A summer 2024 arbitration ruling shed unique light on the Broncos’ 2022 contract extension negotiations with former quarterback Russell Wilson, including the quarterback’s initial contract ask and owner and CEO Greg Penner questioning why an immediate long-term deal was necessary.
The document, reported on extensiely and published by reporter Pablo Torre, is an arbiter’s finding that NFL owners did not collude when it came to contract negotiations for Wilson, Baltimore’s Lamar Jackson and Arizona’s Kyler Murray. The three deals came together in the wake of Cleveland giving DeShaun Watson a fully guaranteed, five-year contract.
Wilson and Penner were among several to testify last summer in the NFL Players Association’s pursuit of outlining collusion by the league’s owners to suppress guaranteed money in contracts and ensure that Watson’s fully guaranteed deal did not become a norm.
Wilson, according to the document, testified that after he was traded to the Broncos in March 2022 (for two first-round picks, two second-rounders and three players) and contract negotiations began, he and his agent Mark Rodgers asked for a seven-year, fully guaranteed contract for around $50 million a year, or $350 million total.
“They didn’t blink,” Wilson testified. He also said, “They kept saying, ‘We’ll do whatever it takes. We’ll do whatever it takes.’”
Wilson said that shortly after the trade became public, “maybe within the next 10 days or so, they started getting cold feet on doing this fully guaranteed thing. It seemed like it.”
The franchise was in the process of being sold when it traded for Wilson. The Broncos said an extension had to wait until the new ownership group was in place.
That happened in early August when the Walton-Penner Family Ownership Group finalized the purchase of the club for $4.65 billion.
General manager George Paton was in contact with Penner, the incoming CEO, before the sale was finalized. Paton texted Penner in June, according to the document, to say told Rodgers the Watson deal was “a nonstarter” in negotiations about a Wilson extension. He also noted the front office’s view was that the other quarterbacks due for new contracts wouldn’t approach Watson’s fully guaranteed deal.
Penner himself, though, questioned whether Denver needed to rush to a deal with Wilson before the 2022 season in the first place. According to the document, wrote in his own notes, “2 years left on contract. Why not wait?” The document indicates Penner also noted rationale for getting the deal done, including a summary of Penner’s notes that indicated the club didn’t want a disgruntled quarterback after trading extensive draft capital for him earlier that year.
Rodgers did not return a phone call Tuesday. The Broncos declined to comment on the document.
Penner in August emailed other members of the Broncos’ new ownership group and said of the developing negotiations with Wilson, “[t]here’s no[t]ing in here that other owners will consider off market (e.g. like the Watson guarantees).”
In an Aug. 27, 2022 email transmitting the final details of the deal, Penner wrote that the guarantees — $124 million at signing, all told — were “far less than Watson. If we can get this done, George feels very good about it for us as a franchise and the benchmark it sets (vs. Watson) for the rest of the league.”
Of course, the deal did get done and it did not turn out well for the Broncos. Wilson was cut after two years — he never played a down of the actual five-year, $245 million extension, which would have kicked in for the 2024 season.
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When the deal was signed, the document shows then-NFLPA president JC Tretter expressed frustration over the fact Wilson hadn’t succeeded in landing a fully guaranteed contract.
The arbiter ultimately found that the testimony and evidence around the Broncos and other teams’ actions did not meet a “clear preponderance of evidence” that they colluded to suppress guaranteed money for the quarterbacks.
Of the Broncos, the arbiter wrote, “The Broncos believed that they had more leverage in negotiations because Mr. Wilson had two years remaining on his existing contract, and therefore there was not a strong incentive for them to accede to Mr. Wilson’s requests for a fully guaranteed contract.” He also wrote that, “while the emails sent by Mr. Penner indicated that he was aware of the precedent that Mr. Wilson’s contract might set for the rest of the League, the emails do not suggest that in attempting to limiting Mr. Wilson’s guaranteed compensation, the Broncos were fulfilling a collusive agreement struck at the March 2022 owners’ meeting.”
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Finally We wish PressBee provided you with enough information of ( Russell Wilson asked Broncos for $350M in 2022 and CEO Greg Penner wondered if a deal needed to happen at all, published document shows )
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