilson - but if he’d been a Bronco? What would that have been like?
Let’s assume the Packers would have extracted the exact same compensation for Rodgers that the Seahawks did for Wilson (which, by the way, was crazy then and crazier now). It’s just easier that way. But would Rodgers have done a better job in Denver?
I think so. Hackett and Wilson were never on the same page - with Wilson improvising without the athletic skills of his youth to compensate for those ad libs. Rodgers and Hackett, for all of both their flaws, run the same offense and clearly click. (This is how Hackett is employed by the New York Jets currently as their offensive coordinator.) Wilson’s improvisation (and a terrible Broncos offensive line) led to him being sacked a preposterous 55 times in 2022, and I really think Rodgers would have gotten the ball out much faster than Russ did. If Rodgers has an on-field flaw, it’s that he’s overly concerned with not throwing interceptions and instead checking down to a receiver or running back, and that should have largely helped the offense progress.
I believe if the team had managed to trade for Rodgers in early 2022, they would have done better - and not fired Hackett before the season ended. They would not have then traded even MORE draft picks (yet another 1st round pick and a 2nd rounder) for coach Sean Payton who was a disastrous match for Wilson from the jump.
Would Rodgers have torn his Achilles as a Bronco? That’s impossible to say - those tears are absolutely random and it’s hard to say either way. But the Broncos managed to finish 8-9 last season which was good enough for 2nd in the AFC West. They wouldn’t have challenged the Chiefs for the division, but with a few more wins they would likely have been a playoff team. I think that’s very realistic - it also means the team would not have used its first round pick this year on Oregon QB Bo Nix, and could have taken a stud OT, which is still a serious need for the team. In 2023, they would have been able to draft someone like CB Joey Porter Jr., TEs Sam LaPorta or Michael Mayer in 2023, as well as CB Kool-Aid McKinstry in 2024. (Fun fact: The draft pick the Broncos traded for Payton came from Miami as part of their trade for DE Bradley Chubb, a pick they had from the 49ers as part of the Trey Lance trade. Also? The pick the Saints used for McKinistry was actually from Green Bay, which Green Bay originally got from the Jets for the Aaron Rodgers trade. We can unwind this one a LOT if we really want to, but we don’t want to.)
In looking up things for this post (I wouldn’t call it ‘research’ as that suggests more rigor than bears fruit) I saw numerous posts questioning whether the trade for Russell Wilson is the worst trade in NFL history. I think the answer to that is … no. (God, I wish it was. You may not know this but I’m not a huge Russell Wilson fan.) But I think Wilson wasn’t nearly as bad for the team as we think he was … the trade value was too much and it was clear at the time it was a curious move. But, that said I think it’s clear that the team would have been much better off if Rodgers hadn’t gotten cold feet and agreed to a trade to the Broncos instead of waiting a year to go to the Jets.