I find it curious that Russ has been treading sewage for a year and a half, but after two games a winner there are folks bringing up MVP possibilities. Amazing.
MVP as QB of the 29th passing attack in the league, behind several teams that have used multiple QBs? I consider that pretty unlikely.
I already thought the Russellettes telling us Wilson is playing "really well" this year was ridiculous. Really well compared to last year, sure, but that's a really low bar.
Payton has Wilson locked down in a lower-risk, lower-return version of Russball (which the Russellettes insisted on calling "Peteball"), in the bottom tercile or bottom quartile of the league in passing yards, passing attempts, intended air yards on pass attempts, and actual air yards on completions.
That is, Payton's solution for how to get something out of his outrageously overpriced QB was to reduce the length of the throws and the number of them.
The result is that Wilson has much-better-than-last-year rate stats like completion%, int%, TD%, and passer rating, and the Russellettes point to those and say it shows Wilson is playing really well, but in actual value produced, he's still in the bottom tercile or quartile in the league (plus he still has has pretty sucky rate stats like sack%, success%, DVOA, and QBR).
"Playing well" was already very wrong. He's managing games well enough in a super-simplified system in which he's asked to do very little. The idea of Wilson getting even a single MVP vote (which would be the first in his career) based on his performance so far this season is just out-of-this-world ridiculous.
In another thread, in I asked whether the Broncos can designate Wilson as a post-June 1 cut and simultaneously have him not considered to be on their roster as of the fifth day of the league year, which I believe will be St. Patrick's Day,
@bmorepunk replied with an article from PFF that said they can (so Wilson is officially cut after June 1, but he's somehow not on their roster on March 17, and therefore doesn't have his $37M 2025 salary fully guaranteed). When I said it looked like PFF thought they could do that,
@bmorepunk said the Denver media do too.
If Wilson were actually playing as well as Wilson fans pretend he is, why on Earth would the Denver media be gaming out the best strategy for the Broncos to get rid of Wilson? If they cut him after this season, it ends up being $124M for one season of one of the bottom three starting QBs in the league, plus (up to) one season of a bottom tercile QB in value. If Wilson were actually playing well, the Broncos would be looking to have him play out the contract not only for the on-the-field value, but also to reduce the APY of the contract to $49M. Instead, they're hoping the Broncos will jettison Wilson and just move on and live with having paid $62M per year for two years of not-good QB performance.