ENGLEWOOD, Colo. - The thousands of people who made their way to the UCHealth Training Center over the course of Broncos training camp last month to watch practice all seemed to train, not surprisingly, toward the quarterback group.
Toward Russell Wilson.
Newness and excitement and buzz abound here in the leadup to the 2022 season due to a new coaching staff and, more recently, new ownership. But the new quarterback naturally has drawn the most attention.
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All of those eyes watching Wilson perhaps learned something about him if they focused on his eyes and his feet.
The veteran quarterback - who spent his first 10 years in Seattle and will lead Denver back there for a highly anticipated Monday night (ESPN, 8:15 PM ET) matchup - even in drills that don't include throwing the ball, would go through his footwork, decide where to throw and then oftentimes carry on through his progression, even when there was no defense on the field, or even no receivers.
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Sometimes, he'd adjust his drop as if he were maneuvering around a free rusher or identifying a different throwing lane. Step up, throw, then point toward where the second option and third option would have been.
"It really helps him get ready for the game quicker because you don't get every throw in practice," Denver quarterbacks coach Klint Kubiak told USA TODAY Sports recently. "After he does throw it, he's already visualizing the rest of the progression."
The mental frame-working of coverages and routes, how they might unfurl over the coming 18 weeks based on time, score, game flow and myriad other factors, is part of Wilson's effort to map an on-field future that changes second by second and can't be entirely controlled.
Wilson's always been wired this way - "obsessed with winning," is the catchall he regularly uses to describe all the little maniacal ways he goes about preparing - and the past year on and off the field have required a lot of frame-working.
So far, the course is developing just as he wanted.
Now comes the next phase. And it begins right where the previous one ended.
Wilson over his years in Seattle expressed a desire to spend his entire career there. In recent seasons, though, as his relationship with the Seahawks frayed, the prospect of a trade became more realistic.
Wilson confirmed this week his belief that Seattle tried to trade him "a couple of times." After the 2020 season his agent, Mark Rodgers, told ESPN that although Wilson wasn't requesting a trade, he would accept one to four teams: Chicago, Las Vegas, Dallas and New Orleans.
Given that Wilson had a no-trade clause as part of the four-year, $140 million extension he signed in Seattle in 2019, he and his group knew they'd have some say in where he ultimately ended up if a trade did indeed go through. So they vetted more than a dozen franchises and cities as potential destinations.
The criteria spanned across the board, from stadiums to weather and schools to coaches, organizational stability, management and more.
Denver checked many boxes in Wilson's mind, people around him say, but nothing surpassed the level to which the quarterback was convinced about the Broncos' young, talented roster, which he has regularly raved about since the trade.
At one point early in training camp, he answered a question about what he saw in practice by rattling off seven players' names and concluded by saying, "We've got a championship kind of football team, and we are excited about that. The exciting part about that is now it's time to just go show up and prove it."
Essentially, Wilson agreed with the relatively common line of thinking that Denver was just a quarterback away from being a contender.
That was enough to make the Broncos an attractive option. even though, when the season ended, it wasn't clear who the head coach would be or when exactly a new ownership group would be in place after the franchise was put up for sale Feb. 1.
By the time the trade actually happened, of course, Denver had hired Nathaniel Hackett as its head coach. Hackett brought with him from Green Bay a similar style of offense that Wilson had played in during the 2021 season under Shane Waldron in Seattle.
"Watching the film (from Seattle), we saw him executing some concepts that we have a lot of familiarity with," Kubiak said. "So you could already tell by watching the film that he's done it. Then hearing him speak the language, it was a pretty quick turnaround."
Further hastening the transition is the manner in which Wilson and Hackett got along from the start.
"Our bond is so strong," Wilson said at the outset of training camp. "Our communication and his understanding of the game - the whys of the game, the history of the game - he's a guru at it."
Hackett, the first-time head coach, has not been shy about the extent to which he allows and wants Wilson to be involved in everything from putting the playbook together to what he likes in certain situations to how he works with the rest of the offense.
"We obviously worked with him and we're putting a lot of his stuff in, too, but he's so open-minded," Kubiak said. "He's definitely had to work at some new calls and some new protection adjustments and new formations. He went about it just like you would if you were learning a brand new subject. You just devote yourself to the material.
"You see his big-ass truck in here, first guy here and then he's here late at night, so he's putting in the work to know it like the back of his hand."
Both the head coach and the quarterback have described their standing as a partnership. Hackett, as one recent example, outlined how Wilson's involvement with paring down the entire playbook into a game plan for Seattle will look.
"We'll put that initial stuff in, he'll have his initial stuff, and we'll be sure to communicate a whole bunch," Hackett said. "In the end, I want him to feel comfortable out there. I want him to run the plays that he thinks he can execute at the highest level."
That's not the only way the Broncos have given Wilson freedom since he joined the organization.
He ran his own early morning walk-throughs with Denver's skill position players before meetings started during camp. He has an office in the team's facility. In the lead-up to the draft this spring, only weeks after joining the organization, he sat in general manager George Paton's office, and the pair watched every wide receiver in the draft together.
Wilson also has members of his personal team around - though not participating in - practice regularly. Before camp started, Paton downplayed the significance of anywhere from three to five or six people in Wilson-brand gear around the facility on a daily basis.
"Nowadays, it's not uncommon for players in this league to have certain parts of their team, and he's got a great team. It's very collaborative," Paton said when training camp started. "They're very respectful of any boundaries we have. They really have become part of the Broncos family and they're really great people.
"Anything we can do to gain an edge, our team to gain an edge, Russ to gain an edge. We're all about winning, and if it's going to help us win, I'm all for it."
It's not a coincidence that Wilson's five-year, $245 million contract extension runs until he is 40 years old. Of course, most quarterbacks don't play out entire contracts - there will likely be another extension or restructure somewhere in the next five or six years - but the quarterback has made it clear he'd like to play "another 10-12 years."
Now he's under contract for the next seven.
When Wilson signed the deal, Paton talked about the impact that he'd already had on the organization in his first six months in town.
There has been as much talk so far about the fact that Wilson was in Monaco for a Formula 1 race and back at minicamp two days later; or that he and his wife, Ciara, opened a clothing store; or that the Russell Wilson Passing Academy is up and running here; or that they were in the royal box at Wimbledon in June and Serena Williams' at the U.S. Open two months later.
The one part of the whole thing that has yet to be unveiled to the larger public is Wilson's day job. Now, that will change. Legacy is not shaped only on the football field, but the Seahawk-turned-Bronco knows the second long haul of his career is about to begin.
"You want your career to be a reflection of being one of the best in the world," he said. "I think my first 10 years has been a positive reflection, but there is more to do.
"There's a lot more to do, a lot more I want to do and a lot more we have to do as a team. That's what I'm excited about."
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: 'More to do': Broncos QB Russell Wilson's second act begins right where the first concluded