The Broncos, Russell Wilson and the Pottery Barn Rule of Quarterbacks

Why the theoretical right move is always to replace your quarterback if you don't have to live with the consequences

Let’s get this out of the way right up top: The Denver Broncos are not cutting or trading Russell Wilson this coming offseason. The fact that I feel the need to address an idea with no practical consideration reflects the premise of the article: there is a stark detachment of theory and practice when the media discusses what teams should do with non-elite personnel.

But before discussing the roots and implications of this detachment, let’s try and look at the Broncos quarterback situation in a measured, rational way. What should they do with Wilson this offseason?

Is Russell Wilson broken?

Before the Broncos take action to get rid of Wilson, they need to think through what they have in the player. Among 26 quarterbacks with 400 or more dropbacks this season, Wilson ranks fourth to last in EPA per play and third to last in PFF offensive grade.

This has been part of a multi-year falloff for Wilson, with his efficiency peak in 2018, followed by four years of decline, and the first season in his career with below-average EPA per play.

Optically it appears that Wilson is on an inexorable downward trajectory, but it would have also looking that way in 2018 if his performance had slightly declined instead of rebounding significantly.

The best way to judge the chance for Wilson to turn things around is to look at historical analogies, and I found several Hall-of-Fame level quarterbacks who fell below the 50th percentile in efficiency using adjusted net yards per attempt (most well below) in their 30’s, before rebounding back to the top of the NFL.

I’m not old enough to remember the narratives at the time when all of these Hall-of-Fame - or Hall-of-Fame adjacent in the case of Philip Rivers - had their poor seasons. But Wilson’s efficiency percentile for 2022 isn’t much different than the other’s, meaning there are multiple examples in a relatively small sample of elite quarterbacks falling in their 30’s and coming back.

It might not be the likeliest outcome that Wilson rebounds, but isn’t a remote possibility. Any decision the Broncos make must consider the chance that Wilson returns to previously high efficiency in the near future, an outcome they’d miss out on by letting him go.

The Implications of Releasing Wilson

When analytics stalwarts like Football Outsiders are making the argument that the Broncos should release Wilson, then you have to at least listen.

Nuke the Russell Wilson Era!

Swallow that horse pill, Denver Broncos! Sink the Sunk Cost Fallacy at sea. Get the colonoscopy and the tax audit done on the same day. You already ditched Nathaniel Hackett. Now toss Wilson to the curb at the end of the season like a dried-out Christmas tree.

I’m a believer that the sunk cost fallacy leads to many bad decisions, but releasing Wilson is about as much as future opportunity costs (discussed above) and previous costs. In fact, releasing Wilson this season versus holding onto him for another year literally saves the Broncos nothing versus the cost to cut next offseason. It’s as much of a mistake to rationalize bad decisions with a misapplication of the sunk cost fallacy than the fallacy itself.

No additional guarantees kick in for Wilson’s contract until the 2024 offseason, when his 2025 salary becomes guaranteed. His 2023 and 2024 salaries are already guaranteed, meaning cutting him this offseason will lead to a total of $107 million in dead cap, which you could spread over two seasons by marking it as post-June 1st.

Keeping Wilson for 2023, retaining all of the potential upside if rebounds, costs the Broncos nothing. You’ll have a $22 million cap hit on his contract this season, which will lower the cost of releasing him in 2024 to $85 million, or exactly the previous release cost minus his cap hit. Releasing Wilson this offseason versus the next means you’re giving up $22M of cap space to not have Wilson on the roster.

Football Outsiders has an explanation for why that might be good idea to rid yourself of Wilson for no financial gain versus doing it next season:

The Broncos could wipe their slate clean all at once in 2023 and start over in 2024 while not looking any worse on the field than they did in 2022. That makes at least as much sense as trying to sell a new coaching staff, the locker room, and fans on another year or two of Wilson.

I agree: the Broncos could be better in 2023 without Wilson as they were with him in 2022. In fact, that’s the most likely outcome. The Broncos have four wins this season and the Texans offseason betting win total for 2022 was 4.5 in the offseason. Even very bad teams win usually win more than four games.

But the question isn’t whether the Broncos without Wilson next season will be better than the Broncos with Wilson this season. It’s whether the Broncos next season without Wilson will be better than the Broncos with Wilson next season. That’s the real, opportunity cost of letting Wilson go.

Wilson might dissuade your top coaching coach from accepting the offer, but we’ve seen countless times over the years how difficult it is a priori to tell if a coach will end up being good. Matthew Coller at Purple Insider wrote about how similarly analysts viewed the hirings of the Nathaniel Hackett and Kevin O’Connell, and now one has been sent packing while the other is a top-5 contender for Coach of the Year. The cost to not getting your No. 1 coaching candidate is analogous to that for not getting your first number choice in roulette. It’s not ideal, also not something to drive a decision.

The Pottery Barn Rule comes to the NFL

So if there’s no real benefit to releasing Wilson now, and you’d lose out on any potential rebound for a Hall-of-Fame level quarterback, why would anyone be advocating for it?

The Pottery Barn Rule entered the American lexicon in a recounting of the lead-up to the Iraq war, when Colin Powell warned then President George Bush about the consequences of a potential invasion:

"You are going to be the proud owner of 25 million people," he told the president. "You will own all their hopes, aspirations, and problems. You'll own it all."

Privately, Powell and Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage called this the Pottery Barn rule: You break it, you own it.

Media analysts love to break teams precisely because they don’t have to own the shattered remnants. They can move on to the next take that raises the theoretical ceiling and casts off another flawed signal-caller, in the pursuit of the NFL Holy Grail: the young, preternaturally talented quarterback.

The logic goes something like this: if the quarterback is the most important position, and a small group of uber-talented quarterbacks - like Patrick Mahomes, Josh Allen or Justin Herbert - can overcome the bad luck of any contextual situation, then why not just continue turning over at the position until you have one of them?

The problem with this in application is that you might not get one of those quarterbacks for years, or maybe not ever. Ask a Browns fan for roughly the last 20 years, or a Jets fan who hasn’t had a legit franchise starter since Joe Namath (sorry, Chad Pennington stans), if it’s as simple as pushing the rebuild button and finding a quarterback that won’t become replaceable in a few seasons.

If you applied the Holy Grail search across the NFL, you’d have 25 teams constantly rotating quarterbacks and trying to get the 5-6 human beings on the earth who are worth having.

You would have let Dak Prescott walk because he wasn’t clearly a top-10 quarterback a few years ago. You’d cut the cord with Kirk Cousins last offseason and miss out on the seventh best odds to win the Super Bowl this year.

Teams with one of a handful of elite quarterbacks have substantial advantages, but general managers have hundreds of other decisions and avenues to add incremental value outside of quarterback. You render all those other decisions moot if you toss away a quarterback you can win with for the low probability game of the draft.

Quarterback purgatory isn’t where you want to ideally be, but as long as last several non-Tom Brady Super Bowl quarterbacks include Matthew Stafford, Nick Foles, Joe Flacco, Eli Manning, and Brad Johnson, you can’t throw away a quarterback who has substantial history of top-10 efficiency, just for the excitement of breaking things up before moving to the next disaster.