Last Thursday, 7 a.m., Broncos training camp, indoor turf field. Players have to be at training camp at 8, but this 7 a.m. meeting has become a regular camp thing. No coaches out here, except coach Russell Wilson, working with the 17 wide receivers and tight ends on the roster. Four hours from now, the young receivers and tight ends would have a big test in a joint practice against Dallas’ defense, and now Wilson was going over coaching points, points about routes, with every receiver on the field.
One of the plays Wilson would call against Dallas was a deep route designed for likely starting tight end Albert Okwuegbunam. Wilson told “Albert O” (Wilson’s moniker for him) he wanted him to take a slightly different cut upfield on a specific route. Okwuegbunam practiced it, got it down, and Wilson said, “Exactly!”
Against the Cowboys, about 45 minutes into practice, the play for Albert O was called. The tight end took the new path, Wilson hit him, and the play gained about 40 yards. Later, Wilson singled out that play as one that was made possible by the cadre of tight ends and receivers coming out an hour early, voluntarily, before coach Nathaniel Hackett’s required report time. “It’s the ownership of the players owning our own offense,” Wilson said. “This has to be a player-ran kind of team. Coach Hackett gives us the keys to do that.”
Wilson has given this team, this organization, this region a giant shot of adrenaline this summer. On consecutive days last week, Peyton Manning and John Elway, the two best quarterbacks in franchise history, showed up to watch. Kenny Chesney’s been a spectator, as has the mayor of Denver. It was 95 degrees with no shade for a midday workday Thursday practice, and 6,500 fans packed the sideline berm to watch. Wilson spent 80 minutes post-practice signing for fans, doing media, playing with his kids on the field, greeting team legends Rod Smith and Terrell Davis and their families, and talking to one of his QB advisors, Marc Trestman. Basically, he’s the mayor of this place. He’s taken over. It’s happened in a matter of months.
For Wilson, this summer is mindful in a larger way of summer 2011, when Wilson, a transfer from North Carolina State, showed up as a fifth-year player at Wisconsin. Five weeks later he was a captain of the team. Four months later, he quarterbacked the Badgers to a win in the inaugural Big Ten Championship Game.
“This is Wisconsin all over again,” agreed one veteran Wilson-watcher. His coach then, Paul Chryst, talked about Wilson setting a tone for the 2011 season from the moment practice started that summer.
Ditto Denver. “He’s a machine,” said GM George Paton. “You don’t really understand it until you see his car here at 5:30 in the morning and then see him roaming the halls at 9 at night.”
Another person who knows Wilson well said the collaboration between Wilson and Hackett is different than what he experienced in Seattle: “Coach and Russell are not coach-player. They’re partners.” They seem to be having a good time. Hackett, a Star Wars freak who likes to keep the atmosphere very light, and Wilson were debating naming audible calls after Star Wars characters one day last week.
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The honeymoon’s in full bloom now. And though I think Hackett/Wilson is going to work, a few things have to happen for the union to flourish.
Wilson’s got to accept all principles of the West Coast Offense, including selling play-action, getting the ball out to open receivers, and not trying to wait-wait-wait for the big plays. NFL Films must have 50 Seattle plays of Wilson from his last two or three Seattle seasons running around, extending plays, trying to make something, anything happen behind a leaky offensive line. Here, in OTAs and in camp, Hackett told me he’s working on cutting those down and forcing Wilson to take earlier options. He said: “It’s gotten to the point that I go, ‘Hey, you’re late.’ Or Russ says it before I do. Or he talks about it because he knows that that’s the standard I want. I don’t want him to be touched. I don’t want him to have to run around. Now sometimes, you have to, but those ones I can’t control. The more that he feels that and understands that, the better it’s going to be.”
I heard something from Sutton at camp that intrigued me. Wilson actually varies his cadence to throw curves at the defense. I’ve never heard of this before. I wish I knew exactly how Wilson did it, but I don’t — it’s proprietary information. But the fact is, Wilson is drilling down with his receivers so they understand how each cadence varies from the norm.
“All the different cadences we have, we try to give ourselves an advantage of getting off the ball and catching the defense off guard,” Sutton said. “He makes it all sound the same, which is dangerous. If we understand when the ball’s supposed to be snapped, we can play at a different level, a different speed. It’s fun to be able to manipulate it the way he does because it gives us that small advantage. It allows us to be able to play fast.”
Sutton mirrors many in the organization, player and coaches and staffers, on Wilson as the rising tide lifting all boats. “He brings that buzz of energy we’ve really needed,” Sutton said. “People who were here when Peyton played say it’s the same kind of feeling.”
The early-morning sessions, conducted against a virtual defense on the indoor field, have helped the receivers understand what Wilson sees too. “I really feel like when you talk football with him it’s like he’s playing the game — playing the game in his mind,” Sutton said. “He’s envisioning the defensive line, linebackers, safeties, corners, the fans. Everybody. He wants us to master the little details the same way he has. All those little details, they hit for him because he sees the game in a different light than other people.”
Wilson told me he loved his “great first decade in the league” with Seattle, which was, altogether, a glorious time for football in the Pacific Northwest. But here, he can be more of a coach to a young group, with a coach who lets him run his own walk-throughs and be the titular head of the organization. The honeymoon’s on. Now, about breaking Kansas City’s six-year stranglehold atop the division…