Carson Wentz traded a day after Russell Wilson: Live updates, grades, news, reaction as quarterback shuffle ensues (2024)

The Seattle Seahawks had quite a Tuesday, agreeing to trade franchise icon and Super Bowl-winning quarterback Russell Wilson to the Denver Broncos for a trade package that includes quarterback Drew Lock, tight end Noah Fant, defensive lineman Shelby Harris, two first-round picks, two seconds and a fifth, a source confirmed to The Athletic on Tuesday. And that was just half the story.

Wilson's time in a Seattle in a nutshell, and what the Broncos just added: He's a nine-time Pro Bowler, having played in two Super Bowls with a win in Super Bowl XLVIII. Last year Wilson threw for 3,113 yards on 64.8 percent passing with 25 touchdowns and six interceptions while missing three games because of a finger injury in 2021. He holds 23 Seahawks passing records and Seattle made the playoffs eight times in his 10 years as the team's starter.

Aaron Rodgers may have decided to stay in Green Bay, but the quarterback shuffle continues elsewhere in the league. One day after the Wilson trade, sources told The Athletic the Commanders and Colts agreed to a deal that will send quarterback Carson Wentz to Washington in exchange for two third-round picks.

Follow along below for more on a groundbreaking story as the NFL free agency period opens one week from now on March 16.

(Photo: Nathan Ray Seebeck / USA Today)

In the end, the Carson Wentz era lasted all of 17 games.

Unfortunately for Wentz, who the Colts agreed Wednesday to trade to the Commanders, the lasting image of his time in Indianapolis will be of Wentz and his teammates flailing all over the field in a season-ending, playoff-eliminating loss to the Jaguars.

The Colts are back at a quarterback crossroads after a 9-8 season that produced no postseason berth and an excruciating conclusion to the campaign.

It’s a place they’ve seemingly lived for the past four years, ever since Andrew Luck decided the rest of his life would not include football.

And here’s the difficult but accurate reality that Colts fans must accept: Barring something unexpected, the Colts aren’t likely to solve their long-term quarterback dilemma this offseason. That’s something the franchise just has to come to terms with, ugly as it might be. Aaron Rodgers is staying home. Russell Wilson is headed to Denver. If Deshaun Watson resolves his legal issues, he will certainly wind up outside the AFC South after his anticipated trade.

The merry-go-round continues. If you think you’re tired, well, you’re not alone.

Read more below.

The Washington Commanders are expected to release veteran safety Landon Collins, a source confirmed to The Athletic, saving Washington $6.6 million against the cap. He'll now hit free agency next week.

Collins, 28, was going to play in 2022 with a cap hit of $16.2 million, and Washington wanted to renegotiate Collins' contract. Trading for Carson Wentz on Wednesday ate up most of the team's remaining cap space.

(Photo: Dustin Bradford / Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)

General manager John Schneider has joked over the years that the Seahawks’ sustained success helped their NFC West foes.

Seattle routinely over the last decade picked in the back half of the first round in the NFL Draft. As a result, division rivals were able to draft the type of blue-chip talent the Seahawks needed to trade late first-round picks to acquire. Seattle hasn’t had a native first-round pick in the top 10 since 2010, Schneider’s first year running the Seahawks with coach Pete Carroll.

Welcome back to the top 10, John.

The Seahawks agreed on Tuesday to trade quarterback Russell Wilson to the Denver Broncos for a boatload of picks, including No. 9 in the 2022 NFL Draft. It will be the earliest Carroll and Schneider are scheduled to draft since they selected left tackle Russell Okung at No. 6 in 2010.

The Seahawks have plenty of holes to fill after finishing 7-10 last season, agreeing to trade Wilson and cutting defensive captain Bobby Wagner on Tuesday, as well. There are a number of different routes Seattle can take with the ninth pick.

To help narrow the choices, we had The Athletic’s draft expert, Dane Brugler, present five prospects for Seattle to consider with its top pick. Seahawks beat writer Michael-Shawn Dugar then evaluated each prospect for need and fit before playing the role of Carroll and Schneider and making a final pick.

Read more on the five candidates below:

When it came to pursuing veteran quarterback this offseason, “Riverboat Ron” Rivera could not have been more transparent.

Quarterbacks run the league. Great ones give teams a shot a glory. Some good ones do, as well. Without either, good luck. Rivera has lived the chaotic QB life since taking over as Washington’s football commander in January 2020. Six different players started under center for Washington during Rivera’s two seasons.

A seventh was coming someway, somehow.

“This year we are being very proactive, looking, searching, doing things we are trying to truly cover every base,” Rivera said at last week’s NFL Scouting Combine.

Taylor Heinicke overachieved last season in relief of the injured Ryan Fitzpatrick, the fallback plan after failing to acquire Matthew Stafford last offseason. The upcoming pool of free agents and incoming rookies lacks sizzle. There’s not enough here to which one can comfortably stake a team’s future.

Read more below.

Seattle thanks LB Bobby Wagner and officially announces his release.

No, this decision wasn’t just about Jacksonville.

And it wasn’t solely about the way the season ended, either.

Truth be told, some inside the Indianapolis Colts’ West 56th Street facility were finished with the Carson Wentz experiment long before the team’s late-season collapse, according to several recent conversations with sources inside the organization. Consecutive losses to Las Vegas and Jacksonville in Weeks 17 and 18 — punctuated by poor play from the starting quarterback — cost the team a 97 percent shot at the playoffs and led to owner Jim Irsay calling it “an epic shortfall that stunned and shocked and appalled us all.”

