by Taylor MacHenry

Today, Mike Tannenbaum, long-time executive with the New York Jets and its previous General Manager, said that Sean Payton would bench Russell Wilson and use him as an example to establish a culture and climate for the team. This scurrilous comment coming from a former Jets boss smells of an ulterior motive. Payback?

The statement flies in the face of the facts that Sean Payton has gone deep in standing up for Russell Wilson, giving the Broncos’ quarterback the maximum opportunity and support to make the 2023 football season a good one for him. Wilson, an emotionally driven player whose heart in the game propels him to go far above and beyond, as he did for Pete Carroll at Seattle, likewise, like most people, struggles if slogging an uphill battle without any support, as he did with Nathaniel Hackett. And one of a coach’s key responsibilities is to be that powerful mentor and at times emotional support animal for his players. Good players need good coaches and great players demand them: Coaches like Sean Payton.

Why did every NFL player that ever suited up for Tom Landry or Vince Lombardi fear these coaches, and avoided like the pain of death ever disappointing them? Yet without exception, these players would take a bullet for Landry or Lombardi. They loved the men!

It is an interesting, old-school dynamic. Fathers who greatly love their children often dote on them and spoil them. But the smart dads who would die for their daughters and sons show their children powerful leadership that is a mix of uncompromising devotion, loyalty, justice, unyielding love and importantly, discipline.

Smart dads know that the world is a terribly cruel place and it cuts no slack for weaklings. Because they love their children, these smart dads establish rules and boundaries enforced by very clear discipline. No ambiguity or guessing for the kid if he or she runs afoul of dad’s rule. Yet in the same breath, that dad will without thought give up his life for his children. That’s the greatest love of all.

Yes, the Denver Broncos are grown men, but they are young men and not too many years away from growing up in a family that loved and protected them. Even a single mom. Too often a single mom.

Yes, inspiringly a single mom. She loves and protects her son like a lioness.

How many pro football players do we see openly weep on television for their parents, dedicating a game to a mom who is critically ill? Or they look up toward Heaven, pointing a finger high and speak their late father’s name?

Like Russel Wilson’s dad, Harrison, who died in 2010 while Russell endured difficult times not only at home but at North Carolina State University where turmoil and a coach who thought little of Wilson just piled onto his burden of losing his father and seeing his widowed mother, alone under a heavy yoke, keep their family and life together.

While these may be grown men out of college, making millions playing a kids game, the hearts of these grown men are the same impressionable hearts of kids who love their moms and dads, and very often really love and respect their old high school football coaches and teachers, and sometimes their college football coaches too.

They could not be great football players without having HEART.

And Russell Wilson has HEART.

Sean Payton knows this fact and builds on it. He is the disciplined coach who often fills the dad shoes for many of his young players, and a few old ones, especially those who did not have a father in their households and mom did a miraculous job of raising the kid.

Yet, Russell Wilson had a mom and dad who gave him their all, during much of his youth. However, he grew up in a professional household. And that has its own set of challenges.

His late father was a lawyer, and his mother was a hospital nursing director. He enjoyed a plentiful childhood with many benefits. But, a professional household often means that mom and dad have responsibilities that often takes them away from the football practices and games, and robs them of a lot of important support time with their sons or daughters.

Such a kid with a lawyer for a dad and a nursing director for a mom finds other people, like teachers and coaches, who mentor the boy or girl, and that support helps fill the emotional gap that professional parents too often leave in their children’s lives, especially during the kid’s formative years in junior high and high school.

For Russell Wilson, football coaches were important people. And God blessed Russell Wilson with people in his life, outside his mom and dad, who loved him and always did their best, who gave the youngster some great mentoring in his youth.

However, in college, things changed. In this case there were those that also made Russell Wilson angry and resentful, and set a fire in Russell’s belly to prove them wrong.

Trouble about a player with lots of HEART is that it can turn angry if rejected by someone who should be a mentor but dismisses the player.

Roll back the calendar to 2010 when Russell Wilson was a student athlete at North Carolina State University. The same year that Harrison Wilson, Russell’s dad, died. Wolfpack head football coach Tom O’Brien never believed in Wilson and on top of the loss of his father, rejected him badly.

Wilson was playing minor league professional baseball while a college football player. This fact alone probably turned O’Brien against Wilson. Football coaches want their football players to play football not baseball.

A young and impressionable Wilson said to him, “Hey coach, I’d like to come back my senior year (to play football).”

Coach O’Brien chopped the legs from under the gifted athlete, who could make first string in anybody’s league, baseball or football, that he would not play his senior year for the North Carolina State Wolfpack football team.

O’Brien said, “Liston son, you’re never going to play in the National Football League. You’re too small. There’s no chance. You’ve got no shot. Give it up!”

The Wolfpack coach drove the nail home when he responded to Wilson after Russell said, “So, you’re telling me I’m not coming back to N. C. State? I won’t see the field?”

And O’Brien said, “No son, you won’t see the field.”

O’Brien had pressed Wilson to stop playing baseball and to devote himself full-time to football, even though the coach was not impressed with the future Super-Bowl-winning quarterback and would cut him without even a shrug.

The rejection burned Russell Wilson deep and broke his heart.

