Isaiah J. Downing-USA TODAY Sports

Denver Broncos head coach Sean Payton revealed Saturday that quarterback Russell Wilson and fellow starters will play in their first preseason game against the Arizona Cardinals on Aug. 11.

“I haven’t shelled it out yet, but they’re going to play,” Payton said, via Pro Football Talk. “We’ll figure out how many snaps. We typically break a game into three phases — first, second, third phase — and then special teams, we might just do two phases, but we’ll have a plan, especially as we get into next week. I’ve got a few notes written down. I don’t have a pitch count. I don’t have an exclusion list if someone’s got a light injury that we back —but we can expect our guys play a little bit.”

Wilson, 34, did not participate in any preseason contest in 2022 — his first season with the Broncos after coming over in an offseason trade from the Seattle Seahawks. Wilson, who inked a five-year, $245 million deal with the Broncos before taking a snap under center in blue and orange, threw for 3,524 yards with 16 touchdowns and 11 interceptions on a career-low 60.5% passing in 15 starts. The Broncos finished with a 5-12 record and had one of the worst offensive teams in the league.

Sean Payton says Russell Wilson was dealing with some of the ‘worst coaching’ in NFL history last season

Payton attributes a lot of Denver’s failures from the 2022 season on a horrendous coaching staff.

“They can only beat the [expletive] out of you so much,” Payton told USA Today last week. “But everybody’s got a little stink on their hands. It’s not just Russell. It was a [poor] offensive line. It might have been one of the worst coaching jobs in the history of the NFL. That’s how bad it was.”

While he didn’t dismiss Wilson from all of the blame, he said it hardly all fell on the quarterback.

“Oh, man,” Payton said. “There’s so much dirt around that. There’s 20 dirty hands, for what was allowed, tolerated in the fricking training rooms, the meeting rooms. The offense. I don’t know Hackett. A lot of people had dirt on their hands. It wasn’t just Russell. He didn’t just flip. He still has it. This B.S. that he hit a wall? Shoot, they couldn’t get a play in. They were 29th in the league in pre-snap penalties on both sides of the ball.”