INDIANAPOLIS — Sean Payton isn’t a prolific tweeter, but he sees some social media activity.
In a recent staff meeting he brought up a meme that caught his attention.
“There’s a Bronco fan with a shirt on and there’s like eight quarterbacks’ names with a cross through it and he’s drinking the quarterback Kool-Aid,” Payton said Tuesday morning at the NFL combine.
The punch line: “Our job is to make sure the next one doesn’t have a line through it.”
The next one.
That, as much as anything, removes any remaining shred of mystery from a reality that hasn’t really had much doubt in recent weeks: Russell Wilson’s time in Denver is finished. The Broncos are head-long into a hunt for their next quarterback.
Payton and general manager George Paton were each unwilling to provide actual finality on Wilson, though Paton acknowledged he hasn’t sensed there’s any trade market for the 35-year-old quarterback just entering the five-year, $245 million extension the Broncos gave him in 2022.Payton, at least, updated the timeline by saying that he expects a final decision regarding Wilson by the end of next week.
“We go through the combine week here,” he said. “Next week, I think Tuesday and Wednesday we’ll be in meetings with ownership. So I expect that we’re going to know fairly quickly. I said this at the Super Bowl, but more specifically, somewhere in the neighborhood of next week we’re going to know.”
Wilson during a podcast appearance Sunday night reiterated that he’d like to stay in Denver, citing his commitment to the franchise. But itap clear at this point that the sides will be going their separate ways.
The league year starts officially March 13, and Denver will have to release or trade Wilson before March 17 to avoid locking in $37 million in salary guarantees for the 2025 season.
“You know, I haven’t heard anything from any teams,” Paton said when asked about a potential Wilson trade. “So, we’ll see.”
Release has always been the most likely scenario for Wilson, and comments from the general manager and head coach Tuesday only further cemented the certainty of that outcome. Payton pointed to a “couple of factors,” including the NFL setting each team’s base salary cap at $255.4 million last week, well ahead of most projections.
“We’re further down the road with the draft class. Obviously the pro free agents (too),” Payton continued.
Added Paton, “We want to see the entire landscape. We had to get through our draft meetings and we had to get through our free agent meetings and evaluate what we have. We just want to get through the process. Sean needs to see all these quarterbacks, the coaches need to see all these quarterbacks, so we can make an informed decision.”
A monumental one, too, even if Wilson’s release is a foregone conclusion at this point.
The Broncos need a quarterback. Again.
The biggest difference this time around is Payton’s presence right in the middle of the search.
The veteran head coach is certainly not lacking in confidence that Denver will come out the other side with a cornerstone player.
“I think we’ll be really good at this and I think, to some degree, we’re glad that a lot of people aren’t,” he said.
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