DENVER — The visiting locker room was dejected after the team lost a game it should have won, but its star player walked in and instantly changed the mood.
Russell Wilson has won way more than he has lost in his 11 years as an NFL quarterback, and one of the keys seems to be his ability to quickly wash away the losses. This was one game, was Wilson’s message to his fellow Broncos in so many words. This wasn’t the Super Bowl. The Super Bowl is still out there for the Broncos.
> Video above: Remembering the man responsible for Russell Wilson's mind
Wilson was asked about his ability to cleanse defeat and look forward to the next-chance-to-win mentality. He answered with an inspirational lecture.
“You realize you don’t win it all on one day,’’ Wilson said Wednesday during the starting quarterback’s weekly press conference. “One game. You win it through a journey and a process. You have to have amnesia playing this game. You have to remember the great moments but also forget them, too, in the midst of a game. You’ve got to be able to, after the game, postgame, you look at everything and see what went well, what didn’t go well.
“I kind of have a process. I watch my film, for example, just my game. Then I watch the whole collective group. Then I watch it again to see what we could have done different. And I always grade it and I always think about simply, ‘what did we do well? And what can we get better at?’ And then from there you take that in objectively and you move forward.
“I think maybe it’s the baseball in me. I don’t know, maybe the Rockies, maybe dealing with the Yankees, I don’t know, playing a lot of baseball back in the day.’’
Let us interrupt his sermon for some background. Wilson is not just a great athlete, he was once a two-sport athlete.
Football, you know about it. And baseball, too, when he was a minor-league second baseman in 2011 and 2012 for the Colorado Rockies’ organization. Baseball is a sport where if you fail two times of three as a batter, and do it over a long time, you go to the Hall of Fame. The greatest of the greats may go 0 for 4 once or twice a week.
Wilson hit .229 with 118 strikeouts in 379 minor-league at-bats at the Class A level for the Rockies. (He later spent six days in spring training with the 2018 Yankees).
Possibly the most positive, optimistic person who ever wore a Broncos uniform, Wilson understood how to cope with failure. And he coped by saying, “I’ll get ‘em next time.’’ Back to his answer.
“I think a lot of it is you have to be able to focus on the next pitch, the next moment,’’ Wilson said. “And if you sit back and think about the past, think about a past play or whatever it may be – you learn from moments. I’m not saying you don’t learn from them. But I think what you’re able to do is you’re able to move forward from them and grow from them.
“And I think this game is all about growth. You’re either growing or you’re not. I always want to be on that constant elevator of growth, I guess.”
And so Wilson is in the midst of preparing for the Houston Texans, whom the Broncos will play six days after their 17-16 loss Monday night against his former Seahawks. The game ended with Wilson and the Broncos’ offense getting pulled off the field by coach Nathaniel Hackett on fourth-and-5 from the Seattle 46 so Brandon McManus could attempt a 64-yard field goal. McManus missed wide left.
Hackett said Tuesday if he had to do it over again, he would have gone for it on fourth and 5. Wilson was asked Wednesday if he agreed with the coach changing his mind a day later.
“Look I think … Yeah,’’ Wilson said with a smile. “I think any time you get a chance to win the game and solidify it and try and make a play – I believe in always having the ball and everything else. But also we have a great kicker and we’re going to believe in our kicker again.’’
For a few seconds there, after running back Javonte Williams gained 9 yards off a swing pass that set up fourth and 5, Wilson stayed on the field and was calling a play to his offensive teammates. But then McManus and the field goal unit came on and Wilson and company trotted off.
“I was at the line of scrimmage ready to go for it,’’ Wilson said. “I was calling a play. We were ready to go, but that’s what we decided and we went with it. We missed by, I don’t know, a yard, maybe. Maybe half a yard, so it was close.’’
Wilson said it was a pass play he was calling, but otherwise didn’t go into detail.
And so he moves forward, and during a walkthrough Wednesday morning, he was motivating his teammates to join him.
“I was telling the guys, the thing about great teams is, they always respond,’’ Wilson said. “If you want to be a championship team you’ve got to respond. So how are we going to respond today?’’
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