Russell Wilson reiterated that he hopes to return to the Broncos in 2024 but doesn’t know whether that will happen during a podcast with former Denver wide receiver Brandon Marshall.
Over more than 80 minutes on Marshall’s “I Am Athlete” podcast, the pair talked extensively about Wilson’s career, marriage, family and much more but they also briefly got down to brass tacks about Wilson’s current limbo with Denver.
“For me it’s about winning. In the next five years I want to win two (Super Bowls),” Wilson said. “I want to feel the chill of that trophy again. So yeah, I want to go back to Denver. I hope I get to go back. I’d love to go back, to be honest with you. I’ve got amazing teammates.”
Wilson, though, acknowledged he doesn’t know if that will happen. Marshall tried to get him to talk about other potential destinations, but the veteran quarterback didn’t bite.
“I honestly haven’t really thought about it. I’m still in Denver,” he said, later adding, “If it’s not there, though, I’d go to a place where we can win again.”
Asked if Wilson could play again for Broncos head coach Sean Payton after their first season together, he said flatly, “Yeah.”
Most in the NFL expect, though, that Denver will release or, far less likely, find a trade partner to jettison Wilson before March 17, when $37 million in 2025 base salary would become guaranteed.
The podcast went live Sunday night, perhaps not coincidentally, just before the NFL descends on Indianapolis for this week’s Scouting Combine. It’s a time on the calendar when a lot of business gets done and a lot of groundwork for future moves is put into place. Payton and general manager George Paton are slated to speak Tuesday morning and now Wilson’s put his stance on the record ahead of time.
Marshall at one point joked with Wilson about where he’d live if he returned to the Broncos because of recent Business Den reporting that he and his wife, Ciara, are taking showings and accepting offers on their Cherry Hills mansion.
“My house ain’t for sale. It’s not for sale,” Wilson said before tempering that a bit.
“It’s not on the market right now.”
Either way, he said he feels like he bounced back from a poor 2022 season and is planning on playing at a high level well into the future.
“People think I’m out of there. Maybe I am, but no matter what I’d love to go back,” he said. “I committed. There. I committed to be there. I want to win more Super Bowls there. I love the city and everything else, but you also want to be at a place that wants you, too.”
Wilson and Marshall also revisited the bye week conversations between his agent, Mark Rodgers, Paton and Broncos vice president of football administration Rich Hurtado that led to acrimony over the potential that Wilson would be benched for up to the team’s final nine games.
He talked for the first time about telling Courtland Sutton – but nobody else in the locker room – about the situation shortly after the Broncos won at Buffalo in Week 10 and a meeting he had with Payton after the bye week.
“I get back on Monday, I still don’t know necessarily what’s going to happen, and on that Monday that’s when I meet with Sean,” he said. “And Sean said, ‘Hey, treat it like nothing happened. You’re going to play this week, we’ve got a big game this week against Buffalo. We’ve got to go win on Monday Night Football.”
Wilson ultimately started seven games after Denver’s bye before Payton benched him for Jarrett Stidham for the final two games of the season.
Wilson wasn’t part of the conversations directly during the bye week, but said Sunday night that the NFL told the Broncos their negotiating stance, “is illegal. You can’t do this.” However, league sources have maintained – and reiterated Sunday night – that the NFL never told the Broncos they were out of line. The only assertion of that came from an outside counsel retained by the NFL Players Association, which was outlined in a letter reported on in January by the Washington Post.