The Colts shipped the 29-year-old Wentz to the Washington Commanders on Wednesday in exchange for a pair of third-round picks, a league source said, one of which can become a second-rounder if Wentz plays a certain number of snaps next season. The deal was first reported by ESPN. The teams will also swap second-round picks this spring. The deal can’t be made official until the new league year begins on March 16.

Read more below.

The quarterback carousel continued to spin Wednesday as the Washington Commanders decided to take a swing on Carson Wentz, acquiring him in a trade with the Indianapolis Colts.

Read more below:

The Commanders and Colts have agreed to a deal that will send quarterback Carson Wentz to Washington, sources told The Athletic Wednesday. The Colts will get two third-round picks from Washington in return.

(Photo: Matt Pendleton / USA Today)

The addition of Russell Wilson has immediately changed the complexion of the Broncos, turning an also-ran in the AFC West to a team that should be able to compete each and every week inside arguably the best division in football. The deal also changed how the Broncos must attack the rest of this offseason, needing to fill more holes with fewer resources because of the price they paid — five draft picks and three players, two of them key starters — to obtain their franchise quarterback.

That plan will begin to take shape with Monday’s start of the free-agency tampering period, and we will delve deeply into each part of the roster build that comes next for the Broncos. For now, though, click below to read 20 thoughts on the trade for Wilson and what comes next for Denver.

Russell Wilson is now a top-six candidate for NFL MVP in 2022 after he was traded to the Denver Broncos, according to BetMGM's latest odds.

The veteran QB's MVP odds, which opened at 30-1 this offseason, jumped to 14-1 post-trade. That places him tied for fifth. The Broncos are also among the betting favorites to win Super Bowl LVII, with the fourth-best odds in the NFL at 12-1.

BetMGM says 9.8 percent of tickets have been placed on Wilson, second-most behind Bills quarterback Josh Allen, who is on 17.1 percent.

NFL MVP odds as of Wednesday morning:

• Packers QB Aaron Rodgers and Chiefs QB Patrick Mahomes: 7-1
• Bills QB Josh Allen: 9-1
• Bengals QB Joe Burrow: 12-1
• Wilson and Chargers QB Justin Herbert: 14-1

It's weird to see, but there he is among Sheil Kapadia's Top 150 NFL free agents.

Sheil has Wagner at No. 7:

"The Seahawks released him before the start of free agency. Wagner turns 32 in June, but he was a 16-game starter last season, and his 170 tackles ranked third league-wide. Over the past three seasons, Wagner’s 467 tackles rank first and are 65 more than any other player. He’s been incredibly durable with 150 starts in 10 seasons."

As Tuesday’s Russell Wilson deal went down on a day filled with fireworks around the NFL, the precise details of the transaction slowly began to emerge.

As one high-ranking NFL executive took stock of it all, he offered a succinct and in-the-moment reaction to Seattle netting a massive haul of two first-round picks, two second-round picks, a fifth-round pick, tight end Noah Fant and two other players from Denver for the Seahawks’ nine-time Pro Bowl selection.

“Holy sh*t!” the executive said via text message.

Flashback to earlier in the day when it was revealed that Aaron Rodgers and the Packers had come to an accord that will keep the four-time Most Valuable Player in Green Bay, likely on a reworked contract that could make him the highest-paid player in the game.

Rodgers’ foreboding comments after January’s playoff exit left his team and the entire football world pondering whether the end was near for the 38-year-old.

“There’s obviously a lot of decisions to be made,” Rodgers said then.

Rodgers’ relative silence in the weeks since, save for a few nebulous statements after winning his latest MVP award last month, offered little additional insight.

So, what did the Packers do? They ramped up their efforts to keep him, showered him with love and prayed he’d return.

There’s an important singular takeaway from these two huge stories that, though they played out differently and were separated by thousands of miles, should not be lost.

It all served as a vivid reminder that success (and failure) in the NFL is determined by quarterback play more than ever. What that means is that NFL teams are increasingly lumped into one of two classifications: those with an elite franchise quarterback and those without one.

Where would you rather be? And what would you be willing to do to go from the latter group to the former? Tuesday provided some answers.

Read the full story below:

Russell Wilson wasn’t happy. That much was clear.

There was tension when Wilson’s agent, Mark Rodgers, got on the phone with Seahawks general manager John Schneider one year ago to broach potential trade destinations for his client. Rodgers had helped craft the narrative around Wilson’s displeasure with the Seahawks. During this call with Schneider, he relayed the teams to which Wilson would accept a trade – if a trade was what Seattle wanted.

The phrasing marked a cagey bit of semantics enabling Wilson and Rodgers to maintain that they had never asked out of Seattle, while still getting their point across. But the Seahawks had grown so weary of the drama and subterfuge surrounding Wilson that Schneider brushed off Rodgers in profane terms, according to a source. Then, in a move signaling just how rocky the relationship between team and player had become, Rodgers promptly went public, revealing to ESPN’s Adam Schefter the four teams Wilson would approve being traded to.

This week, Schneider and the Seahawks rocked the NFL with a massive trade, sending Wilson and a fourth-round pick to the Broncos for two first-round picks, two seconds, one fifth and three players. The deal was stunning, both in its scope and finality, but it didn’t come out of nowhere.

Read the full story from Michael-Shawn Dugar, Jayson Jenks and Mike Sando below: