If anyone needed confirmation that the Broncos’ blockbuster offseason gambles have not paid off, the team provided it this week, firing coach Nathaniel Hackett just 15 games into his first season. Now, there remains one other elephant in the room: quarterback Russell Wilson. The longtime Seahawks star arrived with much fanfare, acquired in exchange for a massive trade package and inked to a $245 million extension before taking his first snap in orange. But Wilson, like Hackett, has been instrumental in Denver’s dysfunctional 2022 performance, leading to questions about his own future with the team.

Fully diagnosing, let alone correcting, Wilson’s plummet under center is hard enough. Long one of the NFL’s standard-bearers when it comes to poise, pocket awareness and downfield passing, the QB has endured easily the worst season of his career at 34, barely completing 60 percent of his throws while totaling just 12 touchdowns and nine interceptions during a 3-10 stretch as the starter. Hackett’s decision-making, plus a banged-up supporting cast, surely contributed to Wilson’s drop-off. But there are larger concerns at work here, namely Wilson’s apparent decline in mobility, which once enabled him to extend plays with ease; and an even more apparent insistence on quick-strike Shotgun passing, which has never been his bread and butter.

It’s become increasingly clear that Wilson both wants and needs to be a QB that he’s never truly been, at least up to this point: he wants to be the ultra-efficient superstar whose legacy and trophy case improve with age, and he needs to be ultra-efficient to compensate for less trademark elusiveness and off-script athleticism. Figuring out how to strike a happy medium, and ironically revert Wilson to the Seahawks-level production he sought to escape, will be the next Broncos coach’s top task.

Or will it? Is there actually a scenario where Denver could cut the cord on this marriage after just one season?

If general manager George Paton sticks around, as the Broncos indicated in their dismissal of Hackett, it may be less likely. Paton, after all, is the one who swung for the fences to land Wilson, parting with three players and five draft picks, including two first-rounders, to do so. He’s the one who gave Wilson a five-year, $245M extension, with $124M guaranteed, on Sept. 1, without ever seeing the QB play a Broncos game that counted. While Wilson’s steadily sluggish debut should give new team ownership plenty of pause about the short- and long-term prospects of their team, the QB’s results can’t be fully separated from the price paid to get them. This is a business. And there is no easy way for Denver to turn this into a profit.

A standard release of Wilson following this season is practically impossible. This would result in an astronomical $107M dead-cap charge and, more importantly, an immediate net loss of $85M, per Over The Cap. The Broncos would literally need to cut almost half their team to stay under the 2023 salary cap. There are multiple ways Denver could reduce immediate losses by designating Wilson a post-June 1 release, however. One scenario has the Broncos absorbing a $61M dead-cap hit in 2023.