Overreaction Monday: Russell Wilson proved the Broncos wrong on SNF

Well that's one way to (temporarily) silence the haters. After weeks of waiting and a whole lot of consternation, Russell Wilson delivered a dream debut for the Pittsburgh Steelers, completing 16-of-29 passes for 264 yards and two touchdowns while adding another score on the ground in his team's 37-15 win over the New York Jets. It didn't get off to the most auspicious start, but by the second half Wilson was looking exactly like the QB the Steelers hoped they were acquiring when they got him from the Denver Broncos over the offseason, hitting deep shots to George Pickens and extending plays with his legs.

While Wilson had the Steelers looking like AFC contenders, the man who replaced him in Denver has been ... up and down, to say the least. The Broncos blasted the New Orleans Saints on Thursday night to move to 4-3, but they're being kept above water almost entirely by their defense: Rookie QB Bo Nix hasn't looked much like a first-round pick so far this season, steadfastly refusing to push the ball downfield and throwing bundles of interceptions on the rare occasions when he does. It's hard not to look at Denver's performance this season with subpar quarterback play, look at the way Wilson played on Sunday night and wonder where Sean Payton's team might be if it hadn't run Wilson out of town on a rail.

Russell Wilson proves the Broncos wrong with performance vs. Jets

Wilson was hardly the second coming of John Elway in Denver last year; he wasn't what he was in his prime, and he certainly wasn't what the team envisioned when it moved heaven and earth to land him from the Seattle Seahawks. But while Wilson may have been more prone to checkdowns and less capable of threatening the middle of the field, he was still a perfectly fine starting quarterback, hitting deep shots down the sideline to Courtland Sutton and extending plays with his legs the way he always has. It wasn't sensational, but it was good enough — and with the way this Broncos defense is playing right now (and the way the wide-open AFC is shaking out), good enough is all Denver really needed.

Instead, Payton and Co. are stuck with Nix, who far too often is an active impediment to moving the ball. When the Broncos defense and running game are making life easy, it all works well enough. But the moment Nix is asked to do anything beyond dump the ball off or scramble for a couple of yards, things go south in a hurry; he simply doesn't have the chops at this point in his career to read a defense and make throws into tight windows down the field, the sort of throws you need to make to move the ball consistently against better defenses. Wilson, for all his flaws at this point in his career, has been around long enough to know how to make some of those sorts of plays.

But Payton wanted a quarterback molded in his image, someone who wouldn't have the nerve to go rogue every now and then. And so now Denver has hitched its wagon to Nix, and lowered its ceiling as a result; can anyone see Nix leading this team to a win in, say, Baltimore in January? The rest of this roster deserves better than its QB situation, and it could be making some real noise with just a bit more from the most important position on the field.