The young athlete wasted no more time with North Carolina State University nor their head football coach who thought very little of Russell Wilson. He reached out to the University of Wisconsin Badgers football team, and they snapped him up. They needed a quality quarterback. And they were amazed that Tom O’Brien would toss Russell Wilson to the curb.

Russell Wilson immediately won the hearts of the Badgers football team, and they elected him co-captain. And Coach Bret Bielema embraced Wilson and filled the young player’s heart with a coach’s love, respect and renewed hope.

Wilson also had a fire in his emotional furnace to prove Wolfpack coach Tom O’Brien wrong about him.

Russell Wilson led the Wisconsin Badgers to an 11 and 3 winning season in the NCAA Big Ten, and the Big Ten Conference Championship, beating Michigan State 42-39.

In the 2012 Rose Bowl, however, Wisconsin fell to Chip Kelly’s number-4 nationally-ranked Oregon Ducks by a touchdown, 45-to-38.

But Russell Wilson proved to Wolfpack coach Tom O’Brien that he did belong on the upper shelf of NCAA football and received Most Valuable Player honors at number-10 nationally ranked Wisconsin in 2011.

Ironically, unranked North Carolina State did not do that great in 2011, finishing with a mediocre plus-side season of 8 and 5, with a 4 and 4 record in the Atlantic Coast Conference. But the Wolfpack did win the Belk Bowl against Louisville, 31-to-24. And what is the Belk Bowl compared to the Rose Bowl?

Russell Wilson made his point and backed it with undeniable fact and action.

He also made it to the NFL, proving another point to Tom O’Brien, albeit that Wilson was picked overall 75th in the 2012 NFL Draft, selected by the Seattle Seahawks in the 3rd round. Not the first round of the draft, but a 3rd round pick, which is highly respectable.

As it was for the 2012 1st-round pick, Andrew Luck, who went to the Indianapolis Colts, in a 2022 do-over of that draft 10-years prior, the Colts would have picked Russell Wilson number 1. A popular lexicon at the time of reflection stated, “Hustle for Russell” instead of “Suck for Luck.”

One thing about Coach Pete Carroll is that he is like his players, an emotionally-driven animal, and he plays with HEART. Big time HEART. Yes, he believes in fielding an overwhelming Defense and managing the Offense, but he wins with it. Yet with that mindset, he failed to tap into all of Russell Wilson’s great range of quarterback tools as he focused on dominant Defense and managed Offense. But Russell Wilson loved Coach Carroll and Pete Carroll loved Quarterback Wilson.

When a head football coach goes all in on a player, and the player has HEART, the player will die before disappointing his coach. And that is Pete Carroll’s relationship with Russell Wilson. They still love each other.

Broncos Coach Sean Payton knows this and believes in this dynamic too. Payton builds teams on that dynamic.

Sean Payton goes all in on his players and he is all in on Russell Wilson.

Nathaniel Hackett never believed in Russell Wilson, did not understand his game, and wrecked the entire Broncos 2022 season.

And that’s what Sean Payton meant when he said that Hackett’s NFL coaching leadership in the Broncos 2022 season was the worst performance of a head coach he had ever seen.

The fact remains that Nathaniel Hackett put such a stinking turd on the Broncos dinner plate that he got fired without completing the last few games of his only season. Yes, Hackett was horrible! Truth!

And because of it, Russell Wilson’s performance stunk too. Simple logic.

It stunk because Russell Wilson thrives on good coaching.

What stinks today is that Mike Tannenbaum would honestly believe that Sean Payton is such a poor coach that he would use a great quarterback, who proved himself for 10 years with Seattle and won the Super Bowl, as a goat to make a show of benching him to set an atmosphere for the Broncos team.

How stupid is that statement? A rhetorical question with an emphatic response: Pretty darned stupid!

Hope now blesses Russell Wilson for the Broncos 2023 football season. And the team as well. Their quarterback has a fire in his belly to prove lots of critics wrong about him, and a good number of Broncos fans.

Sean Payton is a super-star coach who can make Russell Wilson thrive. And in the pre-season, we see a much-improved Wilson who is regaining his confidence as he is feeling the LOVE of his team and his coach, and an increasing number of Broncos fans.

Wilson also has the unyielding and emphatic and very vocal-to-the-press support of his head football coach, Sean Payton.

One thing about Sean Payton: He says what he believes, and he believes in Russell Wilson as his starting quarterback for the Broncos. Take it as gospel.

Will he bench Russell Wilson? Highly doubtful, even if Wilson fails to prove himself and the Broncos need to go shopping for another trail boss.

But that is a worst-case scenario. Not very likely.

What is most likely is that Russell Wilson will feel the LOVE from his team and his coach, and Russell Wilson will play with FIRE to prove his disrespecting detractors wrong.

I believe that Sean Payton expects greatness from Russell Wilson, and I expect that Russell Wilson expects it from himself. And he will go over the top to deliver every extra measure of greatness that he has for a coach that believes in him.

Even though the Broncos lost their first two pre-season games, by one point each, all of us witnessed a better version of Russell Wilson than we saw in the entirety of last season. And I believe it will just keep getting better. So does Sean Payton.

And Mike Tannenbaum said what he said because he is a fan of Aaron Rodgers, the New York Jets and the Jets’ Offensive Coordinator, Nathaniel Hackett.

Just another barb to piss off Sean Payton.

But it also stokes Russell Wilson’s FIRE and HEART.