HC Nathaniel Hackett on King's Ransom Broncos Relinquished for Russell Wilson: 'It's About the QB'

The Denver Broncos' newly-minted franchise leader Russell Wilson has wasted no time organizing workouts and vital bonding sessions with his teammates. It should come as no surprise that Wilson has been so laser-focused on building rapid chemistry with the weapons he will come to rely upon.

If the base camp of familiarity and understanding can be reached, the Broncos will be in a good position for the monumental divisional battles that lie ahead.

Denver gave up three core players, two first-round picks, two second-rounders, and a mid-round draft selection to secure Wilson's services.

While some in the national media ranks are still hand-wringing over the king's ransom the Broncos relinquished to acquire Wilson, head coach Nathaniel Hackett has taken a damn-the-torpedoes mindset because, after all, without a franchise triggerman, an NFL team is dead in the water.

“In the end, it’s about a quarterback," Hackett said earlier this week. "You can ask all these guys around here. You have to have a quarterback to have a chance. It’s whatever it takes to get a quarterback.”

What is a franchise QB worth? Ask the 2016-21 Broncos.

"I don’t think you can ever put too high of a price on anybody that’s great," Hackett said.

Denver's first-year head coach is no doubt excited that his new project is already up and running, with the main protagonists grabbing the bull firmly by the horns. Wilson will be at the epicenter for the installation of Hackett's offense to have the best chance of finding instant success.

That means every facet of the new offense will be quarterback-centric and designed to make Wilson as comfortable as possible. When the bullets start flying for real, Hackett explained the Broncos will be doubling down on giving Wilson all the tools he needs to be able to perform under the most intense pressure.

“I think it’s so important to make sure he’s comfortable in everything he does,” Hackett said. “From the cadence to the way that you just call a play is so important because when you go out there, and all 80,000 people are screaming at you, you want it to be natural. You want to be able to check at the line. You want to change your audibles. You want to switch from play to play. You want to do so many different things. If he’s thinking about that, he’s not going to be playing fast.”

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Tailoring the verbiage and finer points of the system is designed to allow Wilson to operate like it's second nature. Perhaps most importantly, the new head coach can call on his previous experiences of executing the same kind of process in Green Bay with back-to-back MVP quarterback Aaron Rodgers and cross it over to Wilson.

"It’s kind of that whole process of evaluation of what I want to do as a coach as compared to what the quarterback wants,” Hackett detailed. “It’s the same thing we did with Aaron. There were a lot of great meetings that we had between the three of us [including Packers head coach Matt LaFleur] on what’s the right thing to do, what’s better for us, and what’s better for him.”

It sounds like Hackett’s now-familiar collaborative coaching mantra that he’s enthusiastically preached since touching down in the Mile High City. Looking further into the future, should Hackett’s blue-sky thinking deliver winning results, it will be achieved by hitching the hopes and aspirations of the entire operation to its hand-picked quarterback.

Hackett sounds like a coach absolutely champing at the bit to get hands on his new QB toy.

"We talk [and are] just getting to know each other," Hackett said. "I think that this game is very, very important for relationships, and ours especially because it’s such a high-pressure situation. [We’re] getting to know each other—understanding how he works and how I work. We want to be sure that the two of us are on the same page. I think that right now, it’s just about relationships. As we get to that April 11 mark, now we can start diving into the system as much as we can.”

At the very least, kudos to Hackett for so quickly flushing away all the negatives that came attached from the previous Vic Fangio regime. Hackett's damn-the-torpedoes approach has been massively refreshing for the vast majority of Broncos fans, all of whom are suddenly accentuating more positives than they are negatives.

Follow Keith on Twitter @KeithC_NFL.

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