NFL Would You Rather? Panthers or Broncos.

NFL Would You Rather? Panthers or Broncos.

GuyWhoLikesSport

Do you remember that song “Pumped up Kicks”?

It’s poppy and fun.

You instantly like it, then you heard it again and again after that… still fun.

And then you start to listen to the lyrics, by the time you realise the song is about a school shooter, it’s too late.

You’re in too deep.

All of a sudden, it’s not fun anymore.

That’s kind of how I feel about the Panthers’ and Broncos’ trades for small quarterbacks, expecting them to be the solution to their woes.  

The question, therefore, in this column is whose situation would you rather be in over the next 4 years?

The Panthers with their small quarterback locked in, or the Broncos with theirs seemingly on the way out. 

The Broncos traded Drew Lock, Noah Fant, Shelby Harris, two first-round picks (Charles Cross and Devon Witherspoon), two second-round picks (Boye Mafe and Derrick Hall), and a fifth-rounder (Tyreke Smith) for Russell Wilson. 

It was a lot.  

Then they handed Russ a 5-year deal worth US$242 million with over $160 million guaranteed.

The contract is also rare in that there are few outs for the team before 2026 outside of eating upwards of $70 million over the next two years in dead cap charges.

Even after 2026 dead money will count against the cap but it’s less significant. 

Wilson has been horrendous in Denver, last year he had clearly the worst season of his NFL career and this season, while he has improved, has not returned to the level of his halcyon days in Seattle.

That’s true even with this week’s win over the barely post-natal Packers. 

The Panthers also made a big move for a quarterback, but they went for Bryce Young with the number 1 pick in the NFL draft. I

n order to move from pick 9 to pick 1 they traded DJ Moore, pick 9, pick 61, their first-round pick in 2024 (which is likely to be pick 1 or 2), and a second-round pick in 2025.  

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Young is young and doesn’t have much around him other than the corpse of Adam Thielen, but even apart from that he has looked limited and small in the NFL, and has already missed time due to injury.  

By the eye test, he seems to go down every single time that he is contacted by a defensive player and is struggling to make up for a lack of explosive NFL arm talent, athleticism, or processing ability that has helped other short quarterbacks succeed.  

The numbers back up that damning appraisal as he’s 30th in passer rating, 34th in success rate, and 32nd in EPA per dropback. Young has been bad.  

But Young is cheap for the next 4 years and the Panthers, other than all the picks that they traded away, are a relatively clean slate. 

This is a Sophie’s choice.

In my view, the answer has to be the Broncos.  

The Broncos employ Sean Payton as head coach and, critically, are owned by the Walton family.  

$70 million is a rounding error for people with Walmart money.

What that $70 million in dead money means, realistically, is that they lose the benefit of a young quarterback against the cap at least for the first two years of the player’s rookie deal (assuming they draft one in the 2024 draft). 

After this year they will let Payton rebuild the roster in his image and have clearly given their new and expensive coach carte blanche to blame Russ every time something doesn’t go well.

If you asked Payton about the situation in the Middle East, he’d probably answer that Russ didn’t get the call into the Israeli defense force quickly enough.  

Wilson is almost certainly out at the end of the year.  

By the same token, Payton’s offensive wizardry isn’t all gone.

The Broncos are the 16th-best offence by EPA per play despite mediocre personnel, under Nathaniel Hackett last season with basically the same group of players, they were 30th.  

He also has Russ playing decent football given his limitations, sitting third in the league in TD-Int percentage and seventh in passer rating.  

Those numbers are a triumph compared to where he was last year (34th and 34th). Sean Payton can still help quarterbacks play better and still knows how to coach offensive football. 

It’s clear that ownership have picked Payton and not Wilson. It’s also clear that they’ve made the right choice. 

The other key reason I’d lean Broncos is that they’re done given up draft picks in the Wilson trade. They have all their picks this year and appear primed to sell at the deadline to acquire more. 

This is a true clean slate, other than a foundational piece at cornerback in Patrick Surtain and some inflated salaries that should be easily cut to clear up more cap room for 2024 and beyond. 

The Panthers and David Tepper have shown that they will spend – they are suspected to have the most expensive coaching staff in the league – but their head coach is Frank Reich.  

Few people in history have ridden one success to more jobs than Frank Reich.

He’s like the ‘My Sharona’ band of the NFL, if whoever sang ‘My Sharona’ then got signed by Sony and then Dr Dre. 

Beyond that, the fact that they’re still paying for Young with valuable draft capital will obviously hinder their ability to build around Young.

Given Young’s frame, it seems reasonable to assume that his physical prime will be shorter than quarterbacks who are more prototypically sized.

Any wasted years will be an issue, and they’ve wasted one already. They look likely to waste another one in 2024 as well.

So, under duress, give me the Broncos.