Russell Wilson made some bold claims with his statements on his previous Broncos teammate’s podcast.  The Denver quarterback was benched for his last two games of the 2023 season due to a conflict in his contract. Wilson has now come forward with his version of the events.

In a conversation with Brandon Marshall, Wilson detailed the circumstances he had to face last season. According to the Denver Broncos’ QB, the benching resulted from him not adhering to the team’s demands around his injury bond. Shocked to hear Wilson’s account, Marshall even compared the situation to an “extortion.”

Russell Wilson says the Broncos wanted him to update injury bond

Wilson detailed on the I AM ATHELETE podcast, about the time he got a call that left him speechless. According to the QB, the Broncos wanted him to agree to push his injury bond. Wilson claimed that he even got the condition that unless he complied with the demand, the quarterback would be benched for nine games. If he wanted to avoid getting benched, Wilson would have to agree to be uncovered from the injury guarantee for the rest of the season.

“Then, as you (Marshall) mentioned, I got this call, and I was like, ‘I’m confused. What’s wrong?’ I didn’t believe it at first. I thought, ‘This can’t be true.’ And I got the call, ‘Hey, we’re going to bench you for the next nine games if you don’t change your injury bond,‘” Wilson shared, “They want to push back my injury guarantee and hold it for the rest of the year so they don’t have to pay it if I get injured.”

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Wilson was caught in a dilemma, but eventually, he decided not to agree to the conditions and chose to be benched. Revealing the reason behind his risky decision, the quarterback said, “I didn’t wanna set a precedent for players to remove their injury guarantees. There was no way I was going to do that, and so when they said that we’re going to bench you, we’re going to bench you, I said, all right, [if] that’s what you want to do.”

Wilson’s former fellow Denver player, Marshall, was very surprised at the suspicious behavior from the Broncos, even comparing it to “extortion.”

Wilson had to get the NFLPA involved

Host Marshall, being shocked at the instance, exclaimed, “It’s like extortion. Obviously, the NFLPA and the lawyers are involved.” However, Wilson confessed that he was unsure of getting “other parties such as the NFLPA into the discussion.” 

The quarterback had to ultimately rope the organizations in after the Broncos persisted in their conditions. According to Wilson, his agent took the matter to the organization, which led to the NFL terming the action as “illegal.”

“So my agent talked to the NFLPA, the NFLPA called me and asked, and then they talked to the NFL, and the NFL said, ‘This is illegal; You can’t do that.’” Though it seemed like the matter was resolved after the NFL’s involvement, Wilson still got benched and had to miss his last two games.

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Russell Wilson’s account claims that the Denver Broncos used unfair means to make the player forgo his injury guarantee for the rest of the season. However, Wilson didn’t feel it was right to agree to the conditions, as it would have been a bad precedent for the young future players to come. What are your thoughts on this?