Res­cu­ing Zach Wil­son is smart. Stop­ping at Zach Wil­son is hubris.

As a quar­ter­back, Wilson’s mere­ly appe­tiz­er mate­r­i­al. If the NFL Draft is still serv­ing Bo Nix or Michael Penix Jr. as a main course, and at a rea­son­able cost, the Bron­cos would be crazy not to bite.

A QB room con­sist­ing of Wil­son, Jar­rett Stid­ham, Ben DiN­uc­ci and a sev­enth-round fli­er to be named late would be the worst in the divi­sion (pend­ing Raider­foon­ery ). And arguably the worst in an AFC that’s still loaded with fran­chise signal-callers.

In iso­la­tion, though, you get it. Land­ing Wil­son from the Jets with a sev­enth-round pick for a sixth-rounder is a sol­id, low-cap, low-risk move. It just bet­ter not be the only one, at least where the quar­ter­back is concerned.

After Rus­sell Wil­son took the mon­ey and ran, the best thing the Bron­cos could do at QB1 right now is open this com­pe­ti­tion to the mass­es. Bring in as many bod­ies as you can afford until one of them actu­al­ly sticks.

And, on paper, this body’s got more upside than most. Maybe. The draft­niks at NFL.com three years ago described the 24-year-old Wil­son, the No. 2 over­all pick in the ’21 draft, as a “blend (of) Jake Plum­mer and John­ny Manziel com­ing out of (BYU).” Which is both awe­some (the Plum­mer part) and ter­ri­fy­ing (the Manziel part) in the same sentence.

On one hand, the kid did beat Rus­sell Wil­son, head-to-head, at Empow­er Field as a vis­it­ing QB with the Jets twice in two trips since Sep­tem­ber 2022.

On the oth­er, what the heck does that say?

If you look at Zach Wilson’s 30 career starts against any­one not named the Bron­cos, he’s sport­ed a 10–20 record, thrown 23 touch­downs and 22 picks, and com­plet­ed 17 pass­es per game at a clip of 56.5%.

Also, he got benched for Trevor Siemi­an. 2023 Trevor Siemian.

Wis­er foot­ball heads, old coach­es and scouts texted me Mon­day to say they still see a spark in Zach Wil­son, that nobody could’ve walked away from the dump­ster fire that is the J‑E-T‑S with­out some sec­ond-degree burns. That maybe Bron­cos QB Whis­per­er Sean Pay­ton — Rus­sell Wil­son notwith­stand­ing — is the sen­sei who winds up bring­ing it out of the guy, the way he brought it out of Drew Brees, Ted­dy Bridge­wa­ter and Ker­ry Collins, anoth­er top-five bust in his ear­ly days with Carolina.

Although with the lat­ter, it’s worth not­ing that Collins went 16–9 as a starter over his first two sea­sons with the Pan­thers, pre-Pay­ton. He even made a Pro Bowl dur­ing his sec­ond sea­son in the league before things went south. Wil­son, at a sim­i­lar stage in his career, hasn’t come any­where close to that.

As depth, though, he works. As insur­ance, he fits. If any­thing, it means Pay­ton and GM George Paton don’t have to feel forced to sell what­ev­er farm is left in order to try to swoop into one of the top 5 picks in the draft. It prob­a­bly also means that they’re not sure if they’ve got the cap­i­tal to even pull that off.

Unless the tank for 2025 — a real­i­ty show of Shedeur Sanders, Deion Sanders and Pey­ton would be more the­ater than these moun­tains could han­dle — is tru­ly on, Wil­son helps a QB room. He doesn’t com­plete it. Add Penix or Nix to that mix, though? Now you’re cookin’ with gas.

Wil­son is the banana bread French toast at Pan­zano, the mac & cheese at Nola Jane. A great first bite. But if he’s the last, this off­sea­son is going to leave Bron­cos Coun­try with a famil­iar, emp­ty feel­ing in their guts.

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