Broncos want QB Wilson to adjust his contract, or he will be benched

Russell Wilson, quarterback (QB) of the Denver Broncos, will have to spend the rest of the 2023 National Football League (NFL) regular season on the bench if he doesn't agree to adjust his contract with the team, the player confirmed on Friday.

According to the 35-year-old veteran, the team's decision-makers asked him to remove $37 million of injury guarantee from his contract after he led the Broncos to their first win over the Kansas City Chiefs since 2015 on October 29. He has started in every one of the 15 games for the team so far this season and completed 297 of his 447 passes for 3,070 yards and 26 touchdowns with eight interceptions. The Broncos won seven of those 15 games.

However, coach Sean Payton announced on Wednesday that Jarrett Stidham will replace Wilson as the starting QB against the Los Angeles Chargers on Sunday for the team to win and "to get a spark offensively." Stidham, 27, has made only 14 appearances in the league and started in two of them in the Las Vegas Raiders last season. They lost both.

Wilson joined the Broncos in a blockbuster trade in March 2022 and then signed a five-year, $245 million extension with the team. The deal included $39 million guaranteed money for 2024, whether he is with the team or not, and another $37 million for 2025 if he could not pass a physical on the fifth day of the new league year in March.

"They definitely told me I was going to be benched and all that," Wilson said on Friday. "That whole bye week I didn't know what was going to be the case. I was going to be ready to play, I wanted to go to Buffalo and beat Buffalo [November 13]. ... I wasn't going to remove the injury guarantee, this game is such a physical game, I've played 12 years and all that."

Wilson was a nine-time Pro Bowler and the winner of Super Bowl XLVIII with the Seattle Seahawks in 2014 before he was traded to the Broncos. However, his cooperation with the team has not been going well. They were 5-12 and missed the playoffs last season. The team lost three of their past four games to drop to the current 7-8 record.

Though Wilson called the threat of benching him a "low blow," he still expressed his willingness to stay in Denver. "I hope that it's here, I hope that it's here for a long time," he said. "I hope we win some more silverware in the front hall and we get some more championships, and if it's not here, I'll be prepared to do that somewhere else, but I hope that it's here. I genuinely mean that, I brought my family here and everything else."

The Broncos are not completely hopeless for the playoffs at the moment. They will face the Chargers on Sunday and then the Raiders on January 7 in their final two regular season games.